'Narrative Medicine'

This chapter traces the origins, development, and key critical issues within narrative medicine. It addresses the general emphasis in the field on Aristotelian and realist storytelling, and argues that illness – and especially acute, chronic, or terminal illness – better lends itself to more formally experimental narratives. The chapter discusses the tendency of classical narratives to imply the purposiveness of adverse events, arguing, instead, that illness is a contingent or chance event. It interrogates the distinction between diachronic and episodic understandings of selfhood and is concerned with aspects of narrative that are often overlooked in narrative medicine. The chapter considers the tension in medical practice between empirical knowledge and the kind of hermeneutic understanding that narratives demand. Finally, the chapter offers three brief case studies that explore some of the ways in which literature and patient narratives can elucidate the key points raised in the chapter.