Narrative contributes to mutual understanding between cultures in a global world, he said at the University of Navarra. Arthur W. FrankD. in Sociology from the Yale University and professor at the department of Sociology of the University of Calgary (Canada).

The expert was one of the main speakers at the symposium 'Life Writing as Empathy: A Symposium on Narrative Emotions', organized by the project 'Emotional culture and identity' of Institute for Culture and Society (ICS), funded by Zurich Insurance.

"Understanding comes from knowing other people's stories, which circulate within the communities. These allow us to understand who they are and why they act as they do, from agreement with their conception of reality," he said.

Professor Frank noted in that vein that the narrative financial aid unravels complex challenges of today's societies. As an example, he mentioned how immigration stories in North America have changed since the 19th century: "In the past, migrants had a cultural expectation to become Canadians or Americans. Today they want to preserve their culture: the language, the dress, the food... There is a very strong narrative dimension to help understand immigration or the limits of integration in host societies."

Narratives and disease: the imperialism of medicine

On the other hand, Professor Frank referred to another of his lines of research, the narrative of disease. On this issue, he regretted that "medicine exercises a narrative imperialism and the history of the disease becomes, in reality, a medical narrative". Thus, he considered that "the day-to-day struggle waged by the patient is not taken into account" and that, instead, "the story is reduced to the treatment process".

Arthur W. Frank is Professor Emeritus at the University of Calgary (Canada) and a professor at Betanien University College (Norway). He also practices at the Center for Narrative internship in Boston and has been Visiting Professor at universities in Japan, Great Britain and Canada. He is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and in 2008 was awarded his award in Bioethics. He specializes in illness experience, narrative, ethics and programs of study of the body.

The professor made these statements at framework of the symposium organized by the ICS, which had as goal analyze empathy in biographical works, in the framework of emotions and emotional cultures, and was approached as an interdisciplinary dialogue from a series of texts such as memoirs, diaries, letters, films and documentaries, and online media. A total of thirty experts from ten countries participated.

The meeting addressed among other topics the teaching of empathy through literature, empathy and social identities (ethnicity, disability, gender, age and class social), representations of emotions related to empathy, reader acceptance and empathy, report and empathy, and the ethics of empathy.

Two other keynote speakers were Suzanne Keen, Ph.D., Harvard University and dean and professor of Philology English at Washington and Lee University (USA); and Irene Kacandes, Ph.D., Harvard University and professor of comparative literature at Dartmouth College (USA).