Welcome to The Reflexive Voice

The Reflective Voice attempts to bring to life the concepts in the "Close Reading" chapter of Spencer et al's 2016 The Principles and Practices of Narrative Medicine: allowing a text to ‘read’ us as we read it, ensuring that both parties (text & reader) are fully engaged in a way that pronounces the elements of the text (desire, plot, form, time, etc.) and the landing place that the text has found. Our text in this case is the Narrative Medicine Master’s program at Columbia University, and the narrative medicine community.

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The magazine’s name encapsulates the perpetual movement that this forum is meant to facilitate for Narrative Medicine students and practitioners: looking back at the training to examine its impact. The practitioner is then also examined, as reflection is inherently subjective, creating a sort of mirroring effect. This effect doesn't remain unheard and unshared, hence the voice being the instrument instead of something else, like the mind.

 

Addressing questions of directionality and relationality will hopefully not only provide students with closeness to their place in this field but also provide founders and faculty, and the larger public with material for the impact of this work.