FROM NARRATIVE MEDICINE TO APPRECIATIVE MEDICINE

Narrative medicine is a way of addressing the doctor-patient relationship, considered to be conducive to increasing empathy through the patient's narrative of the disease and its associated symptoms [1]. The physician's role in narrative medical practice is to listen to the patient, who tells him about the symptoms of the disease he suffers of, their stories being loaded with meaning for the patients. The patient experiences the disease as a series of sufferings, whose story encodes the symptoms that contribute to the diagnosis. The narrative of the disease itself has therapeutic valences. The experience of the disease, especially of the chronic one, is an existential condition for the patient, an experience of his own bodily uniqueness. The present paper presents a series of possible correlations between narrative and appreciative therapy, brought together in the sphere of narrative medicine.