Narrative & Psychology

In most psychology i imagine (not being a psychologist) that the object is to get a clear narrative for the patient. One that puts together all the confusing mental and physical elements in a way that enables them to be mentally collected and tidied away.

I consider my as-of-today-ex-girlfriend. In counseloring sessions recently she comes to reveal that she has low self-esteem began because her aunt valued her brother more than her. She was driven to become very jealous and competitive toward him, and after forming a respect for him then other people. She tackles the symptoms these days of that low self-esteem but has forgotten about it. She's told me this before.

The thing is tho my sister had the same thing with me. My grandmother never gave my sister a second look but doated on me. My sister has grown up to be more confident and successful than me and I just got complacent in the praise and never did anything.

The point is not then that the narrative does anything. Same narrative for different people achieves different results. Its that looking at the whole story we have a narrative of the person herself. It is a very useful tool to describe a personality, not directly, but through the way events have been dealt with by that personality.

So we know that my ex has a born tendency to feel undervalued. Having narrativised what she is however, and seen what narrative she would like to be, she can follow the new narrative and in so doing change those aspects of her intangible personality.

Well that's my defence case for Freud.