Narrative Medicine, Healing and Salutogenesis: Contrasting meta-narratives
Main Article Content
Abstract
While narrative medicine “fortifies clinical practice with the narrative competence to recognize, absorb, metabolize, interpret, and be moved by stories of illness”,
(www.narrativemedicine.org), the role of healing in clinical narratives has yet to be considered. Salutogenesis, defined by the late Anton Antonovsky, is the ‘creation of health and the fostering of healing’ where healing does not simply address reversal of disease but emphasizes health-promoting experiences and behaviors as distinct and differentiated from the illness perspective. This contrast between illness and healing offers an opportunity to consider a deeper meta-narrative (identity stories that confer legitimacy on what we do) – that can significantly broaden and likely add to the impact of narrative medicine.
In this 45-minute workshop, Drs. Kreisberg and Huffaker will guide participants through two narrative exercises – the first, an illness narrative, and second, a healing narrative. By introducing Antonovsky’s perspective on healing, participants will gain an awareness of a deep and widespread meta-narrative comparison that has yet to be articulated in narrative medicine. In contrasting these meta-narratives, it is suggested that work has yet to be done to fully explore the potential for healing narratives in narrative medicine. They can afford the exploration of stories far beyond the bio-medical illness paradigm and introduce the likelihood that including both illness and healing stories offers an enriched potential for narrative elements of whole person care.
Article Details
Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal. Creative Comons 4.0 CC-BY
Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).