Narrative Medicine: The Use of History and Story in the Healing Process
Lewis Mehl-Madrona, M.D, Ph.D
Bear & Co, Rochester, VT, 2007. ISBN: 13:978-1-59143-065-0.
Paperbound, 324 pages including notes. $20.00


The purpose of Co | Create: Ideas Matter is to explore new ideas, or at least ideas that fall outside of our normal thinking. In psychology there is a branch called “Narrative Psychology.” In a nutshell, narrative psychology is a ever-growing field of psychological research into the ways stories shape lives. It is a field that I have been exploring for several years, first through my studies in Celtic mythos and then, in my research into neighborhood narratives.

Simplified, the basic “principles” of narrative psychology are:

1. Human beings deal with experience by constructing stories and listening to the stories of others
2. Stories, rather than logical arguments or lawful formulations, are the vehicle by which meaning is communicated.

In Narrative Medicine, Lewis Mehl-Madrona takes the principles of narrative psychology and applies them to medicine, but he does so in a very unique way. Mehl-Madrona examines these principles from the perspective of use of narrative as a healing modality by indigenous peoples. It is worth remembering, before we go further, that the traditional practice of medicine with their specific illness approach (often drug oriented) does not pay much attention to narrative in their healing modalities, and that is even true of many psychiatrists.

Mehl-Madrona writes that he is "seeking new ways to conceptualize and integrate the wisdom of indigenous cultures, the insights of holistic medical practitioners, contemporary social sciences, and our developing understanding of the importance of the story in behavior and biological science (p. 30)." In this, he wants to invite "other voices" to join in creating an "explanatory story" of illness. The primary "other voice" for the author is the voice of indigenous peoples, that is, Native Americans. It is important, according to Mehl-Madrona, that we understand the significant differences between narrative medicine, as drawn from both the indigenous voice and the larger corpus, and traditional medicine; particularly the fact that narrative medicine is systemic in nature, while traditional medicine limits itself to a specific treatment of a specific illness without examining and treating underlying causes or systemic results.

Simply put, Mehl-Madrona proposes a reinvention of medicine to include indigenous healing methods that for thousands of years have drawn their effectiveness from telling and retelling. Narrative Psychology as a practice is just beginning to understand the power of this. Traditional medical practice has, for the most part, yet to begin to even acknowledge the power of narrative in healing, even forgetting that they once did. I can remember how when I was a child visiting the family GP he would ask about school, church, friends, the daily of living, and always seemed to consider what I said – my story – essential to my health. Today, we seem to have lost the gentle art of healing, the art of listening to the backstory.

Mehl-Madrona is not some New Age guru spouting nonsense just to hear his own voice. Mehl-Madrona is a graduate of Stanford School of Medicine and a certified physician in family practice, geriatrics, and psychiatry who has worked for most of his life in rural medicine. He is also an associate professor of family medicine and psychiatry at the University of Saskatchewan. Part Cherokee, part Lakota, Mehl-Madrona knows personally the power of narrative medicine from the indigenous perspective.

What makes this Narrative Medicine important and exciting, at least to me, is that we have a board certified medical doctor challenging the more tradition modalities of Western medicine; not by ridiculing them, or even dismissing them, but rather offering narrative medicine as a both a complement and a way to systemically treat the whole person. That said, lucky for us, Narrative Medicine is written not for the doctor, but for the layperson. Mehl-Madrona has provided us with a handbook of how we might use narrative medicine in our own healing processes.

Psychologist Theodore Sarbin states, "We live in a story-shaped world." Sarbin believed that every aspect of our mental and social lives, from our dreams and nightmares to the rituals of work, family, worship, and play, to the experiential life is fashioned, and held together by story. Both plot and action: we use plot to link seemingly disconnected threads together and actions to make sense of it. This is the premise that Mehl-Madrona addresses both in the chapter "Master Narrative" and throughout the book.

Mehl-Madrona in Narrative Medicine shows us the importance of our own story in our in own healing process. Throughout the book there are case histories which we can draw upon to both understand how the process works and to make personal application.