Narration Between logos and Pathos. The role of Story Telling in clinical Psychology

Although narration has always been a sort of exclusive of research and psychological intervention, only in the last two decades has the narrative method taken on an explicit, pregnant identity, putting forward a conceptual and methodological alternative which, despite obvious differences, has appeared as a ‘turning point’ in several areas of the discipline. This paper stems from a socio-constructivist epistemological paradigm that emphasises the categorial and semiotic value of the mind as well as the symbolic processes of reality construction which the actors of the social relation perform intersubjectively. Based on this perspective the paper explores the construct of narrative thought as the link between the operative, conscious functioning of the mind and its emotional, unconscious one. Starting from this hypothesis, the paper investigates the construct of narration as a symbolic process – the output of narrative thought – placed midway between the affective symbolisations produced by the unconscious nature of the mind and the operative categories produced by rational and scientific thought. The analysis is carried out by working on the comparison/integration of models of cultural psychology and psychodynamics. The paper and its focus on the device of narration are based on the idea that a comparison between socio-constructivism and psychodynamics could translate into an increased understanding of the symbolic dynamics of meaning construction and thus of the links that are established between subjectivity, cultural models and cultural practices and of the symbolic models which may aid their transformation. The author also believes that, in carrying out this comparison, the contribution of semiotics – viewed as a new cross-disciplinary science of sense-making processes, of the ways in which a sense is given to the world through narration – can constitute a major expansion for psychology and in particular for the connection between meaning construction processes and intervention.