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This book foregrounds the importance of narrative as a conceptual paradigm for understanding mental health issues, presenting stories as an alternative source of knowledge and expression. At the same time, the volume acknowledges potential limitations of narrative paradigms, especially when these are coupled with normative expectations of truthfulness, coherence, and comprehensiveness.
List of contents
- Narratives and Mental Health: An Introduction
- Jarmila Mildorf, Elisabeth Punzi and Christoph Singer
- Part I: Theoretical Approaches to Researching Narratives and Mental Health
- Chapter 1: Imagining an Alternate Psychology
- Brian Schiff
- Chapter 2: I Have Many Sick Hearts: Stories about Illness and Life
- Jens Brockmeier and Maria I. Medved
- Chapter 3: Narrative Practices in Mental Health: Narrative Therapy and the Fictive Stance
- Daniel D. Hutto
- Part II: Current Narrative Practices in Psychology and Psychotherapy
- Chapter 4: The Art of Teaching the Art of Listening: An Interview Study with University Teachers in Clinical Psychology and Social Work
- Elisabeth Punzi and Malgorzata Erikson
- Chapter 5: The Aftermath of Silencing the Trauma - A Narrative Case Study
- Soly Erlandsson and Nicolas Dauman
- Chapter 6: Writing as Narrative Resource in Therapeutic Settings: Diaries, Sketches, Notes
- Jarmila Mildorf and Daniel Ketteler
- Chapter 7: What Constitutes Mad Behavior? Changes in the Grand Narrative of Disorder Delineated in Psychiatric Diagnoses between 1832 and 1980
- Malin Hildebrand Karlén
- Part III: Narratives of Aging, Dementia and Depression
- Chapter 8: How to Narrate a Healthy Life: Life-Stories and Mental Health in Interviews with the Elderly Aged 90+
- Mari Hatavara
- Chapter 9: Narrative Ethics and Dementia: Critical Comments and Modifications
- Daniela Ringkamp
- Chapter 10: Narrative Experiments with Medical Categorisation and Normalisation in B. S. Johnson's House Mother Normal
- Sara Strauss
- Chapter 11: Mental Illness Representations in the German Mass Media: The Case of Depression
- Marina Iakushevich
- Part IV: Mental Health, Life Storying, Trauma and Artistic Expression
- Chapter 12: Narrating Shame in Contemporary Mental Distress Memoirs by British Women
- Katrin Röder
- Chapter 13: Psychic Relief and Non-Narrative Configurations in Graphic Memoirs about Mental Health
- Lasse R. Gammelgaard
- Chapter 14: Memory is a Strange Thing: Science Fiction, Trauma and Time in Arrival
- Christoph Singer
- Index
About the author
Jarmila Mildorf is Associate Professor for English Literary and Cultural Studies at Paderborn University, Germany. She is a member of the International Society for the Study of Narrative, the European Narratology Network, the International Network for Address Research, and the German Network for Narrative Medicine, on the advisory board of the research center Narrare, and co-editor of the book series Narratives and Mental Health (Brill) and the Romanian journal Eon.
Elisabeth Punzi is a licensed psychologist and Associate Professor at the Department of Social Work, and Centre for Critical Heritage Studies, Gothenburg University. Her research includes critical perspectives on diagnostic systems and established treatment methods and the prerequisites for providing client-centered care.
Elisabeth Punzi is a licensed psychologist and Associate Professor at the Department of Social Work, and Centre for Critical Heritage Studies, Gothenburg University. Her research includes critical perspectives on diagnostic systems and established treatment methods and the prerequisites for providing client-centered care.
Summary
Narratives surrounding mental health are intertextually and culturally embedded in a constantly evolving web of narratives, whether it is in research and treatment practices in psychology and psychiatry, the professional categorization and definition of mental health issues, people's own definitions of mental health, or medial as well as artistic representations of different mental health states.
Narrative and Mental Health: Reimagining Theory and Practice investigates the nexus between narratives and mental health from an interdisciplinary perspective, offering a dialogue between psychology and psychiatry and other fields such as social work, linguistics, philosophy, literary studies, and cultural studies. Contributors from various disciplines and countries across the globe address questions surrounding mental health and illness in individual as well as cultural stories while also attending to their mutual influence. Narrative interviews, narrative psychology, narrative therapy, diary writing, and psychodynamic processes are explored alongside oral history, news media, graphic novels, film, fiction, and literary autobiographies. At the same time, the volume acknowledges the potential limitations of these narrative paradigms, especially when coupled with normative expectations of truthfulness, coherence, and comprehensiveness. From here, mental health emerges as a dynamic concept that is subject to change over time and which deserves close attention both in research and practice.
