ABSTRACT
Constructivism – where learning involves filing new knowledge inside existing structures of experience – is often eschewed in medical apprenticeship, which remains largely behaviourist and transactional. Proponents of transformative learning theories – learning that goes deep, changes perspectives, and is meaningful to the learner – argue however for the importance of reflexive cognition and emotion in addition to behaviour. Here, authenticity is critical, and medical education has been slow to come to authenticity because determining whether these behaviours are performative or authentic is thought to be largely outside its purview. In this educational milieu, poetry has been largely employed as consolation, or it has offered entertainment and distraction, but there is a wretched emptiness in such approaches. In this chapter, Irish philosopher and writer Iris Murdoch’s concept of ‘unselfing’ is employed to unlock the pedagogical power of poetry in medicine. Medicine should treat poetry not as consolation or a place of retreat but as a destabilizing opportunity, therapeutically shifting our attention or point of view. ‘Unselfing’ is illustrated here drawing on the ironic poetry of Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012).
