Abstract

The present paper aims at treating the problem of the validation of the main assumptions of the Narrative Based Medicine approach (NBM). In the first part of this paper, the authors stress six different meanings narrative acquires in the medical care context and, for each of them, they analyze psychological processes that are involved. The Authors underline also the necessity that NBM assumptions refer to the development of scientific investigations on narrative processes, memory, language and communication. The second part of this paper takes in consideration the fact that nbm and Narrative Psychology have developed in parallel without a mutual interaction, and that this lack of dialogue could be due to the difficulty of interdisciplinary communication between Medicine and Psychology. Some possible trends of research are then presented in order to validate in a direct or in an indirect way NBM models. Moreover it is claimed that medical training can make use of narrative concepts and methodology in order to increase medical proficiency in communication and comprehension of clinical anamnestic data.