A Name Cures Nothing: The Power of Names
I want to return to The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese for a minute. There’s a part in the story where Mariamma is finishing medical school and she receives a visit from her childhood friend Lenin.
“The boy who delivers the food must be the chef’s son, because his skull is also shaped like a tower. ‘It’s called oxycephaly,’ she says to Lenin. He’s impressed, but less so when she says there’s no treatment for it.
’Good that there’s a name, at least,’ he says.
Unwittingly, his words deflate her. Just like with ‘the Condition,’ a name cures nothing.”
I was smiling as I read this because it made me think of the old idiom about optimism and pessimism. I can see why Mariamma, who would eventually make it her personal mission to cure “the Condition,” would see the glass half empty when considering names in the medical community.
I, on the other hand, have been watching a child grow and develop her language skills. It has been a delight for me to see her expand her vocabulary. When she first started talking, she’d frequently be in tears, saying, “You’re not understanding me!” These conversations drove home the importance of language and being able to name things.
One aspect of our social needs, one way we feel less alone, is feeling that others understand us. We need to be seen. We need to be heard. We need to know that others can relate to our experiences. Naming and categorizing is an important part of communicating that understanding.
Naming and categorizing may also help with our esteem needs. In the book, “the Condition” is a shameful family secret until Mariamma starts researching it and writing in the local paper about it. By drawing attention to the genetic nature of the condition and by outlining its symptoms, she helps remove some of the associated stigma.
Additionally, when your body is behaving abnormally and you don’t understand why it’s behaving the way it is, that can be stressful (safety). Putting a name to the problem can help lower the physiological stress response to the abnormal behavior. Sometimes it simply helps to know you’re not imagining symptoms, but other times it can be empowering (autonomy): either there’s a known path of treatment or you can reach out to others who have been in a similar situation.
Yes, a name isn’t a cure, but attaching a name to something is an important first step to finding a cure. Can you think of a time when learning a name helped give you clarity?
Notes:
Communication difficulties have been linked to negative outcomes in a number of studies. For an example, see How Does Difficulty Communicating Affect the Social Relationships of Older Adults? An Exploration Using Data from a National Survey by Andrew D. Palmer, Ph.D., Jason T. Newsom, Ph.D., and Karen S. Rook, Ph.D.
For more on the anguish of those searching for a diagnosis for mystery illnesses, see The Stress of Being Undiagnosed, an article summarizing a rare disease webinar.