Healing Dramas and Clinical Plots: The Narrative Structure of Experience (Cambridge Studies in Medical Anthropology) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I had polio in 1947. Subsequently, I spent years in physical therapy and medical community services. This is a book clearly written by an author who has very little experience in the area of physical suffering or disability. Yet her clear and precise understanding of what denigrates and also what boosts the morale of patients dealing with severe trauma shines forth. I applaud this effort. The constant push toward compassion found in her book and the call to carefully listen to the stories of individual patients astounds someone like me who grew up in the confines of a rather harsh and unfeeling medical community where listening to the patient was unheard of. This is for me a glorious breakthrough. And yet, the most crucial and pivotal assistance ever imparted in my estimation is a spiritual understanding of how we come to terms with faith in our Maker and God during times of tragedy and loss. Personally, I don't know how anyone survives severe disability apart from the grace and compassion of the Almighty Who can and will enter into our place of suffering and bestow spiritual strength to press on. Learning that God is a very present Help in trouble enables and fosters triumph in times of darkness.

Click Here to see more reviews about: Healing Dramas and Clinical Plots: The Narrative Structure of Experience (Cambridge Studies in Medical Anthropology)

There is growing interest in "therapeutic narratives" and the relation between narrative and healing. Cheryl Mattingly's ethnography of the practice of occupational therapy in a North American hospital investigates the complex interconnections between narrative and experience in clinical work. Viewing the world of disability as a socially constructed experience, it presents fascinatingly detailed case studies of clinical interactions between occupational therapists and patients, many of them severely injured and disabled, and illustrates the diverse ways in which an ordinary clinical interchange is transformed into a dramatic experience governed by a narrative plot. Drawing on a wide range of sources, including anthropological studies of narrative and ritual, literary theory, phenomenology and hermeneutics, this book develops a narrative theory of social action and experience. While most contemporary theories of narrative presume that narratives impose an artificial coherence upon lived experience, Mattingly argues for a revision of the classic mimetic position. If narrative offers a correspondence to lived experience, she contends, the dominant formal feature which connects the two is not narrative coherence but narrative drama. Moving and sophisticated, this book is an innovative contribution to the study of modern institutions and to anthropological theory.

Click here for more information about Healing Dramas and Clinical Plots: The Narrative Structure of Experience (Cambridge Studies in Medical Anthropology)