Reconstructing agency by shifting perspective in trauma narrative
Abstract
In the treatment of sexual abuse victims reconstructing the abuse narrative from fragmented memories and gaining back a healthy sense of agency are major objectives of therapeutic interventions. Our analysis of the psychotherapy process in case of a sexual abuse victim analyzes in-session interaction in terms of joint construction of narrative by client and therapist in psychodynamic psychotherapy, focusing on the immediate effects of the therapist’s single interventions on the reconstruction of the client’s self-narratives. We discourse analyze the interaction of one audio recorded therapy session. We examine narrative perspective (NP) in the text using our discourse-based model of perspective. Our analysis reveals how — in the course of reconstructing the abuse narrative with the help of her therapist — a reconstruction of agency and patiency takes place through shifting the client’s NP. The client’s perspective of her own role as agent goes through gradual shifts as the interaction progresses. The therapist has a crucial role in the reconstruction process by influencing the client’s perspective shifting behavior through shifting NP in her own interventions. Implications for psychotherapy research and clinical practice are discussed.
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narrative perspective in perceiving hidden information about social identity. European Journal of Social Psychology, 35, 785-796.
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Voutilainen, L., Perakyla, A., & Ruusuvuori, J. (2011). Therapeutic change in interaction:
Conversation analysis of a transforming sequence. Psychotherapy Research, 21,
348-365.
Westen, D., Shedler, J., Durrett, C., Glass, S., & Martens, A. (2003). Personality diagnoses in adolescence: DSM-IV axis II diagnoses and an empirically derived alternative. American Journal of Psychiatry, 160, 952-966.
Zwaan, R. A. & Radvansky, G. A. (1998). Situation models in language comprehension and memory. Psychological Bulletin 123, 162-185.
Allen, J. G. (2001). Traumatic relationships and serious mental disorders. John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
American Psychiatric Association & American Psychiatric Association.Task Force on DSM-IV. (1994). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders: DSM-IV. Amer Psychiatric Pub Inc.
Beaudoin, M. N. (2005). Agency and choice in the face of trauma: A narrative therapy map. Journal of Systemic Therapies, 24, 32-50.
Beran, E. & Unoka, Z. (2005). Construction of self-narrative in psychotherapeutic setting: an analysis of the mutual determination of narrative perspective taken by patient and therapist . In U.M.Quasthoff & T. Becker (Eds.), Narrative interaction (5 ed., pp. 151-169). John Benjamins Publishing.
Berán, E., Unoka, Z., & Czobor, P. (2011). A szelf affektív bevonódása a pszichoterápiás folyamatba: érzelmi intenzitás kifejezése narratív perspektívahasználattal a terápia kezdeti szakaszában. Pszichológia, 31, 237-257.
Bremond, C. (1973). Logique du récit. Editions du Seuil.
Bromberg, P. M. (2003). Something wicked this way comes: Trauma, dissociation, and conflict: The space where psychoanalysis, cognitive science, and neuroscience
overlap. Psychoanalytic psychology, 20, 558.
Chafe, W. (1994). Discourse, consciousness, and time: The flow and displacement of conscious experience in speaking and writing. University of Chicago Press.
Clark, H. H. (1996). Using language. (4 ed.) Cambridge University Press Cambridge. Conway, M. A. (2001). Sensory-perceptual episodic memory and its context:
Autobiographical memory. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London.Series B: Biological Sciences, 356, 1375-1384.
Conway, M. A., Harries, K., Noyes, J., Racsma'ny, M., & Frankish, C. R. (2000). The disruption and dissolution of directed forgetting: Inhibitory control of memory.
Journal of memory and language, 43, 409-430.
Conway, M. A., Singer, J. A., & Tagini, A. (2004). The self and autobiographical memory: Correspondence and coherence. Social cognition, 22, 491-529.
Genette, G. & Sheridan, A. (1982). Figures of literary discourse. Columbia University Press New York.
Gorman, J. M. & Roose, S. P. (2011). The neurobiology of fear memory reconsolidating and psychoanalytic theory. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association,
59, 1201-1220.
Habermas, T. (2006). Who speaks? Who looks? Who feels? Point of view in autobiographical narratives1. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 87, 497-
518.
