Mental Illness and Personal Narratives

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Using narratives to gain an insight into human experience is becoming an increasingly popular method of exploration. Assuming that people are in essence narrative beings that experience every emotion and state through narrative, the value of exploring these gives us a unique understanding. Narrative is thought to act as instrument to explore how an individual constructs their own identity (Czarniawska, 1997) and explain how each individual makes sense of the world around them (Gabriel, 1998). It may also give us an understanding into individual thought processes in relation to individual decision making practices (O’Connor, 1997). It is evident from studies such as Heider and Simmel (1944), that there appears to be an instinctive nature in people to introduce plots structures and narratives into all situations, with an intention to construct meaning to all aspects of life in its entirety. The value of narrative is that it is a tool that allows us to understand what it means to be human and gives us an insight into a person’s lived experience whilst still acknowledging their cultural and social contexts. Narrative is thought to be significance as it is ‘a fruitful organizing principle to help understand the complex conduct of human beings (p.49)’ (Sarbin, 1990) The construction of a person’s narrative is thought to be dependent on each person’s individual awareness of themselves and the circumstances that surround them. However, a debate to whether a person is able to formulate a valid narrative in the face of a mental illness such as schizophrenia has emerged. Sufferer’s symptoms are often thought to interfere with their abilities to perceive within a level deemed acceptable to their society’s norms and therefore the validity ... ... middle of paper ... ...chical concepts of the self affecting the internal dialogue and therefore verbalising second order narratives. These narratives are again weakened by the individual’s inability to evaluate their stories with others as a result of social isolation that often occurs. From these points summarised it would be reasonable to assume that these in combination with the general symptoms of schizophrenia that affect communication such as a poverty of speech, affective flattening, word salads and catatonic behaviours earlier discussed that any narrative produced could not possess validity as a result of its incoherence. However, It must be understood that schizophrenia is not a straight forward disorder, it does not affect everybody in the same way and its symptoms are on a spectrum. To simplify, when it comes to a formation of narrative individual differences are everything.

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