Learning in boxes

Along with some colleagues from the more creative fringes of our discipline, I will shortly be running a conference on narrative in health care. My vision is that doctors, nurses, anthropologists, psychotherapists, literary critics, historians, linguists, and service users will spend two days sharing experiences of illness and healing through the simple, time honoured, and universal technique of storytelling.

I expect that the stories they tell and hear in formal, timetabled presentations may prove …