At 2 p.m. on the afternoon of Friday, February 25th, 2022, the 94th Peking University Medical Humanities Forum was held in Room 716, Yifu Teaching Building, Peking University Health Science Center. Professor Zhao Baisheng, School of Foreign Languages, Peking University, made a lecture entitled “Medical Narrative and Narrative Medicine— The Diary of Guolin  (《郭林日记》) from the Perspective of Biographical Literature Study”. The lecture was chaired by Professor Guo Liping, School of Health Humanities, Peking University. Nearly 40 listeners from teaching units and clinical hospitals in PKU have attended the lecture.

　　 First of all, Professor Zhao Baisheng started with the background of “the study of biographical literature” (传学) and cited a saying by the famous Irish poet Yeats “All knowledge is biography”. Professor Zhao pointed out that medicine and narrative research is a typical interdisciplinary research, which needs to find a “pivot point” that the methods used may vary, but the principle is the same. Based on this core, researchers could expand outwards to conduct valuable interdisciplinary research. After that, Professor Zhao talked about narrative medicine and pointed out that narrative medicine needs to pay attention to the core issues, such as definition, origin, characteristics, type, role and training, in order to explore the ways of discipline institutionalization. Moreover, Professor Zhao distinguished “narrative medicine” from “medical narrative”, and emphasized that narrative medicine is based on medicine through scientific analysis by means of professional treatment in order to make people healthy. While the medical narrative takes non-medical rehabilitation as a means, through artistic exploration, based on humanity, so as to achieve human integrity. Narrative medicine and medical narrative are connected through narrative competence. From the medical perspective, the essence of the contact between doctors and patients is listening to the stories. Doctors are supposed to act as “medical literary critics”, who could understand the patients’ narratives, and analyze it from patients’ diversified and emotional narratives. Therefore, they can restore the distortion of the narratives, and locate the condition accurately according to the patients’ narratives.

　　 In addition, Professor Zhao pointed out the two types of medical narratives: non-fictional narrative and fictional narrative, and analyzed the ethical considerations, aesthetic appeals and universal significance among them. The 21st century is an era of non-fiction. The non-fictional literature, including biographical literature, has outbroken in this century, and the disease biography has entered a golden age. The biography on the theme of disease is of great significance in the classic biographical area. Professor Zhao cited the biographies of Franklin, Gandhi, Steven Jobs and so forth to show the complex individual struggles and ethical demands in the disease narrative. Medical biography has huge potential, which can be subdivided into patient biography, patient biography, doctor and nurse biography, medical management staff biography, patient family biography, disease biography, drug biography, hospital biography, medical school biography and so on. Taking  the Diary of Guolin  as an example, Professor Zhao showed how to use the “perspective for the study of biographical literature”, in order to emphasize the three elements of patients’ biographies: experience, self and identity. Disease is a complex physical and mental experience, and the disease writing is a process of self allegorical in order to achieve self transcendence of disease and obtain a new identity. The key to this narrative process is the inductive model, professionalism, group effect and psychotherapy developed by Guo Lin. Identity crisis is a common experience of patients. Disease narrative is not only a required course for good patients, but also a starting point for doctors to understand patients. Finally, Professor Zhao put forward the “general patient theory”, which can achieve the macro-transformation of people’s body, spirit, personality, and promote the development of medicine, humanity and faith from the aspects of technical, psychological and spiritual through the general, all-around and comprehensive lifestyle improvement.

　　 This lecture revealed the intertwined relationship between the medical narrative of establishing the patient’s identity, as well as the narrative medicine of serving the doctor’s professional intelligence from the perspective of biography, which had been received with undiluted enthusiasm from the audience. Professor Guo Liping appreciated Professor Zhao’s lecture, and commented from the perspective of narrative medicine. Professor Guo said that disease narrative promoted the birth of narrative medicine, which is more conducive to strengthening narrative medicine’s focus on patients. Therefore, a better relationship between doctor and patient could be built, so as to promote good health. Professor Zhao Bin, from the Jishuitan Hospital of Peking University, responded from the perspective of a doctor. He reviewed his experience as a medical students, and reflected on the shortcomings of traditional clinical treatment, which only emphasizes technology and neglects humanity. The audience had a heated discussion on the differences between theory and experience, the status and role of narrative in medicine, and the reflection of medicine from the perspective of humanity.

　　 Department of Medical Language and Culture