How People Change: The Short Story as Case History-Fast Shipping

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A manual to show practicing physicians and medical students how to make use of shortstories to help their patients adapt to their illnesses and participate in theirtreatment.

For most people, the quickest route to wisdom, other than experience,is through stories. Stories speak across generational lines and cultures, emphasizethe universality of human experience, and offer insight into the dynamics involvedin unfamiliar situations.

Freud and D.W. Winnicott were among the few psychiatristsable to write case histories emblematic of the vicissitudes of the human a rule, the technical and dry approach of the psychiatric literature is not fitto teach doctors how to connect to their patients’ suffering because it privilegespathological categories over experience. Tucker, therefore, turns to the drama andconflicts of fictional characters, to restore the human dimension of medicine andto entice practitioners to grasp the emotional and intellectual layers of the particularsituations in which their patients are entrapped. The sixteen stories selected hereare analyzed to show how they illustrate the process of change, as defined by ErikErikson’sof the “life cycle.” Some of these stories include “Gooseberries”by Anton Chekhov, “The Dead” by James Joyce, and “Her First Ball” by Katherine and medical students can turn to these narratives as examples of how othershave dealt with challenges and debilitating conditions, and encourage their patientsto follow similar paths to bring about change in their lives.