Narrative Medicine
The term ‘‘narrative medicine’’ has come to connote a medicine fortified with the knowledge of what to do with the stories of illness. As patients tell of themselves in all the ways they can—with words, gestures, silences, facial expressions, biopsies of their livers, tracings of their hearts—and hope to be heard, we do our best to receive all these narratives, honoring them not only for their biological content but also for the news they give of the person in whom this illness dwells. Like all narrating situations, these instances of storytelling unite the teller and the listener in a shared world either recalled or imagined.
— Rita Charon, “Narrative Medicine as Witness for the Self-Telling Body”
