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The importance of stories – fictional stories

Posted in books, creativity, education, from the living room, from the reading room, life, narrative, psychology, writing on September 11, 2011| 1 Comment »

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.

I’m also a great fan of fiction and the importance of the imagination. I vividly remember Ian McEwan writing this, about this day, ten years ago…

If the hijackers had been able to imagine themselves into the thoughts and feelings of the passengers, they would have been unable to proceed. It is hard to be cruel once you permit yourself to enter the mind of your victim. Imagining what it is like to be someone other than yourself is at the core of our humanity. It is the essence of compassion, and it is the beginning of morality.

So, this recent article in the Guardian caught my eye, “Reading fiction improves empathy, study finds”. There are a number of studies described in this article, and it’s introduced me to something called “the pyschology of fiction”, and, specifically to the work of Keith Oatley. If I wasn’t so insatiably curious I wouldn’t keep finding these amazing new worlds to explore! One of the studies described in the article compared the effects of reading Harry Potter with the effects of reading Twighlight. They used a new measure – “Twilight/Harry Potter Narrative Collective Assimilation Scale”! Don’t you love that? Look at this conclusion from that research –

“The current research suggests that books give readers more than an opportunity to tune out and submerge themselves in fantasy worlds. Books provide the opportunity for social connection and the blissful calm that comes from becoming a part of something larger than oneself for a precious, fleeting moment,” Gabriel and Young write. “My study definitely points to reading fulfilling a fundamental need – the need for social connection,”

and read this fascinating comment by Keith Oatley

“I think the reason fiction but not non-fiction has the effect of improving empathy is because fiction is primarily about selves interacting with other selves in the social world,” said Oatley. “The subject matter of fiction is constantly about why she did this, or if that’s the case what should he do now, and so on. With fiction we enter into a world in which this way of thinking predominates. We can think about it in terms of the psychological concept of expertise. If I read fiction, this kind of social thinking is what I get better at. If I read genetics or astronomy, I get more expert at genetics or astronomy. In fiction, also, we are able to understand characters’ actions from their interior point of view, by entering into their situations and minds, rather than the more exterior view of them that we usually have. And it turns out that psychologically there is a big difference between these two points of view. We usually take the exterior view of others, but that’s too limited.”

Spot on. He really nails the importance and value of fiction as a tool for building empathy. We reduce the place of the Humanities in our education system at our peril!

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September – time to think about learning

Posted in creativity, education, from the living room, life on September 1, 2011| 3 Comments »

I remember taking part in a small group once which opened with asking everyone to say which month was their favourite month, and why. One of my colleagues said September because that was the beginning of the Academic Year. I liked that response and I’ve always remembered it.
I have many criticisms of our educational system and institutions, and what I really believe is that everyone should learn all the time. I am insatiably curious which drives my constant desire to learn.
However, this time of year is the time when the universities and colleges publish their programmes for “adult” or “continuing” education classes, so I think it’s a great time to plan what you’d like to learn in the coming weeks.
My most recent experience was a course in artists photographic book self-publishing. If you’d like see what I produced have a look here.
What would YOU like to learn next?

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Lighten, brighten and enlighten

Posted in creativity, from the consulting room, from the living room, from the reading room, health, life, personal growth, philosophy on June 16, 2011| 3 Comments »

June is the month of the light. Next week in Scotland, it’s midsummer’s day – the shortest day of the year (you’d never know we’re in the middle of summer, given all the rain and wind we’ve had!). So, I’ve been thinking again about light.

Candle light in particular reminds us how sharing light increases it. Have you ever lit one candle from another? When you do, the first candle doesn’t get any dimmer. By lighting one candle from another, you end up with more light.

I wonder what kind of light I bring into this world? You might like to wonder about what you pass on to others too, because, although we might not physically pass light to each other, we certainly pass our emotions, our attitudes, our way of being onto to those around us and spread them the way that light can spread.

Around the turn of the year, when I was thinking about my Life (with a capital “L”), I played with this idea of light and I thought, actually, what I try to do, as a doctor, can be captured in three verbs about light.

Firstly, I try to lighten others’ loads. I try to ease their suffering. If I didn’t achieve at least that, I’d not be much of a doctor. I hope that everyone I see has their life, or the burdens in their life, lightened a bit as a result of my care.

But that’s not enough for me. I don’t want patients to come back and just say they feel a little lighter. I want their lives to be brighter. By that I mean I hope their days become better days, more fulfilling, more colourful, brighter days. I hope for others, and I hope for me, that life becomes brighter, and by that, I really mean an increase in that “emerveillement du quotidien“.

But even that’s not enough for me. I hope, at best, to enlighten, to show new possibilities, to support and stimulate new growth. I just love when I hear that a patient’s life has become lighter, brighter and, yes, transformed – that they’re experiencing a personal enlightenment.

If you think about light this month, why not think of it as a metaphor, as well as a physical phenomenon? What metaphors of light seem most relevant in your life?

