Part of my day job involves teaching psychiatry residents and medical students. One of my biggest challenges is getting these young people to tell me the story of the patient they have seen. I give examples from my own work with patients, and model the skill by interviewing patients in front of them, but it seems like listening to people and then telling their stories - to the patients and to themselves - is an unfamiliar activity. What I get instead is a list of symptoms or a few snippets of the patient's life that don't hang together, or even move through a specific span of time. Recently I got rather low student reviews on a lecture I gave on "Taking a Psychiatric History", and it's coming up again in the spring. I'd like to get the message across this time!
My background and orientation to stories comes from a superficial appreciation of the "hermeneutic method" - whose origins were in monasteries, where the monks sat in a circle and told and retold and interpreted a scripture to achieve a fuller understanding of it. Interpretation of stories is not the dominant culture in psychiatry or in popular culture anymore.
However, a member of our group has talked to us about the Network of Biblical Storytellers, whose tagline is, "We bring God's stories to life for a post-literate, digital age." I'm not surprised to find a faith-based organization keeping alive the spirit of understanding people through their stories, but I'm wondering:
Are people losing their appreciation of each others' stories?
Is this "post-literate, digital" business part of the problem?
Do I have to convert my students to a different philosophy of life (contemplative, introspective, faith in ultimate reality) to get them to tell me the patient's story?
Can the Biblical Storytellers help me get better reviews on my next lecture?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
From the perspective of a writing teacher, I've seen that people LOVE to tell stories, especially about themselves. It's one of the best ways to get less-experienced writers more fluent. In the writing center, the skilled tutors ask the writers, "What happened next? How did you feel when that happened?"
ReplyDeleteI think that we stll like to TELL our stories. We just aren't as good at listening to the stories of others.