Trauma And Narrative Therapy-a Narrative Psychological Analysis Of Isak Dinesen’s Works

Isak Dinesen (1885-1962) undoubtedly is a prominent writer in contemporaryliterature world. She has received the Nobel Prize nomination twice, and iscredited as the first Danish author to achieve world fame since Hans ChristianAndersen and S ren Kierkegaard. Trauma is a theme throughout Dinesen’s majorworks. Her obsession with trauma is pertinent to her personal sufferings in life.With her own psychological trauma as the prototype, Dinesen created manytraumatized characters and wrote of people’s feeling of trauma and sense ofself-collapse in the face of adversity. Moreover, Dinesen’s works highlight thetherapeutic function of narrative to psychological trauma. By narrativereconstruction of personal stories, Dinesen and the fictional figures in her worksreconstruct their selves and recover from psychic trauma.This thesis takes spiritual trauma, self and narrative therapy as the researchperspectives and the theory of narrative psychology is applied to interpretDinesen’s works. By examining the traumatic symptoms of the writer as well asthe characters and analyzing their self-therapy process, the study attempts tounfold the healing power of narrative and to provide a model for the resolution ofself crisis and spiritual perplexity of people in modern society. This thesis consistsof an introduction, four chapters and a conclusion.The introduction introduces Dinesen’s literature achievements, the researchbackground, the research perspective, the major aim of the study and the generalstructure of the thesis.Chapter One lays the theoretical foundation for this thesis, generalizing thetheory of narrative psychology, narrative self and narrative therapy.Chapter Two analyzes the characters’ traumatic symptoms. Shocked bytraumatic events in life, the characters lose their coherent and stable sense of self,presenting traumatic symptoms of dissociation. The dissociative state andself-collapse of those fictional figures are the artistic representation of Dinesen’ssense of trauma. And then this thesis examines Dinesen’s traumatic experiences toexplore the root of her psychic trauma. Chapter Three draws on the narrative therapy theory in narrative psychologyto study the method that the characters and the writer use to cure themselves ofspiritual trauma. Through verbally recounting life experiences and writingautobiography, the victims of trauma in Dinesen’s works and the writerreconstruct their life stories; by this means, they render life with meaning, rebuildtheir selves and step out of trauma.Chapter Four talks about the mode of story in Dinesen’s works and herphilosophy of storytelling. It points out that Dinesen’s art of story contains thethoughts of narrative psychology. This part sheds light on literary and theoreticalvalues of Dinesen’s works and reveals its significance in helping readers relievetheir own trauma and handle spiritual predicaments in real life.The final part is the conclusion of the thesis. This thesis holds that Dinesen’swriting embodies the thoughts of narrative psychology. The way ofself-construction and self-treatment represented in her works is in consonancewith narrative theories of self and therapy. The narrative psychology theoryprovides readers a new perspective for understanding and interpreting greatliterary works of this sort.