Some Reflections on Non-substance Bound Healing Effects and the Concept of Narrative Medicine

Abstract

The term narrative medicine refers to the idea that the construction of meaning is an essential component of medicine. While biomedicine is focusing on the observation of symptoms as indicators of biological dysfunction in the methodological framework of empirical science, narrative medicine is focusing on the interactional processes in which "symptoms" are reframed in the context of the patient's individual history and experience. Methodologically, narrative medicine advocates a hermeneutic approach in addition to the empirical observational model. In the subsequent paragraphs, we will discuss some of the underlying reasons for the phenomenon of non-substance-bound healing effects of language. This will require to discuss differences between narration and placebos. Just as narration, placebo is also a phenomenon associated with non-substance bound healing effects involving meaning and belief systems. However, placebo is involving meaning systems of a rather different kind. While the implicit belief of narration is that there is a world of shared meaning that allows humans to communicate with each other, the basic implicit belief system of placebo is that there is a material world, in which material things can influence other material things. However, despite of these discrepancies in the underlying belief systems, surprisingly narratives and placebos also are sharing some common ground. We hypothesize that the effects of both, narratives and placebos have their origins in developmental trajectories, which can be best understood in the framework of attachment theory in order to elucidate their effects on psychological and physical health. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)