Rita Charon: The Ethicality of Storytelling: Privacy, Confidentiality, and “Ownership” of Patients‘ Stories
The lecture takes place online on July 21st 16:00-17:30 (German time).
This lecture forms part of the international summer school The Ethics of Storytelling (20–23 July 2026), organised by the International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC), Justus Liebig University Giessen. Bringing together scholars from narratology, literary and cultural studies, ecocriticism, education, AI research, and other disciplines, the summer school explores the ethical opportunities and challenges of storytelling across professional, cultural, and public contexts. Through keynote lectures, workshops, and collaborative discussions, we examine how narratives shape social life and how storytelling can be practised responsibly in an increasingly digital world.
Participation in the guest lecture is free of charge and open to everyone.
Abstract:
Creative, cognitive, and psychological currents in private and public lives have been overtaken by stories. Astute, grandiose, or tawdry, storytelling has reinvented our daily lives. Persons seeking health care recount their experiences of illness to clinicians in what are supposed to be confidential interchanges. Some clinicians listen only for diagnostic clues of disease. Others are moved by the stories they hear from patients, either because they have been well trained to attend to their patient’s experiences or because they recognize a story worth publishing themselves.
Clinicians may consider publishing patients’ stories as a professional duty to illuminate suffering and advocate for better care. Some aim to become writers. Others are feeding their cv. Some but not all clinician-writers seek and obtain consent from patients to write about them. Some but not all journals require written consent from patients to publish these stories. Clinicians have been sued for libel for publishing about patients without consent.
The keynote lecture will examine confounding and competing interests surrounding patients’ privacy, exposing fundamental schisms between clinician and patient perspectives. Deep questions surface about professional power, the duty to do no harm, and the very nature of story as a pluripotent apeirogon.
More information on the international summer school website.