ABSTRACT
Mattingly effectively develops the argument that narrative structure, experience, and ritual converge to produce healing dramas. Mattingly suggests that the necessary precursor to therapeutic emplotment is "locating desire" in a social drama and arises by the work of the therapist in creating multiple possible imagined endings to the narrative drama. Mattingly invokes Edith Turner: Narratives become one medium through which the healer tries to connect a person's individual experience to an ideal or preferred narrative, and healing itself is equated with the rhetorical task of persuading the patient to see her experience in a certain way. Arthur Kleinman acknowledges that healing rituals are part of Western medicine but considers them flawed by lack of attention to the illness narrative. Kleinman's willingness to merge the domains of anthropology, medicine, and psychiatry meant that we had divergent perspectives as part of our respective methodologies. Kleinman presents his case series and follows each case with a section labeled "interpretation.".