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Bento’s Sketchbook

Posted in books, creativity, from the reading room, perception on June 4, 2011| Leave a Comment »

I always look forward to reading John Berger, ever since his classic four part documentary and book, entitled Ways of Seeing (see them all here)

I love his description of story where he looks up at the stars and sees story as the creation of the invisible lines which turn stars into constellations and how those constellations and their stories then influence the way we live (even at a simple level of navigation), and his other, related telling of how story joins up the steps we take to create a path, or a journey. Those ideas and descriptions have become such a part of how I see the world that, probably, I now realise, he didn’t exactly say either of those things, but the essence of his ideas has embedded itself in my psyche and the details now are more more personally mine.

His latest book is Bento’s Sketchbook (ISBN 978-1-84467-684-2) and I’ve had it on Amazon pre-order since I first became aware of it. It’s one of those books where you take it out of its cardboard packaging and immediately, I mean immediately, begin to read it. I took it everywhere with me, reading it on trains, in cafes, at work and in my house. I loved it. Completely loved it.

The book is based around the story that Spinoza, the philosopher carried around and drew in a sketchbook, but the actual book has never been found. John Berger decided, on receiving a blank sketchbook one day, to create the book Spinoza might have created. He does this by influencing the way he sees the world by bringing Spinoza’s writings to the front of his mind….in other words, he sort of puts himself into Spinoza’s shoes and sees the world from a Spinoza-Berger stance. (Oh, I’m not sure that really captures it!)

The book is about seeing. It’s about being aware, and really experiencing the present moment, and using drawing as a tool to enable that. This book completely inspires me to try to draw. I’ve had that thought many times, but can’t get the old school teacher’s judgement that I had “no artistic ability” out of my head. Time to banish that after all these years, I reckon. After all, what do you think? Don’t you think my photos show at least some artistic ability??

I normally include a few quotes from books I’ve loved but I’m not going to do that here. I don’t want to reduce it to quotes. This book is an experience and one which can’t be felt without seeing John Berger’s own sketches which heavily illustrate the words.

I can’t recommend this book highly enough. It is an inspiration and a call to wake up……go on, become a hero, not a zombie! (my words, not his!)

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The shapes of stories

Posted in creativity, from the viewing room, video, writing on April 4, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Here’s a very entertaining four minutes or so of Kurt Vonnegurt explaining the shapes of stories, using a blackboard……

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Connections: wintering

Posted in books, creativity, from the consulting room, from the dark room, from the living room, health, life, photography on December 27, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I finished reading William Fiennes, The Snow Geese, this morning, then as I looked out of my window I saw this sight

I followed them round to the other side of my house….

I don’t really know what to make of these “coincidences” in life, but they certainly heighten the sense of emerveillement in le quotidien……

I really enjoyed ‘The Snow Geese’. It’s one of those books I’ve had lying around for a long time, but only recently decided to read. It has that wonderful combination of beautiful writing and fascinating, thought provoking facts, which I love. The main themes of the book, based around the writer following snow geese as they head north to their breeding grounds, are about freedom, our connection with nature, and the strong instincts to head home (migratory birds have two homes really…..one for the summer and one for the winter).

What I didn’t expect to find were some references to homesickness from a medical perspective, and, given that I’m a doctor, it should be no surprise that those passages leaped out at me.

Baron Dominique Jean Larrey, Inspector of Health of the French armies under Napoleon [described nostalgia in the following terms] First, an exaggeration of the imaginative faculty: patients thought of their homes as enchanting and delightful, and expected to see relatives and friends advancing towards them. Second, the appearance of physical symptoms: fever, gastric disturbance, ‘wandering pains’. Finally, depression, listlessness, weeping, and sometimes suicide.

How fascinating to see this holistic description and understanding, beginning with an individual’s inner, subjective, mental processes, leading onto whole body dysfunction with specific disorders in certain organs and systems, then progressing to a life-threatening state of mind. What cures did such doctors suggest? Larrey recommended distraction – through “music, recreation and regular exercise”.

In 1858, James Copland, in his ‘Dictionary of Practical Medicine’, described nostalgia as a cause of disease, rather than as a disease itself (where does a disease begin? Can you really say where health gives way to disease?) However, he still considered it to be a serious problem.

The patient nurses his misery, augments it until it destroys his nightly repose and his daily peace, and ultimately devours, with more or less rapidity, his vital organs.

Fiennes quotes from a 1996 edition of Psychological Medicine ….

What strikes one most in the sparse literature on help for the homesick is that often only returning to the old home environment brings real relief.

Well, well, well…..how often is it the case that the solution to a problem is to deal with the problem?! I know that seems obvious, but if it’s so obvious why do we persist in using drugs which merely mask symptoms as first line treatments for so many problems?

I’m particularly struck by the holistic, contextually bound understanding of the nature of homesickness in these works. How have we allowed the practice of medicine to decline to its currently dehumanised, mechanistic form? A doctor must understand the narrative context of a patient’s illness to arrive at a correct “diagnosis”, not just hunt a lesion and divide illness into real or imaginary, organic or functional. A person can only be fully understood as a whole person, body, mind and spirit, inextricably embedded in their unique physical and semantic environments……and, so, “cures” should be based on this perspective rather than the diminished, reductionist one, shouldn’t they?

