Listening to stories of trauma from a narrative perspective

Wendy Patterson

Propp’s classic model of narrative1 mapped

onto my model of a trauma narrative2

equilibrium turbulence restoration of modified

disequilibrium action intervention
version of equilibrium

X liminal zone Y numbness, madness

narrative meaning-making resolutions?
retraumatisation

1. Propp, V. ([1928]1968). Morphology of the Folktale (trans. L. Scott) Austin: University of Texas Press
2. Patterson, W. (2000). Reading Trauma: Exploring the relationship between narrative and coping.
Unpublished PhD thesis. Nottingham Trent University.
Electronic copy available: wendy@journalofhandsurgery.com
 1. X liminal zone Y: ‘I was just doing X
when Y’3
• equilibrium disturbed/ XY structure
• the construction of suddenness
• the destruction of agency
• the liminal zone
• imaginary stories and their evaluative role
• the injustice of traumatic experience4

3. Wooffitt, R. (1992) Telling Tales of the Unexpected. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf
4. Janoff-Bulman, R. (1996) Shattered Assumptions. Towards a New Psychology of Trauma. New
York: The Free Press
 2. Disequilibrium: numbness, madness and
retraumatisation
• metaphor and the dialectic of trauma5
• the specificity of the meaning of ‘mad’
behaviour
• retraumatisation; XY structure
• imaginary stories and the reverse face of history
• rendering the experience6
• the narrative as testimony to the self who has
survived and as archive of the life lost.
5. Herman, J. L. (1992) Trauma and Recovery. London: Basic Books
6. Ricoeur, P. (1991) Life in Quest of Narrative in D. Wood (ed.) On Paul Ricoeur. Narrative and
Interpretation. London: Routledge
 3. Narrative meaning-making
• causation
• blame
• guilt and fighting talk
• comparators as evaluative devices7
• social- and self-comparisons8

7. Labov, W. (1972) Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular.Oxford:
Basil Blackwell
8. Taylor, S.E., Wood, J.V. and Lichtman, R.R. (1983) It Could Be Worse: Selective Evaluation as a
Response to Victimization. Journal of Social Issues 39(2):19-40
 4. Resolutions?
endings are two-fold/Janus faced: an ending (the
outcome or result), and a beginning, the
beginning of a life beyond the trauma is
contained in the ending of the trauma story, and
the ending of the trauma story is contained
within a new beginning, or the promise of a new
beginning.