“Authenticity” derives from the late Latin authentĭcus, in turn from the Greek authéntikos, which comes from authéntēs, “he who acts from himself”, formed from autós (“self”) and éntos (“within”). To be authentic therefore means to act from oneself, from within, without counterfeit. It is not an imitation: it is something genuine, springing from one’s inner truth.
Transported into the field of narrative medicine, this word takes on a special strength. Authenticity in patients’ stories is not related to the precision of details, but to the ability to give voice to what one feels, to how the illness is experienced. Authentic storytelling is not a sterile chronicle, but an act of truth: a way of putting into words what lives inside.
In the DIAMOND project, dedicated to the many facets of pain, people have found powerful images to express the ineffable. ‘Grief is like a wave that suddenly sweeps over me and doesn’t let me breathe’, says one person. Another adds: ‘I live with a pain that cannot be seen: from the outside I look normal, but inside it is like a constant fire‘. These narratives, although different, have a common trait: the authenticity of a feeling that does not need to be verified, but only welcomed.
Yet, authenticity is a delicate word. It is not enough for a person to tell: it is necessary that his or her story be recognised as meaningful, not belittled, not reduced to ‘error’ or ‘misunderstanding’. Here, narrative medicine teaches us that authenticity means reciprocity: a listening that does not judge but tries to understand the other from his or her point of view.
This perspective finds an interesting echo in the philosophical reflection on informed consent. James Stacey Taylor has recently shown that a person’s autonomy is not necessarily compromised by false beliefs or ignorance. A patient can remain autonomous even if he or she does not know all the technical details. What is compromised, however, is the possibility of giving genuine consent. If I believe that a biopsy is a simple ‘tube in the throat’ and not an incision, my ‘yes’ is not really a consent, because the alignment between what I think and what happens is missing.
Here then, authenticity becomes the bridge between narration and consent. An authentic patient narrative may contain scientific errors, but it remains valuable because it expresses the patient’s experience. Authentic consent, on the other hand, requires that the information given and received be matched in meaning. In both cases, what is at stake is trust: trust that my voice is heard, trust that the information given is understandable, trust that my choices are respected.
Therefore, talking about authenticity in narrative medicine also means questioning the role of professionals: how to create spaces where the patient can narrate without feeling judged? How to translate technical terms into a language that does not lose precision but is accessible? How to give people back the feeling that their consent is not a bureaucratic signature, but an act of conscious participation in care?
Authenticity is never perfect: it is a horizon, a continuous tension. But that is precisely why it is so central to narrative medicine. It reminds us that to cure is not just to apply protocols, but to accompany stories. And that, amidst the many signatures on forms and the many words noted in medical records, what really matters is that patients can say: ‘I was listened to, I had a choice. I was authentically myself, even in illness’.
Bibliography:
- https://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/autenticita/
- Taylor JS. Informed Consent, Autonomy, False Beliefs, and Ignorance. Social Philosophy and Policy. 2024;41(2):546-564. doi:10.1017/S0265052524000244