Authoring experience: the significance and performance of storytelling in Socratic dialogue with rehabilitating cancer patients

This article examines the storytelling aspect inphilosophizing with rehabilitating cancer patients in small Socratic dialogue groups (SDG). Recounting an experienceto illustrate a philosophical question chosen by the participantsis the traditional point of departure for the dialogicalexchange. However, narrating is much more than abeginning point or the skeletal framework of events and itdeserves more scholarly attention than hitherto given. Storytelling pervades the whole Socratic process and impactsthe conceptual analysis in a SDG. In this article weshow how the narrative aspect became a rich resource forthe compassionate bond between participants and how theirstories cultivated the abstract reflection in the group. Inaddition, the aim of the article is to reveal the differentlayers in the performance of storytelling, or of authoringexperience. By picking, poking and dissecting an experiencethrough a collaborative effort, most participants hadtheir initial experience existentially refined and the chosenconcept of which the experience served as an illustrationtransformed into a moral compass to be used in self-orientationpost cancer.