Well-Being and Health Through Autobiographical Pedagogy: Theoretical Foundations and Perspectives

In his 1996 book "The Culture of Education," Bruner stresses the importance of narrative processes in education, highlighting their potential in helping individuals construct their identity and find their role within society. This perspective, viewed from the perspective of lifelong learning, allows for the enhancement of human experience through a reinterpretation and reinterpretation of the concepts of memory and forgetting, construction and loss of self, old age and youth, life and death, in a transformative way. The humanities, including the educational sciences, assume that change is an intrinsic aspect of human experience. They view the study of life stories as a fundamental tool for exploring the formative value of individual events experienced, analyzing their ability to influence and modify behavior, knowledge, and skills in relating to one's surroundings. Contemporary pedagogical reflection highlights the crucial importance, at every stage of life, of autobiography and life stories as educational tools capable of achieving high cognitive and educational goals, starting from the enhancement of individual subjectivity. If we adopt this principle as an interpretive paradigm for reinterpreting the meaning of our life experiences, we realize how autobiography can serve as a meaningful interpretive space that can connect the present, past and future in a complex temporal dimension. Representatives of this pedagogical current include Paulo Freire, Pierre Dominicé, Gaston Pineau and Peter Alheit, each with their own specific sensibility and personal approach to the topic of education. The skills required by narrative, whether oral or written, are encapsulated in a single individual lending themselves to action, making narrative knowledge a possible training tool, in the proper sense of "Bildung." The importance of constructing a narrative of care contexts that places the configuration of the individual at the center and respects the complexity of everyday life is evident. In this context, literature, especially literature open to childhood experiences, can become a resilient device and a new paradigm of reference. It can serve as an effective formative and transformative tool for children and young people through a historical-pedagogical interpretation of the works of various writers. Contributions from various disciplines and research perspectives, ranging from pedagogy to sociology, from philosophy to medicine, from literature to the arts (music, painting, cinema), outline educational pathways that can promote risk prevention (both medical and marginality), transformative, formative and self-formative processes. The focus on narrative experience constitutes the file rouge of the issue in which the reader is invited to an education in reading and comprehension of narrative text from childhood, so that it restores to the word its transformative value and contributes to strengthening emotional development in a logic of primary prevention of relational distress. It is crucial to dwell on the potential and limitations of the epistemological and pedagogical status of narrative, especially for its use in concrete terms, such as regarding the practices of using books as therapy. At the same time, it is fundamental to deepen the problem of transdisciplinary teaching, stimulating future research in the goal of greater inclusion, stimulating future research and hoping for a full inclusion of Narrative Medicine in the undergraduate and postgraduate pathways of health care personnel. This process aims at improving medical treatment, the therapeutic relationship between patient and health care provider, more accurate clinical assessment, and deeper understanding of the patient. Topics of considerable relevance include those related to pain and suffering, for which there is an increasing need for specific training for health care professionals as well, so that they can deal with them in a more prepared way, benefit personally, understand themselves better, and facilitate generative expressive channels of sharing. It is therefore crucial to understand how new technologies can also assist the operation of medical instruments, particularly without losing sight of the human wholeness that characterizes medical humanism. In this context, therapeutic writing in the context of Narrative Medicine emerges as a powerful tool for exploring the transformative potential of life stories affected by suffering and illness, bringing them to a level of systemic reflection. These stories can relate to both patients and professionals working in the field of medical care. In the end, self-understanding in fact turns out to be important with respect to the concept self-representation in illness. A theme investigated by classics of literature itself, but one that appears even more important when one considers that through the book, narrative qualities are externalized, weaving a tale that can truly mark life and relaunch it in a different, transformative perspective.