Traumatic experiences and life-stories: on narrative identity and existential creativity

Paulo Jesus

Chapter 5 in Memory, Trauma and Narratives of the Self, 2024, pp 108-132 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Understanding the psychopathology of trauma requires acknowledgment that symptoms of mental disorders are hybrid combinations of neurobiological and cultural processes manifested in intersubjective meaningful experiences. Meaning-making and symbolic social interactions are critical to discern the “why” and “how” of traumatic suffering; for an experience is only traumatizing and distressing if it is perceived, felt, and appraised as a threat to one’s identity, dignity, and freedom. Therefore, understanding trauma implies understanding life stories and their tragic (dis)continuities. “Trauma” denotes a fracture in one’s narrative identity, revolving around the repetition of a disquieting event or series of events which disturb the whole person and the whole lifeworld. The existential and social-political depths of traumatic experiences demonstrate that overcoming the self-loss is possible through a creative process oriented toward the generation of new future possibilities, inspired and sustained by a kind of responsible and projective tragic optimism.

Keywords: Politics and Public Policy Sociology and Social Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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