Chapter 9: Scheherazade and the Axe: Narrative Medicine, the Apocalypse, and the Way Through

My approach to the apocalyptic moment this volume explores is deeply informed by the “narrative medicine” movement. This movement is an effort among doctors and medical schools to bring the messy, human capacity for storymaking to the bloodless, stimulus-response world of high-tech medical practice.

I acknowledge that these seem like the strangest of bedfellows: medicine and narrative, scientific detachment and radical subjectivity, accurate diagnosis and efficient treatment versus messy, open-ended “tell-me-how-you-feel” interactions. And in some medical quarters, it’s still a hard sell. But the movement has arisen to meet a moment much like the one that confronts public school teachers and leaders, and hospitals and medical schools have begun to accept the wisdom offered by a heretofore-alien idea.