Memory and Projectivity in Patient Narratives

• In Event: 20820 - Section on Medical Sociology Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 21. Patient Experiences and Diagnostic Processes II

Abstract

There is a burgeoning interest in sociology to consider the origins, patterns, and impacts of future projections, alongside a robust subfield that examines the "sources, content, and consequences" of memory (Mische 2014, p. 1). Sociological work in these areas asks how recollections of the past and anticipations of the future shape present action and identity. Yet, these strands of research tend to treat past and future in isolation. I argue that more sociological work should consider both; we are temporally truncated if we extend consideration of a temporally oriented self only into the past or future. Every moment of decision-making, meaning-making, or identity formation involves both remembered experiences and anticipated futures. Studying only past- or future-oriented data misses how these dimensions shape present experience. I suggest that how we remember the past influences what futures we imagine, while anticipated futures affect which past experiences feel meaningful now. "The past is as hypothetical as the future" (Mead 1932, p. 12), and both are actively reconstructed from the present.
This interplay between past and future becomes particularly salient during disruption or uncertainty, when temporal orientations are upset (Olick 1999; Beckert 2013; Emirbayer and Mische 1998; Swidler 1986). To consider this empirically, my project draws on the DIPEx database, a repository of in-depth interviews with patients reflecting on illness—including their past, diagnosis, treatment, present care, and anticipated future. When diagnosed with a terminal illness, how do people reimagine both past and future? Do they construct life stories differently than patients expecting to recover? This study examines how patients narrate their past and future when facing terminal diagnosis or potential recovery. Through this comparison, I analyze whether discernible patterns emerge in how individuals with more open or closed futures reconstruct their past and anticipate their future. I hypothesize that the structure of the anticipated future determines available forms of past reconstruction.

Author

• Lena Greene Gloeckler, Columbia University