Some reflections on non-substance bound healing effects and the concept of narrative medicine

Carl E. Scheidt

pp. 85-94

in: Farzad Goli (ed), Biosemiotic medicine, Berlin, Springer, 2016

Abstract

The term narrative medicine refers to the idea that the construction of meaning is an essential component of medicine. While biomedicine is focusing on the observation of symptoms as indicators of biological dysfunction in the methodological framework of empirical science, narrative medicine is focusing on the interactional processes in which 'symptoms' are reframed in the context of the patient's individual history and experience (Charon 2001). Methodologically, narrative medicine advocates a hermeneutic approach in addition to the empirical observational model. The Humanities, from the perspective of narrative medicine, are considered as a valuable contribution adding the dimension of history and the cultural and symbolic mediation of meaning to the understanding of health and disease and the individual patient's suffering. In stressing the relevance of communication in the doctor-patient relationship, narrative medicine is overlapping with the concept of psychosomatic medicine.