The Past in the Exam Room: Intergenerational Memory, Moral Ambiguity, and the Work of Empathy

AI Summary

Intergenerational memory shapes clinicians' moral experience and empathic engagement in routine clinical encounters, quietly influencing judgment and response.
Pre-professional inherited histories of war, displacement, and fear enter encounters, informing ethical perception beyond professional training and institutional norms.
Recognising clinicians' inherited affective histories is not unprofessional; it is central to reflective, ethically attentive clinical practice and empathy work.

AI Summary

This article examines how intergenerational memory shapes clinicians' moral experience and empathic engagement in everyday clinical practice.

Drawing on a reflexive account of a routine medical encounter that unexpectedly activated inherited histories of war, displacement, and fear, the essay is situated within anthropological and medical humanities scholarship on clinician subjectivation, postmemory, and moral experience.

While existing literature has examined how professional training and institutional norms shape clinicians' subjectivities, less attention has been paid to how pre-professional, intergenerational histories of trauma enter clinical encounters and quietly inform ethical perception.

Basic summary

Cult Med Psychiatry. 2026 Jun 16;50(3):38. doi: 10.1007/s11013-026-09996-x.

ABSTRACT

This article examines how intergenerational memory shapes clinicians’ moral experience and empathic engagement in everyday clinical practice. Drawing on a reflexive account of a routine medical encounter that unexpectedly activated inherited histories of war, displacement, and fear, the essay is situated within anthropological and medical humanities scholarship on clinician subjectivation, postmemory, and moral experience. While existing literature has examined how professional training and institutional norms shape clinicians’ subjectivities, less attention has been paid to how pre-professional, intergenerational histories of trauma enter clinical encounters and quietly inform ethical perception. By engaging concepts from psychological anthropology and narrative medicine, this article argues that clinicians’ inherited affective histories are not extraneous to care but constitutive of moral judgment and empathic response. Attending to these dimensions of subjectivity is not antithetical to professionalism but central to reflective and ethically attentive clinical practice.

PMID:42301323 | DOI:10.1007/s11013-026-09996-x

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