Habermas, T. (2012). Identity, emotion, and the social matrix of autobiographical memory: A psychoanalytic narrative view. Understanding autobiographical
memory: Theories and approaches, 33-53.
Herman, J. L. & Schatzow, E. (1987). Recovery and verification of memories of childhood sexual trauma. Psychoanalytic psychology, 4, 1.
Jackendoff, R. (1992). Language of the mind: Essays on mental representation. Language of the Mind: Essays on Mental Representation.
Kaminer, D. (2006). Healing processes in trauma narratives: A review. South African journal of psychology, 36, 481-499.
Karlsson, M. M. (2002). Agency and Patiency: Back to Nature? Philosophical Explorations, 5, 59-81.
Keskinen, S. (2004). Between Abstract Individualism and Gendered Lives: Negotiating Abused Women's Agency and Identity in Therapy.
Labov, W. & Fanshel, D. (1997). Therapeutic Discourse Psychotherapy as Conversation. New York, NY: Academic Press. Ref Type: Generic
Lane, R. D., Ryan, L., Nadel, L., & Greenberg, L. (2014). Memory Reconsolidation, Emotional Arousal and the Process of Change in Psychotherapy: New Insights from
Brain Science. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1-80.
Levitt, H. M. & Piazza-Bonin, E. (2011). Therapists' and clients' significant experiences underlying psychotherapy discourse. Psychotherapy Research, 21, 70-85.
Levitt, H. M. & Rennie, D. L. (2004). Narrative activity. The handbook of narrative and psychotherapy, 299-313.
MacWhinney, B. (2000). The CHILDES Project: Tools for analyzing talk. transcription format and programs. (1 ed.) Routledge.
McAdams, D. P. (2001). Coding autobiographical episodes for themes of agency and communion. Unpublished manuscript, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL.
Nelson, K. & Fivush, R. (2004). The emergence of autobiographical memory: a social
cultural developmental theory. Psychological review, 111, 486.
Németh Enikő (1996). A szóbeli diskurzusok megnyilatkozás példányokra tagolása. Budapest: Akadémia Kiadó.
O'Kearney, R. & Perrott, K. (2006). Trauma narratives in posttraumatic stress disorder: A review*. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 19, 81-93.
Ochberg, R. L. (1994). Life stories and storied lives. Exploring identity and gender: The narrative study of lives, 2, 113-144.
Pillemer, D. B., Desrochers, A. B., & Ebanks, C. M. (1998). Remembering the past in the
present: Verb tense shifts in autobiographical memory narratives. In
Autobiographical memory: Theoretical and applied perspectives, 145-162. Polya, T., Laszlo, J., & Forgas, J. P. (2005). Making sense of life stories: The role of
narrative perspective in perceiving hidden information about social identity. European Journal of Social Psychology, 35, 785-796.
Prince, G. (2003). A dictionary of narratology. U of Nebraska Press.
Schafer, R. (1976). A new language for psychoanalysis. Yale University Press.
Schiffrin, D. (1981). Tense variation in narrative. Language, 45-62.
Unoka, Z., Berán, E., & Pléh, C. (2012). Narrative constructions and the life history issue
in brain-emotions relations. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 35, 168-169. Uspenskij, B. A. Ź. (1973). A poetics of composition: The structure of the artistic text and
typology of a compositional form. University of California Pr.
Van Dijk, T. A., Kintsch, W., & Van Dijk, T. A. (1983). Strategies of discourse
comprehension. Academic Press New York.
Voutilainen, L., Perakyla, A., & Ruusuvuori, J. (2011). Therapeutic change in interaction:
Conversation analysis of a transforming sequence. Psychotherapy Research, 21,
348-365.
Westen, D., Shedler, J., Durrett, C., Glass, S., & Martens, A. (2003). Personality diagnoses in adolescence: DSM-IV axis II diagnoses and an empirically derived alternative. American Journal of Psychiatry, 160, 952-966.
Zwaan, R. A. & Radvansky, G. A. (1998). Situation models in language comprehension and memory. Psychological Bulletin 123, 162-185.
Published
01-Jun-2015
How to Cite
Berán, E., & Unoka, Z. (2015). Reconstructing agency by shifting perspective in trauma narrative. Language and Psychoanalysis, 4(1), 50-74. https://doi.org/10.7565/landp.2015.003
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