Once upon a Time: Interpretation in Literature and Medicine

A Once upon a Time: Interpretation in Literature and Medicine Samuel A. Banks Bridges linking literature and medicine are rooted in the bedrock of two profoundly human propensities. First, to be human is to encounter life through events, to know our existence as a sequence of occasions. Second, existence is a never-ending opportunity and demand for interpretation . When we examine the seismic rumblings that Karl Jaspers described as boundary situations (joy, despair, anxiety, guilt, grief), these two essential aspects of humanity stand out. These cardinal human dimensions, historic and hermeneutic, define the lives and work of authors or critics and those who suffer or care for the suffering. An understanding of the distinctively human foundation jointly supporting both medicine and literature emerges from a closer consideration of these two facets of daily life. Childhood stories rightly begin with the phrase "Once upon a time." The words characterize the way that all human beings experience, not only fairy tales or the broader range of narrative, but also life itself. Daily life (when experienced as "sane" or "normal") is not felt to be an oblong blur. We know it in discrete occasions, lived integers. Things happen concretely, uniquely, once upon a specific time. Our very sense of time is a placing of ourselves in the stream of living. The Greek word for measured time, chronos, defines a series of self-orientations, each with a definite past, present, and future. Every tick of the clock marks a birth and a perishing in our existence. Those deeds, however, are rudimentarily and inevitably interpretive . Even the young child moves rapidly beyond random movements, translating actions into meanings. We are incurably historic beings, embedded in nature but transcending it by recognizing the significance of our acts or endowing them with meaning. This is only the beginning of the interpretive burden and joy, the Literature and Medicine 1 (Rev. ed., 1992) 24-28 © 1992 by The Johns Hopkins University Press Samuel A. Banks 25 hallmark of Homo symbolicus. We are never satisfied with raw activity. We must tell the tale, again and again. Having recognized that events are significant, we try to realize that significance fully by discovering or imposing meanings through elaboration in story. Every happening takes its place in the narration. Our lives echo and reecho, "Once upon a time . . ." Each person is both participant and observer; each is author, actor, and audience in the drama of his or her lifestory. Our "narrative nature" is an essential human ingredient. Viktor Frankl, the Viennese psychiatrist who survived Auschwitz, asserts that the one unavoidable human task is the search for meaning. He emphasizes Nietzsche's arresting words, "If a man has a why to live, he will find a how."1 In a lighter vein, the social scientist Gregory Bateson explores the critical boundary between nature and human nature, offering a parable highlighting human existence as ceaseless storytelling: There is a story I have used before and shall use again: A man wanted to know about mind, not in nature, but in his private large computer. He asked it (no doubt in his best Fortran), "Do you compute that you will ever think like a human being?" The machine then set to work to analyze its own computational habits. Finally, the machine printed its answer on a piece of paper, as such machines do. The man ran to get the answer and found neatly typed the words: THAT REMINDS ME OF A STORY.2 From the cave walls of Lascaux and firelit tribal dances of the Sioux to Madison Avenue luncheon talk and medical-student skits, we are context hunters, searching for relevance in particular time and space. We react to our world, spinning sagas, singing, dancing, painting. We reflect, reinterpret, refine our histories, and live for the telling. Even our social institutions—churches, legislative bodies, industries—are precipitates of the complex culture-dramas each society must create. Such cultural crystallizations as hospitals and universities also elaborate our human dramas of ignorance and learning, illness and healing. Although more formally structured, works of literature are concrete experiences of the human hunger to tell stories. The forms are myriad, the intent one. Through such literary constructions as...