Week 3 - Storytelling, Narratives, & Metaphors

Is Pain Suffering?

Naur pain is not suffering.

Why does suffering occur?

• Because of the integrity of the person is threatened. —> Bc who we are as a person is threatened.

• Suffering is it’s own thing within itself.

Frank Meets Cassell

What would treatment look like? What would care look like?

Breakdown of the Self

• Breaks down who we are in the world

• Losing a sense of purpose, a sense of self.

Why Stories?

• How do we learn to live with illness?

• How do we learn to make illness something worth living with?

• Frank’s Argument: Storytelling can be therapeutic & healing

What is a Story?

1. Event

2. Story

3. Narrative

Event

• A single occurrence in which something happens

• A point in time

• NOT a story

• (Ex: “I got sick” = Event A (Not a story until a second event is introduced)

Story

• 2 or more meaningful events in sequence

• WHAT happened

• "(Ex: “I got sick, then I got better” = Event A —> Event B

Narrative

• One particular way of rendering a story

• Infinite number of ways of telling a story

• How you frame, communicate, and form

• How we tell it

• HOW it’s told

Plot

• Gives the story a sense of causality

• Story ( X → Y) = The king died, and then the queen died.

• Plot (X→ Y bc Z): The kind died, and then the queen died of grief.

• Same story allows multiple plots

Character

• A representation of human identity, in fiction or non-fiction.

• Guides us through stories, helping us understand plots and broader themes

Character Type

• Stands for a class of group of people

• (Ex: The depressed person, the cancer patient, etc.)

Point of View (POV)

Refers to both:

• How the story is narrated (first or third person) → The perspective of the character

• The worldview of the voice telling it → How the “problem” is framed

• Shapes how the story is told. It offers insights and blindspots (What are we missing? What is not being said or seen?)

Enchantment

• To imbue with meaning

• Wonders

When did the UTSC Health Humanities Course Start?

2014

Disenchantment

• By Max Weber (1864-1920)

• illness in the body grown unworthy of the spirit, sinking into its own senses.

• Modernity characterized by increased rationalization, bureaucratization, secularization of Western society.

• Faith in systems and principles, rather than understanding reality through mystery and magic.

• We lose the sense of the mystical → positive and negative consequences.
  
  A very real phenomenon in healthcare:

• Burnout, compassion fatigue.

• Empathetic aspect of therapeutic relationship reduced to mechanisms.

Frank’s Illness Narratives - Three Major Patterns

1. Restitution (Cure)

2. Chaos

3. Quest

Restitution (Cure)

• Illness as a temporary detour; body is restorable.

• Primary goal is permanent to return to normal life.

Language of Survival: “Yesterday I was healthy, today I’m sick, but tomorrow I’ll be healthy again”

Only outcome: Getting well

Chaos Narrative

• Illness as a permanent state of disaster

• Will get worse with no redeeming virtues.

• Anxiety-provoking

• Ill person is not in control of illness

• Strong personal and cultural dislike of stories.

Quest Narrative

• Illness as an opportunity to transform oneself, or one’s relationship to disease.

3 Typical Events:

1. Departure (the “call of the symptom)

2. Initiation (a “road of trials”)

3. Return (out of crisis, but marked by illness)

• Unlike restitution and chaos, illness is something other than something to cure or dread.

• It can be therapeutic.

Literal Language

• Words in their primary, non-figurative sense; what’s actually written, as opposed to what’s implied.

Figurative Language

• Language which uses figures of speech

• (Ex: Metaphor, simile, aliteration)

Metaphor

• Strong association drawn between two dissimilar things

• “Life is a journey”

Simile

• Implied or qualified association between two things or ideas.

• “Life is like a journey”

What Makes up a metaphor?

A tenor and vehicle

Tenor

• The subject to which attributes are ascribed or given

• (Ex: “Life is a journey” The tenor = Life)

Vehicle

• The object whose attributes are borrowed to make the comparison.

• (Ex: “Life is a journey” The Vehicle = Journey

Military Metaphors

• Especially prevalent in healthcare

• Socio-culturally ubiquitous

• Emphasis on seriousness of purpose

• Pertaining to war, battle, invasion, combat)

• (Ex: Influenza attacks the body’s immune system)