The people who come to see us bring us their stories. They hope they tell them well enough so that we understand the truth of their lives. They hope we know how to interpret their stories correctly. We have to remember that what we hear is their story.
Robert Coles in “The Call of Stories”.
Stories have always fascinated me. I love them. Every day when I sit in my consulting room patients tell me the most amazing, fascinating and unique stories. As a medical student I was taught how to “take a history” – I hate that phrase actually – who’s doing the “taking” and what exactly are they “taking” and from whom? Doesn’t seem right to me at all. Instead I prefer teaching medical students how to listen to patients’ stories. However, the point is that this is the beginning of all diagnosis. To a certain extent listening to the patient’s story is a diminished art. There’s an over-reliance on technology and a lot of doctors just don’t seem to be able to make a diagnosis without a test these days. Diagnosis is a form of understanding. It’s a process of trying to make sense of somebody’s experience.
If stories are so important in clinical practice, then how can I learn to handle them better I wondered? There is a developing area of medicine known as “narrative-based practice”, with associated “narrative-based research” methodologies, but materially-orientated, reductionist scientists look down on narrative. They prefer data. So, when I started to study narrative (which, technically is the story AND the way that story is told), I couldn’t find much work from a scientific perspective. I had to turn to the humanities.
One of the books which I really love in this area of study is “On Stories” by Richard Kearney (ISBN 9-780415-247986). Not only is it a fabulous exploration of the place of story in human life, but it’s written completely beautifully. Richard Kearney is a philosopher but he’s also a magnificent writer. This one book taught me more about the importance of story than any other.
Telling stories is as basic to human beings as eating. More so, in fact, for while food makes us live, stories are what make our lives worth living.
This sets stories at the heart of human existence – not optional, but essential.
Aristotle says in “Poetics” that storytelling is what gives us a shareable world.
The key word there is “shareable”. It’s through the use of story that we communicate our subjective experience and its through the sharing of subjective experience that we connect, and identify with others.
Without this transition from nature to narrative, from time suffered to time enacted and enunciated, it is debatable whether a merely biological life could ever be considered a truly human one.
Beautifully expressed. Sets narrative at the heart of what it means to be human and stands it against those who would take a materialistic view of life which they claim can be reduced to data sets and DNA.
Every life is in search of a narrative. We all seek, willy-nilly, to introduce some kind of concord into the everyday discord.
This is one of my favourite lines in the whole book. This is exactly the power of story – it enables us to “get a handle on” life, to bring some kind of order out of chaos.
What does Richard Kearney mean by story then? Well, I’ll finish this post with two more quotes from his book which make it very clear and very simple.
When someone asks you who you are, you tell your story. That is, you recount your present condition in the light of past memories and future anticipations.
This shows that story collapses time, bringing the past and the future into the present. Story telling requires memory, imagination and expression.
Every story requires –
a teller, a tale, something told about, and a recipient of the tale.
Nice and simple, but what profundity lies in there. For every story, there is a unique human being doing the telling, there is the story itself and its subject matter, and, very importantly there’s the recipient – the listener or the reader. Story is, as Aristotle said, a way of creating a shareable world. That’s the greatest potential of blogs, I reckon. By sharing our stories we create a shared world. Yes, sure, stories can divide as well as connect, but without stories, there is no potential for connection, no potential for compassion and no potential for the creation of a meaning-full, and better world.
Heroes Not Zombies 
Doc, this is a stunning post. You’re getting at the heart of what makes us all who we are – and what gives us the language and capability to communicate effectively with each other.
I devote a good portion of my life to stories and the telling of stories and the learning and analyzing and unpacking of stories. When my students complain about having to read “all these old stories,” it becomes my joy and my challenge to make them see that a story that was told hundreds (or even thousands) of years ago – or one told just now – speaks some sort of urgent and universal truth. We love these stories because they help us to make sense of the world and our place in it. It heartens me to hear that others put as much value on them as I do; thank you for writing this.
Thank you, too, SO much for the book recommendation. I was gifted a book card for my birthday, and I think I just found what I’m going to use it for…
[…] With thanks to Bob Leckridge on Heroes Not Zombies Robert Coles in “The Call of Stories” […]
As such you would enjoy reading “Kitchen Table Wisdom” by Rachel Naomi Remen..
Great book, and a great post. As soon as I surface into normal life, I am going to walk over and get hold of that book.
You have inspired me to start my own blog:
http://www.aspirationofthesoul.wordpress.com
I am rainbow9 there……
GaleG
Excellent post. There’s a lot of similar info in Daniel Pink’s latest book, “A Whole New Mind”, well worth checking out.
Well, mrschilli, wow! Lovely feedback. Thanks. I hope you enjoy the book. I think the best teachers are great storytellers!
Thank you Steve. I agree – Whole New Mind is a fascinating and inspirational book – https://heroesnotzombies.wordpress.com/2007/11/08/a-whole-new-mind/
Glad to have inspired you GaleG. It’s one of my biggest hopes for this blog – that it inspires people.
🙂
damyantig, thanks for the positive feedback, hope you enjoy the book, and I hope you surface soon (from wherever it is you are just now)
thanks for the book recommendation, entropy. I’ll check it out
[…] How well said! The attempts to reduce human beings to their elements, isolate those elements and treat them as if they were not a part of a whole, are doomed to failure because that’s just not how human beings function. It’s not real. What’s real is that the mind and the body are not two separate entities but are both manifestations of the one organism and that organism is embedded in physical, social and cultural environments – embedded – cannot exist in any kind of environment-free setting (if you could even imagine such a possibility!). And, his final, crucial point in that quote above – “dynamically creating their own words” – more than that, we can see that we actually create an entire sense of self from our own words….from our personal narratives. […]
[…] Here’s another study which shows the health benefits of writing about your experience. We all use narrative to make sense of our lives, so you’ll understand that writing about our experiences can help us to do just that – to […]
[…] do you know what another person senses, feels or thinks? Through the sharing of stories. Our key tool in organising all these elements and conveying these experiences to others is […]
[…] this is one of our most fundamental drives. See his “Man’s Search for Meaning”. Richard Kearney shows how we use storytelling for this purpose, and Owen Flanagan shows how we inhabit […]
My favourite book on the story-ness of life is “Tell Me a Story” by Daniel Taylor.
