The Scientific American has an interesting piece on Rita Charon and narrative medicine at:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=30&articleID=000E87FC-73D3-1264-B1DB83414B7F0000
The "better listening to the patient's story" part of the article seems to me to make a lot of sense.
So also does the part about improving doctor/patient relations. (I just saw the 1991 movie, The Doctor, which movingly dramatizes the same point. In it, the top doctor - played William Hurt - thought he knew it all until he became a cancer patient, and discovered how the medical system callously treats him as a thing.)
Where I start to have some concerns about narrative medecine is when I read that someone with high cholesterol and chest pains talked with his doctor about his problems with his father and his own challenges as a father and his chest pains went away. No doubt some pains and illnesses are psychosomatic, but the implication that a lot of illnesses -- or even most illnesses -- can be "cured" in this way seems to me misleading.
Nevertheless an interesting article.
Do you really believe Charon was dismissive of her patient's symptoms, or was this an abbreviated description she used to demonstrate the mind/body connection?
I've read much of her work and as a narrative theorist, I'm hard pressed to believe this is what she intended. I think she suggests the dimished chest pains illustrate a need to consider his pain as stress-related, not psychosomatic.
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