Transcript Personal Complexities

Personal complexities
COMT 492/592
Narrative

Two modes of thought
• Logical reasoning – pardigmatic
• Narrative – examination of feelings, personal
experiences

Stories about health
• Interconnect both types of reasoning-each
story reflects the whole of who we are

Narratives become products
• Other people listen to them
• Vehicles for social change
Health Narratives


Communicating personal fears to
others
Connects personal to political by
giving voice to life with disability, and
limits set by insurance
Provider’s narratives


Disproportionate privilege granted –
dominates voice of medicine –
silences voice of patient
Providers are also constrained
• By American Medical Model, to be
scientific not emotional
• By managed care to be quick, not caring

Need to be combined with stories of
significant others, support network
Narrative & Identity

Disembodiment
• A reversal of normal or desired state, away from self.

Spoiled identity or stigma
• Loss of control over our bodies (Goffman, 1963)
• Body doesn’t meet cultural ideal
• Our society privileges perfect bodies

Passing
• Try to keep body (whole or part) invisible from public,
manage “sick” identity

Transformation
• Taking control of illness (or problem) through
storytelling
Identity Work

Identity work
• process of articulating what it means to have a
life proscribed by illness –
• illness begins a process of renegotiating
identity

Identity work leads to discoveries:
• What I have always been (reclaiming right to
be who one is)
• Who I might become
• Cumulative epiphanies (series of selfdiscoveries)