Also, do you ever read Stanley Hauerwas?
Thank you for a thought provoking post.
No, David, I don’t know either of these authors. Thanks for the tips. I’ll check them out
The Gift of the Gateway: The Gift of Story…
Stories: they are the way we communicate our experience, the way we understand the experience of others, the way we liberate our imaginations, the way we make sense of the world and our own position within it. They are the…
[…] I agree, Beeban. Stories and the telling of stories really are the foundation of what it is to be human. Filmclub’s co-founder, Lindsay Mackie said – “ Films have the […]
[…] Instead, I found the best thinking on storytelling lay in the world of the Humanities. In fact, Richard Kearney’s “On Stories” gave me more insights than any other single […]
So much in this piece of writing I deeply appreciate as truth. As a homeopath, I have listened to many patients’ stories. I have seen them make the connections within their own lives themselves as they tell their stories fully, perhaps for the first time (as I require them to do when taking a homeopathic case history).
On a few occasions when remedies have been delivered late or got lost altogether, I’ve noticed that patients begin healing sometimes before they get the prescription. I have wondered is it because they have been compassionately witnessed and not judged or labelled? I hear them describe themselves and their experience as fully as they are able to. I’m not just interested in the pathology they have but when it started and what was going on at the time. I even want to know if they like sugar! I hear their story and listen attentively, observe as faithfully as I can and feel privileged to do so.
I have noticed when I focus on ‘getting the remedy right’ rather than listening to their story, patients have poorer response to my prescriptions. I don’t think that’s an accident.
Thanks for this Bob.
Ann
You’re spot on, Ann. I am absolutely sure that an essential part of the healing process is being listened to, compassionately, and being acknowledged. I share your sense of privilege
[…] consider it now from the perspective of narrative. Richard Kearney, in his “On Stories”, says a lot about how we use stories to understand our lives, our selves and others. He says […]
[…] How do we address a patient who has these problems? A patient whose problems are “invisible“? At least in Alison’s case there are lesions which can be revealed by technology – the “tiny white pin pricks running up and down my spine” – and this will be her ticket to being taken seriously. Sadly, countless patients present to their doctors with equally disturbing and problematic symptoms, but in the absence of “lesions” they are dismissed as “the worried well”, or the problem somehow being a psychological one. I believe this is naive. Don’t we often see a disorder of the system? of the person? (of the “complex adaptive system“?) Such problems maybe only can be known through the patients’ narratives. […]
[…] you aware of the metaphors, the myths, the stories which you use to comprehend your […]
[…] second quote reminds me of Richard Kearney’s “On Stories“. This point often pops into my mind when I encounter someone who thinks rationalism is about […]
According to Muriel Rukeyser, the universe isn’t made of atoms, it is made of stories!
[…] Pleasures of Imagination (The Chronicle of Higher Education) The Importance of Story (Heroes Not Zombies) The Six Stories You Need to Know How to Tell (International Storytelling […]
[…] found a wordpress blog by a clinical chap, who also has a very high view on personal story. Worth a read. He references a book called On […]
[…] I’m a great fan of stories. In fact, I think we understand ourselves and others by using narrative, and the central way in which I work as a doctor is to hear people’s stories, and help them to change them from stories of being stuck or in chaos, to stories of flow, and flourishing and growth. […]
This reminds me of a kinda men are from mars type thing i heard once. I was told about how men greet their wives after a difficult day and listen to what happened and try to find something to fix. A woman listens to a man and lets him say his peace and offers her companionship and support. If you seek to understand when you listen, and question when you don’t understand, the speaker will be forced to re-explain their story and perhaps also will re-understand it also. Thus they can make the changes they need to as your understanding of their problem is almost consequential.
(the subtext of this comment being that I’m seeking to re-understand both my understanding of stories as well as my understanding of my own story, by telling you a bit of it. Many thanks for all of these provoking posts Bob!)
[…] For me, narrative is the core of a holistic approach. […]
[…] enable you to clarify your own main themes and influences. I like this approach. I like the idea of the story of the self, especially as stories take us from the past, into the present and forward to the possible futures. […]
[…] was taught the history is not a data set. It is a narrative. Patients come and tell a story. They don’t come to share data. Data can be collected on examination and investigation which […]
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[…] Cassell mentions “a purpose, result of outcome of change”. The thing with outcomes, is that they are only what you describe at the time you describe them. Outcomes lead to new changes. There isn’t a stopping point. You could say the same about results. So what about purpose? I think purpose is discovered, and/or created through narrative. […]
[…] We create stories by weaving together the past, the present and the future. Stories have a direction. They develop from “once upon a time” and lead up to “The End”. Although we can always find a “prequel” and a “sequel” which layer this story into another one. […]
[…] Keeping focused on the narrative which includes this synthesis also enables us to explore the individual’s values, hopes and fears, allowing us to make more relevant, more holistic, diagnoses and so, hopefully, to offer more appropriate choices for each patient. […]
[…] else will you be doing today? Reviewing 2015? Recalling events, remembering experiences, retelling stories? Looking ahead to 2016? Making plans, resolutions, choosing what changes to […]
[…] https://heroesnotzombies.com/2008/01/30/the-importance-of-story/ […]