One of the most frequent questions I get from doctors, nurses, and helping professionals is how to apply narrative medicine when you have at most 20 minutes for a consultation, a waiting room full of patients, or, in guidance services, back-to-back interviews with young people. How do you apply it—that is, how do you make it possible to structure active listening, cognitive empathy, and the recognition of the other person’s (and our own) human resources and multiple intelligences—in order to initiate a caring process?
This morning I woke up thinking about a philosopher who, back in high school, I didn’t like very much. He didn’t write as captivatingly as Plato: it was Aristotle. Far from the phenomenology so dear to narrative medicine (Ricoeur, Derrida…): Aristotle, the one of syllogisms. Well, he was also the tutor of Alexander the Great, so his pragmatism matters. One thing I did love about Aristotle is the theme of the transition from potential (what we would call today potentiality) into act, into fulfillment.
So here I can try to answer how to apply narrative care, with its stance, in worn-out times and within an imperfect system: it is not a skill you switch on—an awkward Anglicism to mean “turn on”—nor an add-on, but a way of being, of standing, of living. A seed, when it germinates, does not question whether it has moved from potential to act. It simply is. Of course, in its DNA it carries auxin, the plant hormone that makes it grow and sprout—if the surrounding conditions are good, if the environment is favorable.
It’s not that I meet one person and think, “With you I’ll be more narrative, and with the next one I won’t because I have less time.” It may depend on how fertile the other person’s ground is for being narrative, but I still explore that path. The act presupposes a potential of learned skills, to be integrated with other techniques and applied in every possible context. I think time is sometimes a real limiting factor, and sometimes an excuse. Three minutes are enough to truly listen. I’m not saying we should become mind readers—but a little bit, why not? What does a mentalist do? They don’t read minds; they observe, paying attention to words, emotions, and details: micro-expressions, hesitations, changes in tone, chosen words and avoided words. They hold together what they see and what they hear, and they simply ask questions. And then they amaze us with their understanding of the other.
Here the phenomenology of the last century becomes useful—it’s not distant theory. It reminds us to stay with what shows itself, with how the experience presents itself to that person. Not to hypothesize explanations. Ricoeur works on the idea that we give meaning to what we live through storytelling: we assign meaning to facts and behaviors. Derrida reminds us that language is not neutral: words can open or close. Even a question can completely shift the narrative, and he teaches us to remain present with the person, observing how the “between,” the dialogue, takes shape.
And here Gestalt helps us with its figure–ground system. Where do I place the focus? If I let the background lead—the system, the time constraints, my agenda, the person’s family, the context—the person gets lost. If instead I bring the person and their story into the foreground, the background remains but does not lead. This shift does not require additional chronological time; it can be built through constant practice. That is where the transition from narrative potential to narrative action takes place.
I might say something close to taboo: it’s like learning to ride a bike, to swim, to drive, to walk. We don’t forget these things because they become automatic. So the automatism I wish for helping professionals is this: don’t start with a checklist, but begin with narrative curiosity, staying with the other person’s words and helping the story move forward toward awareness.
And so I return to Aristotle—yes, that school philosopher, studied many years ago and then left in a distant drawer of memory. But this morning he resurfaced because he still has something useful to offer: he brought order to how things move from possibility to reality. And if that movement does not take life in reality, it remains a missed opportunity—a lost potential. And that is not what I wish, because life is too short to lose opportunities
