The recent focus in academic medicine and in the media on narrative medicine provides a timely opportunity for psychoanalysts to enter into analytically-informed discussions with physicians about ways of understanding the doctor-patient relationship. The term “narrative medicine” was coined by Rita Charon, a professor of internal medicine at Columbia. The core of the practice of narrative medicine is the achievement by the physician of narrative competence:“the competence that human beings use to absorb, interpret, and respond to stories.” (quote from Charon, in 2001 JAMA article)
Because our clinical work involves the exploration of the stories our patients tell us—as they unfold within the two-person analytic relationship, we psychoanalysts are in a unique position to contribute to interdisciplinary dialogues and teaching about narrative medicine. Analysts who wish to do so must find ways of entering the physician's world and of genuinely being helpful to them in their work at the frontlines of patient care. The authors will describe approaches they have found to apply their experience as analysts to the clinical setting of the practicing physician.
Randall H. Paulsen, M.D., is assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, psychiatric consultant to the Integrative Care Center of the Osher Institute for the Study of Alternative and Complementary Medicine and the Brigham and Women's Hospital, and faculty member at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. Fred L. Griffin, M.D., is a member of the Missoula Psychoanalytic Study Group and of the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Society. He is a graduate of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School and the New Orleans Psychoanalytic Institute and is currently practicing in Missoula.