Permanent Seminar by Marijke Boucherie and Cecilia Beecher Martins

Marijke Boucherie (CEAUL)

Listening to ‘Clients’ in Psychotherapy: The Solution-focused Therapist and the Literary Scholar

Having had a theoretical confrontation with health workers specializing in "solution focused cognitive and systemic therapy" at the Korzybski Institute in Antwerp, I have been trying to understand their reluctance against open (versus solution-focused) thinking. In this seminar I want to present some of my readings and reflections on the implications of that experience and invite the participants to help me think on what opposes and parallels the “uses” of literature and the ”experience” of literature as acts of writing-reading “dear life” itself.

Cecilia Beecher Martins (CEAUL)

Looking at Literary Fiction and Life Writing in Health Care Education

In “Narrative Medicine: The Essential Role of Stories in Medical Education and Communication” Rita Charon suggests that instruction in close reading of literary texts can be beneficial for health care professionals because “close reading is seen to 'translate' into improved attention in listening to oral language" (2015: 99). Charon’s proposals are supported by literary scholar Norman Holland, who ascribed transitional and/or transformational qualities to significant engagement with literary fiction in his 2000 essay “The Mind and the Book”.

However, in the Medical Humanities context I see a desire, on the part of healthcare students, to use materials based on real-life experience. In the context of healthcare education this is a valid request, but as a trainer I am left to enquire if the differences in inspiration, form, nuance and language found in literary fiction and life writing texts should not be taken into consideration when working with the different types of texts in healthcare education. This is the question I wish to address in this session.

Session chaired by Nuno M. Proença (CHAM)

Note: Both lectures will be delivered in English, but Q&A will be held in Portuguese and English. 

July 18 | 5 pm | Room 5.2 (FLUL)