The Power of Storytelling

Much has been said about the need for senior leaders in organizations to learn to convert the vision and the strategy in a “story” as a way to engage people. In the personal realm, many parents know that children like to hear stories from their parents and being read books before going to sleep. Age does not make any difference. We all like to be captivated by good stories.

I have recently read a very interesting article on what happens in the brain when we hear a story (New Scientist, 12 February 2011). This article mentions that our brains use storytelling to reconcile our conscious and subconscious thoughts.

Even though stories may only exist in the imagination, for the brain they can seem entirely real. Based on the research done by Rolf Zwaan in the Netherlands, it appears that we do not just tell stories to make sense of ourselves, we actually adopt the stories of others as though we were the protagonist.

Brain scanning conducted in Washington University, showed that in scans of people reading a story or watching a movie, the same brain areas that are active in real-life situations fire up when a fictitious character encounters an equivalent situation.

The brain responds in the same way if the story is in words or if it is a realistic action video. Stories can also manipulate how you feel so watch out for those horror movies.

For those who love stories, we would like to share the story of the winner of the senior category from the Brain Art Competition. The story is called “Purgatory” written by a young fellow, Jason Dunn. This is what one of the judges wrote about the story...

Enjoy!

Actor/Writer Barry Thorson From Canada

Extremely well written, the quest for Robert/Michael to discover the truth of his past was, in short, gripping. Each character was well defined and fleshed out, without ever resorting to easy stereotypes. I was constantly surprised at the twists in the story, and though the premise pushes the boundaries of credibility, I bought in all the way along and never stopped to say ‘as if’. Really great work!

Purgatory by Jason Dunn

A severe amnesiac adjusts to his forgotten life while investigating the operation which kept him alive, about which he remembers nothing.

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For a year after the accident, I didn’t understand what had happened, nor did I have any sense of who I was. It was like my life had just started, even though I was a 35-year-old man. For the first few months, I was in the hospital, acting and thinking like a newborn baby.

Denise, my wife at the time, thought I was going to be that way permanently. I had no idea who my wife was or who anyone else was. To me, everyone was just a blurry shape in the whirl of colours around me. Eventually, I learnt to distinguish people and identify them.

I was learning to see the way newborn babies must learn to see. I was also re-learning the senses of touch, taste and smell. My hearing at the time was non-existent. It was my sense of sight that I was able to engage and play with most in those early months. I’m probably the only person in the world who can remember the process. For me, it became terrifying.

Somewhere in my mind I knew something was seriously wrong, but that knowledge came to me as only a feeling. I was drifting around in a mental and visual fog that seemed to be boundless. I think I knew that the world and my mind were supposed to be much clearer, and I had a pervasive sense of dread because they weren’t.

The undamaged parts of my adult brain were screaming for normalcy. My mind was undergoing torture, and all I felt were the effects without knowing the causes. It took only months for me to become somewhat coherent and able to communicate crudely with the world around me, but I had lost my memory of time in the accident and those months seemed to go on forever.

My mind, which seemed part adult and part child, struggled continuously against that visual fog, trying to learn something that would take me out of my mental fog. I was always terrified upon waking. I think I dreamt normally and in clear images. The transition to my usual waking state was like entering some kind of death. Thank God it didn’t last.

One of my earliest, clear memories from that time is Dr. Engelman taking me to his office. I’m positive that it happened at night. I remember walking through the hospital corridors with him. There was nothing wrong with my body, thank God. It was just a matter of learning to use it.

As we walked, I looked down at Dr. Engelman’s shorter figure with a kind of naive awe. I knew he was talking because his mouth kept moving a lot. Most of the people around me did that. I was very deaf at the time and probably couldn’t have understood his words anway.

I remember the inside of his office as dark, and I remember an image of him holding a syringe up to the light. The syringe was filled with a liquid that wasn’t quite green and wasn’t quite brown.  I think I knew it was for me, but I wasn’t worried.

Nurses had jabbed me painlessly with syringes for as long as I could remember. All that seemed strange this time was that Dr. Engelman wanted to jab me with this one in his office instead of in my bed.

I lay down on his examining table and Dr. Engelman held my head steady. Then I remember a pinprick inside my ear, followed by the gradual penetration of the long, hard needle into my head. It was scary. The nurses had only ever stuck the point of the needle into me.

I screamed without hearing myself, or knowing what I was doing. Dr. Engelman slowly slid inches and inches of the straight, rigid metal upward into my head. I could feel it lodged in there and I howled. Dr. Engelman kept pushing it further.

When he discharged the syringe’s contents, I could feel whatever it was being forced against the inside of my skull into a space where it didn’t fit. It was horribly unnatural. I didn’t dare move until the alien needle had been pulled back out.

Dr. Engelman repeated the injection through my other ear before he took me back to my bed. I didn’t mention that incident to anyone until more than a year later. Shortly after that night, I had enough of a sense of hearing to contend with.

I re-discovered my ability to speak after I heard some of the doctors and nurses doing it. That marked a significant point in my recovery, but I had only more suffering to come. It took me a while to understand the concept of amnesia, and to understand that I had been diagnosed with it.

I remembered a lot about the world. Watching TV, which I did a lot of, brought a lot of knowledge back into the forefront of my mind. I couldn’t remember anything about  myself though.

Denise, whom I was told was my wife, started visiting me regularly. She brought old photos and home movies, none of which were familiar to me. I recognised myself and her in them, but nothing more. She told me a lot about myself.

I was Robert Bowman, 35.  I had been a quality assurance officer for a large food company. That meant I checked the manufacturing records of various foodstuffs to make sure they had been made correctly. Denise and I had gotten married ten years before and we had two daughters, Margaret who was seven, and Danielle, who was six. Denise wanted to bring them to see me once I got a little better.

Read the rest of the story here