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Literature delivers recognizable sketches and portraits of individual and collective strivings and frustrations that uncover our shared humanity, as Siegel reminds us ("Literary References to the Science and Practice of Speech-Language Pathology," Dec. 26, 2007). The numerous, smartly chosen, warm, and pithy excerpts from fiction and non-fiction help persuade us that art combined with science can more fully inform the broader understanding of our role.
Personal story, whether conveyed through written word or speech, expressed through song, or acted out, reveals our individual testimony about life as we’ve lived it. That is why the practice of narrative medicine (Charon, R., 2006. Narrative Medicine. New York: Oxford Press) draws increasing adherents. Applying methods of narrative analysis to patients’ stories of illness, physicians distinguish among the patient, the body, and the self. Parallel charting allows patient and physician to share written accounts of their involvement in the healing process.
"Narrative speech pathology," a term I coined and described in the paper "Using Story to Help Heal" presented at the 7th Annual International Stuttering Awareness Day Online Conference, shares the same goal but allows for a substitute medium to include drawing, painting, puppetry, and play analyzed similarly to the written word.
If we want to know our patients and to partner with them, we will invite them to tell us their stories of pain and hope in their own way and in their entirety.
Ellen-Marie Silverman
Milwaukee, WI
tsss920499@aol.com
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