Healing and the Invention of Metaphor: Toward a Poetics of Illness Experience

It has long been understood that illness is influenced not only by our bodies' physiology, but also language, culture, and meaning. This book, written by renowned cultural psychiatrist Laurence Kirmayer, explores of the influence of metaphor, narrative, and imagination in experiences of suffering and processes of healing across cultures. It emphasizes how metaphor can open a window to the hidden mechanisms of healing driven by meaning and symbolism, myth and imagination. At the same time, it offers a rigorous critical account of the metaphors embedded in the epistemology and practice of contemporary biomedicine, psychiatry, and psychotherapy. In doing so, it exposes the sociomoral and political dimensions of these dominant approaches to understanding and treating illness.

Table of Contents:
Preface; Acknowledgments; 1. Into the Backcountry; 2. The Body's Insistence on Meaning; 3. Broken Narratives; 4. Animal Powers; 5. Healing Fictions; 6. Landscapes of Memory; 7. The Texture of Time; 8. Poetics of Alterity; 9. Asklepian Dreams; 10. Epilogue: Ethics, Aesthetics, and Poiesis; Notes; References; Index.

About the Author :
Laurence J. Kirmayer is Distinguished James McGill Professor and Director of the Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry at McGill University. He directs the Culture & Mental Health Research Unit at the Institute of Community and Family Psychiatry at Jewish General Hospital, Montreal. He is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and the Royal Society of Canada.

Review :
'Laurence Kirmayer, a world leader of transcultural psychiatry, has written an exquisite and poetic book that places metaphor and the imagination at the center of medicine, healing and even human thought. It is a paradigm-changing work that is both inspiring and a joy to read.' Henry Abramovitch, Professor Emeritus, Tel Aviv Medical School & Founding President, Israel Institute of Jungian Psychology in honor of Erich Neumann 'This is the best book on metaphor in healthcare by a country mile. Laurence Kirmayer's re-telling of a life's work surprises at every turn. While dazzling us with brilliant prose the author does so with warmth and humanity. He asks you to dance with him – and who could resist?' Alan Bleakley, Emeritus Professor of Medical Education and Medical Humanities, Peninsula School of Medicine, University of Plymouth 'This masterful collection of essays explores the crucial role of metaphors and narratives in how individuals experience and interpret mental illness, and how practitioners of all stripes use cultural poetics to connect with patients and facilitate healing. A must-read for anyone interested in mental health and the creative nature of healing.' Mark Nichter, Regents Professor Emeritus, University of Arizona 'Laurence Kirmayer is one of the most thoughtful and constructive analysts of contemporary psychiatry, and this book makes a compelling case for the key role of metaphor in enabling us to bridge the divide between meaning and mechanism, and to understanding 'the cognitive machinery, discursive practices, cultural histories, and forms of life that constitute and transform experience in sickness and in health'.' Nikolas Rose, Distinguished Honorary Professor, Australian National University & Honorary Professor, University College London 'In this masterful study, a major luminary in psychiatry and anthropology offers crucial insight into the interweaving of culture and illness: how imagery and narrative, with all their bodily resonances, can shape psychological pain. An indispensable guide to the metaphors we live by – and by which we can both suffer and be cured.' Louis Sass, author of Madness and Modernism and The Paradoxes of Delusion 'This book sheds new light on the study of language and health, examining the ways in which metaphor informs the experience of illness and the process of healing.  The author is the world's foremost expert in (cross-) cultural psychiatry, and his writing is profound, philosophically-informed, and provocative.' William Sax, Professor Emeritus, Anthropology, Heidelberg University 'This long-awaited book from the foremost transcultural psychiatrist writing in the global North is steeped in anthropological wisdom, bristles with psychological insights, and forges a radically new synthesis of emotions, meaning and the body. Kirmayer teaches us about the material agency of metaphor, the body's insistence on meaning, and the conditions of and for human flourishing. This book makes uncommon sense.' David Howes, FRSC, author of The Sensory Studies Manifesto 'Laurence Kirmayer asks why his psychiatric perspective and biomedical ethics fail to connect meaningfully his patients' symptoms and their suffering. He outlines how the recent emphasis on narrative-based ethics imposes a distorting temporal and causal path on suffering and the self. At the core of this book is an enthralling presentation of seven dreams of a psychiatric intern that function as rationale for and defense of a poetics of illness in which, not ratiocination but myth and archetype autonomously lend meaning and evoke experiences of healing.' Craig E. Stephenson, author of Possession: Jung's Comparative Anatomy of the Psyche, Anteros: A Forgotten Myth, and Ages of Anxiety