The author of Show Me Where It Hurts: Manifesting Illness and Impairment in Graphic Pathography discusses the growing field of graphic pathography, its benefits, and more.
Why is graphic pathography such a fast-growing field, and how does it "work" for the drawing subject?
Graphic pathography allows subjects who have fallen ill or experienced a medical or clinical challenge to have their say—or rather, to draw their own representations. If the internal workings of the body disappear from consciousness when we are in good health, according to Drew Leder, their appearance as aches and pains during illness, I argue, invites artists to reenvision or revise Leder’s “recessed body.” Graphic pathography illustrates the experiences of illness, sometimes to critique a subject’s care and caregivers, other times to offer fresh perspectives on the effects of receiving chemotherapy, living with clinical depression, or struggling against anorexia, among many other experiences. Because the artists are freed from confining clinical representations to express themselves through the graphic line—one with infinite possibilities of showing what sometimes telling cannot achieve—graphic pathography invites aesthetic and personal responses by which others can learn and empathize. That medical schools increasingly are incorporating courses in graphic medicine, in addition to existing courses in narrative medicine (writing about one’s experiences of illness or impairment), teachers, students, and medical practitioners alike find that art can assist in healing.
What subjects do artists of graphic pathography pursue and why?
Artists attend to illnesses and diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer’s, depression, dementia, anorexia, COVID—every experience is different depending on a multitude of factors, including support, race, economic class, gender, community ideology, and sexual orientation. Artists also address sexual reassignment surgery to offer needed information for those uninformed of the procedures, to dispel fictions about trans subjects, and to highlight their challenges. Others draw comics about caring for the old and infirm—assuring their readers that no one correct way exists by which to provide comfort—or tending to the very young who die young, in illustrations of grief. Health care providers cogitate, by reading or creating comics, on how to be a compassionate doctor, nurse, or other caregiver by highlighting the pressures and pleasures as well as the challenges and victories of their professions. Medical students illustrate how their exhaustion and sometimes lack of thoughtful pedagogy leads to self-critique and self-doubt.
What benefits accrue in creating graphic pathography for artists, readers, and healthcare providers?
Artists bestow agency on their cartoon selves through thoughtful depictions of their corporeality drawn against disciplining representations created for them under health care and within health care spaces. We might usefully remind ourselves that the Latin-derived term “patient” is defined (by the Online Etymology Dictionary) as the “quality of being willing to bear adversities; a calm endurance of misfortune; bearing of suffering.” Where do we see the unpatients (the nonpatient subjects) of graphic pathography, those characters who unwillingly bear adversity? Through comics artists’ self-representations, traces of the imputations of illness and impairment, or of medicine’s sometimes cold and categorizing gaze, are slowly chipped away, and sometimes completely demolished, in the artist’s manifestation. The term manifestation references showing by illustration, the man of the drawing “hand,” and that of keeping a log, like a ship’s manifest.
Why do so many graphic pathographies by and about white subjects exist in relation to the paucity of works by artists of color?
This is the question that concludes my study, among related inquiries that invite other scholars in the field to participate in writing about graphic medicine’s many representations beyond those by and about white subjects: if predominantly white bodies self-represent, what does this glaring omission portend for the larger field of graphic medicine and its readers? To whom does medicine cater? Historically, black men and women unknowingly served as experimental bodies for medical science; meanwhile, Asian immigrant bodies were grounded in cultural narratives of both disease and palliation, the former playing out currently during the COVID pandemic, the latter in the conception of them as model minorities. In what unfortunate ways do images of black, yellow, and brown bodies intersect with illness and disability? I ask us to inquire: how is an academic focus on comics by white subjects consciously exposing or unconsciously contributing to a historical convergence among race, disease, and/or disability?
Show Me Where It Hurts: Manifesting Illness and Impairment in Graphic Pathography is now available from Penn State University Press. Learn more and order the book here: https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-09682-7.html. Save 30% w/ discount code NR23.
by Abby Hershler and Lesley Hughes, co-editors of Looking at Trauma: A Toolkit for Clinicians
Childhood trauma is often followed by shame, silence, confusion, secrecy, and fear. Looking away works for a while—until it doesn’t.
We (Abby Hershler and Lesley Hughes) are two trauma therapists who have heard the same story from so many trauma survivors: “I finally reached out for help. But my doctor/counsellor told me I needed to see an expert.”
While a referral to a trauma specialist makes sense, it can often mean waiting months, even years, for help. The societal cost of unaddressed childhood trauma amounts to billions of dollars annually. But health care providers often feel ill-equipped to offer support.
In an effort to narrow this health care gap, we collaborated with a medical illustrator, Patricia Nguyen, and her professor, Shelley Wall, to offer a solution: a book that explores trauma-focused and trauma-informed therapy through comics. Looking at Trauma: A Toolkit for Clinicians is creative and user-friendly, offering trauma-informed tools for all health care providers and educators.
Leveraging the power of visual learning, these comics take readers along a journey of discovery, making highly emotional information more accessible. The relatable character in the comics captures how childhood trauma is reexperienced in adulthood with distressing symptoms and unhealthy patterns of behavior. Alongside each comic is a written chapter that expands on each of the illustrated educational topics. This combination is more powerful than words alone.
For example, one model, called “Parallel Lives,” explores traumatic reenactments and triggers as the main character trips and becomes immersed in water and entangled in weeds. The weeds and water represent memories and traumatic losses from the past, a visual that provides a powerful and easy-to-understand metaphor and entry point for self-discovery.
Looking at Trauma encourages safety, stability, creativity, and therapeutic connection as clinicians and their clients begin to make meaning together. We hope to disarm the powerful forces of shame and stigma associated with trauma and promote trauma-informed care, one comic at a time.
Looking at Trauma: A Toolkit for Clinicians is now available from Penn State University Press. Find more information and order the book here: https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-09207-2.html. Save 30% with discount code NR21.
