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Paul Grobstein's picture

stories: a cross-cultural perspective?

Submitted by Paul Grobstein on Mon, 10/13/2008 - 4:12pm.

Assuming your father isn't either American Indian or Nigerian, there's an interesting cross-cultural similarity here. The following is from Thomas Young's The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative ...

"The truth about stories is that that's all we are. The Nigerian story-teller Ben Okri says that "in a fractured age, when cynicism is god, here is a possible heresy: we live by stories, we also live in them. One way or another we are living the stories that are planted in us early or along the way, or we are also living the stories we planted -- knowingly or unknowingly -- in ourselves. We live stories that either give our lives meaning or negate it with meaninglessness. If we change the stories we live by, quite possibly we change our lives.""

If we take that seriously, what does it say about "mental health"?

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