Narrative and Mental Health Reimagining Theory and Practice

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.

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.

Christoph Singer is Professor for British and Anglophone Cultural Studies in the Department of British Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. He has published anthologies on intersections of Middlebrow & Modernism, the iconography of Dante & Milton, and on spaces of Well-Being. His second book discusses the temporality of narratives in times of crisis, particularly the experience of existential waiting.

Narratives and Mental Health: An Introduction
Jarmila Mildorf, Elisabeth Punzi & 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 & 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 & Malgorzata Erikson

Chapter 5: The Aftermath of Silencing the Trauma - A Narrative Case Study
Soly Erlandsson & Nicolas Dauman

Chapter 6: Writing as Narrative Resource in Therapeutic Settings: Diaries, Sketches, Notes
Jarmila Mildorf & 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