ABSTRACT
This chapter examines narrative and how it has influenced a wide array of humanities and social science disciplines and several helping professions, medicine in particular, in the USA. Although the sense of narrative or story varies across as well as within the professions and disciplines, there are some common features and issues that draw them together for a narrative turn in theory and practice. Narrative health care stakes out a fundamental position on the relationship among sickness, life stories, and personal identity. The connection between narrative identity and sickness comes when the patient's life story is interrupted by serious illness. Health care, particularly medicine, has been slower to explore narrative views than other disciplines and professions. In contrast to narrative naturalists, social or narrative constructivists argue that stories are formed, or constructed, from an interaction of lived experience through time and meaning.