We are connected. Intimately, complexly connected. ‘The Snow Geese’ reminds us how connected all creatures are to their environments and to the rhythmic change of the seasons. Good to be reminded of that in this snow and ice bound December in Scotland.

How are you going to spend your wintering?

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worlds within worlds

Posted in creativity, from the dark room, photography on December 3, 2010| 1 Comment »

Do you remember finding a hollow in a tree when you were a child and imagining a whole world in there? Scotland’s folk culture is rich with stories of fairies, strange lights appearing at night, selkies and other such other-worldly creatures. I always enjoyed imagining the miniature world that I could conjure up in such dark and interesting natural places. So when I was looking at the snow on the hedge outside this week I suddenly noticed the sunlight shining through intricate passageways in the snow………worlds within worlds.

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nanowrimo – or where I’ve been for the last month!

Posted in creativity, writing, tagged nanowrimo on November 30, 2010| 1 Comment »

If you’re a more regular reader of this blog, you might be wondering why my posting rate has plummeted this month……well, the answer lies in that little winner’s badge here.

nanowrimo is National Novel Writing Month. It happens every November and the deal is you sign up to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days….that works out at a steady 1,677 words a day. Of course, you’re not expected to produce a fully crafted novel by day 30, just to have the raw text of a novel to spend the next few weeks or months, editing, revising and developing.

I signed up on November 1st, and completed my 50,000 words on November 27th and it’s been one of the most amazing experiences I’ve ever had. I write a lot. This blog is part of my writing output, but I’ve written almost exclusively non-fiction so far (I have a collection of about 80 or so small fictional clinical cases entitled Dr Cannyman’s Casebook to accompany my course in Patient Centred Homeopathy). I’ve had a dream to write fiction as long as I’ve had a dream to be a doctor and I’ve been doctoring some 32 years now, but a novelist for none of them! After all this time, I’ve wondered, could I actually do it? Do I have it in me? I’ve read a few books about creative writing and the one thing they pretty much all say is you have to actually turn up and write. I know. Sounds obvious, huh? But it just isn’t easy. And one of the things that always stopped me from getting started was I might have the germ of an idea, but I sure as hell didn’t have characters or a plot. Surely, I reasoned, you need ALL of that AT LEAST before you start.

I was wrong.

The nanowrimo experience is an experience in motivationally supported daily writing. Yes, I’ve done daily writing for long periods, but never daily fiction writing. Nanowrimo is about daily fiction writing. You sign up online, get your own user page, a box to enter your daily word count and a graph to show you your progress along with stats encouraging you to write a little more by telling you how much more you need to write today to get the 1667 daily target, and what date you’ll finish if you keep on at the rate you’re going. In addition to that you get regular emails encouraging you and they are just brilliant. Liberating messages from other participants and writers saying things like “OK, you’re several days into this now and you’ve probably no plot and no idea where it’s going. Welcome to writing fiction! This is how it is. Keep going. You’ll find your characters and your plot emerging as the month progresses”. Well that was news to me. I had no idea that an approach like that could work.

So here’s what I learned. First of all I learned it really took a LOT of discipline to write those 1667 words a day, but I was more determined the more I progressed. Second I learned that although on the vast majority of days I would have no idea what I was going to write, an idea would emerge, I’d start with that, and before I knew it these characters appeared, this dialogue occurred, these events happened. I found things coming together in ways I hadn’t planned (because I hadn’t planned anything!) and I found little remnants of stories of my life and of people I’ve met turning into brand new elements of other stories under my fingers as I typed. It was a total revelation. Thirdly, this comment from one of the emails “It’s so strange how our mind knows more than we are aware of it knowing.” hit me right between the eyes. That is exactly what I’ve discovered in doing this writing exercise. It’s all in there. Even when you don’t consciously know it.

So here I am. The proud owner of a nanowrimo 2010 winner badge. A writer with a new habit. The owner of 50,000 words to work on, words I feel which have a good chance of turning into a proper novel. I’ve only shared with others some of what I’ve written so far, but the feedback has been so positive I am thoroughly encouraged.

I think that’s what nanowrimo is all about – enabling you to get to the place where you can say to yourself “I believe I can do this”.

It’s been quite a month!

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Sensing Nature.

Posted in art, creativity, from the dark room, from the viewing room, photography, video on September 16, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Today I went to the Mori Arts Centre, on the 53rd floor of this building in Roppongi Hills….

…where there is an exhibition, entitled “Sensing Nature”. Apparently there are two words for “nature” in Japanese. The original meant “as is”, and the newer one is like the Western idea of “nature” being like “wilderness”, or “countryside”. There are installations from Yoshioka Tokujin, Shinoda Taro and Kuribayashi Takashi.

Here’s one entitled “Forest from Forest”