Diagnosis Narratives and the Healing Ritual in Western Medicine

ISBN-13: 9780367588519 / Angielski / Miękka / 2020 / 258 str.

James Meza

Opis

The dominance of ‘illness narratives’ in narrative healing studies has tended to mean that the focus centres around the healing of the individual. Meza proposes that this emphasis is misplaced and the true focus of cultural healing should lie in managing the disruption of disease and death (cultural or biological) to the individual’s relationshi

Spis treści

Part I: Methods
1. Fieldwork methods
2. The theoretical frame

Part II: The diagnosis narratives
3. Entrance into the field
4. Who is narrating and what story are they telling?
5. Spatial cognitions
6. The doctor tells the diagnostic story to the patient
7. Joint attention to the diagnostic narrative
8. Spatial therapy

Part III: Ritual healing in Western medicine
9. Ritual theory
10. Disease as an existential threat
11. Qualifications of a leech
12. Healing relationships
13. When the healing ritual fails

Part IV: The body politic
14. The business of medicine
15. Overdiagnosis and overtreatment

Part V: Narrative studies on healing reconsidered
16. Narrative healing reconsidered
17. Theoretical synthesis
18. Reflections of a healer

Appendix A: Individual patient narratives
Appendix B: Doctors talk about work
Appendix C: Codebook and themes

O autorze

James P. Meza is Assistant Professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Public Health Science at Wayne State University School of Medicine, USA. He holds a PhD in Cultural Anthropology and is a practising doctor of medicine (MD).