Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: shame

  • The Barbie doll syndrome

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “In all the years I’ve been a therapist, I’ve yet to meet a girl who likes her body.”1– Mary Pipher, PhD, clinical psychologist In 1959, the Mattel toy company introduced a doll in the US that was not modeled on a baby or small child, but rather on a young adult. The…

  • Furniture of bones

    D. Brendan JohnsonMinneapolis, Minnesota, United States “Would you like the new patient?” My senior resident offered me the next admission, a patient being stabilized in the emergency department after a suicide attempt. As a fresh medical student in the beginning of my clinical education, I quickly said yes, plucked up my courage, and went to…

  • Janus

    Dahlia MukherjeeHershey, Pennsylvania, United States I was walking back home from school with my friend. It was a typical gloomy English day with the grey clouds swirling menacingly on top of us threatening rain. We were excitedly talking about my friend’s birthday party next Saturday in her backyard. “I can’t wait to be at your…

  • Obstetrical fistula: A malady hidden by shame

    Layla A. Al-JailaniYemen Nouria strolls across the kitchen, making lunch for her family as she does every day. Her stride is slightly wobbly, but any observer would think this was a healthy young woman. What they do not see, however, is the hidden anguish, pain, and shame that tears at her body and eats through…

  • The bedside manners of Ingmar Bergman’s celluloid physicians

    Eelco WijdicksRochester, Minnesota, United States The great humanitarian filmmaker and auteur Ingmar Bergman used physicians in his films much more frequently than his peers. Bergman’s full filmography, including two films (Thirst and Brink of Life) directed by but not written by Bergman, features sixteen physicians in thirteen films. Excluding the family doctor in Fanny and…

  • Aniza

    Eleonore Blaurock-BuschGermany I miss my people and my home,but don’t send me back. I don’t have a passport,no papers. Dad gave them to my husband-to-be,the one who couldn’t take me now,and I am not sad about it. I am crying about my sister.They cut her up, sewed her tightand her fat, old husband, he likes…

  • Whose blood is it anyway?

    Felicity SelfPacific North West I am ashamed. I am ashamed because I have only given blood once in my entire adult life. I am forty-eight years old and eligible to donate blood since I was seventeen, which means I have had thirty-one years in which I could have given blood. And I know the importance:…

  • Shame

    Jeanne BereiterAlbuquerque, New Mexico, United States “I wasn’t trying to kill myself,” Jessica insisted, running a black-tipped, artificial fingernail through her black, gelled hair, which flashed blonde at the roots. “I was drinking, and I miscalculated. I didn’t know this could happen.” Jessica had been admitted to my adolescent psychiatric unit after she fell down…