ABSTRACT
We engage more fully with the disparate literary movement known as Russian Formalism. In Chapter 3 we unpacked its philosophy and cultural milieu, drawing connections to contemporary deployments of narrative-based approaches to medical education, while here we take a more practical approach. We analyse a medical interview using our instantiation of the close reading technique, eventually turning to a purely poetic interpretation of medical interviewing. We show how thinking of the medical interview as language and sound, not as outcome or as relational technique, can transform clinical encounters. We see this as a significant and original contribution to medical/health humanities, moving beyond the typical reach of narrative-based medicine. In essence, we show defamiliarisation in action, comparing this to the poet Emily Dickinson’s notion of “thinking slant”, where “The Truth must dazzle gradually”.
