Commentary on "Pathological Autobiographies"

Rom Harré explores the construction of the self and language, and raises a question of whether pathologies of self may be identified in narrative. His paper stimulates not only questions about the acquisition of the self through language, but also examines the extent to which language reflects the internal world of the individual. I offer a commentary from the perspective of a forensic psychotherapist. Psychotherapists work with their patients to help them construct and deconstruct their autobiographies, using their own and their patients’ language. The work of the forensic psychotherapist has an added dimension, which involves listening to traumatic narratives of evil done by and done to others. I hope the forensic and the psychotherapeutic dimensions may offer material complementary to Harré’s argument.

Object relations theorists believe that the acquisition of the self is a process involving relationships with significant others, aspects of whom can be internalized, or reacted against in a process referred to as “contouring” (Stern 1985). The process of attachment facilitates both cognitive and affective development, and the development of what Bowlby called “Internal Working Models” of others and eventually the self as well. The key word here is “working,” implying continuing process, revision, accommodation, and assimilation. The experience of a responsive other, who can attend to the developing identity of a child by actively verbally describing what the child was doing, has been described as one part of positive parenting (Forehand and McMahon 1981). The “attending” parent describes what the child is doing in a way that helps to anchor developing identity and provides reinforcement of the developing child’s internal experience. “Attending” is a verbal aspect of the “mirroring” behavior that developmental theorists like Stern have believed to be so important for the development of a sense of self.

The acquisition of a secure internal working model of the self may be demonstrated by the presence of what Holmes (1993) has called “autobiographical competence.” Where there is disturbance of attachment and self development, there will be disturbances in autobiographical competence. Studies that compare insecurely attached children to securely attached children show that they have less reduced access to personal memories, particularly those which may be sad or painful (Bretherton 1990). That the acquisition of self development is related to a capacity to think about the feelings of others is demonstrated in other studies, which show that insecurely attached children have decreased capacity to talk and (apparently) to think about how an imaginary child in an imagined scenario might be feeling (Main 1991). These are two examples of how disturbances of self concept may be reflected in the language that individuals use to describe themselves and their own stories.

There are examples from adulthood as well. After traumatic events, individuals frequently display shock and an inability to speak in the immediate aftermath of a disaster. As the shock dies away, survivors often find their narratives fragmented with gaps, or places where people feel “stuck.” Here, the disorder of language seems an almost direct representation of the disorder of thought, which can appear in the psychological sequelae of a disaster. Individuals describe intrusive thoughts in the narrative, or blanks, all of which render the narrative incoherent and force the speaker to start over again to try and make sense of what has been an experience. The role of the therapist may be to listen, and by helping the individual to hear his own story, may allow him or her to gradually fill in the narrative gaps and develop the detail and richness of the experience so that it can be thought about. It is only when traumatic experiences can be thought about that they can be left behind.

There is at present considerable research interest in how an adult’s state of mind about him or herself may be reflected in the language each uses when discussing past events. The Adult Attachment Interview (Main and Goldwyn 1989) is a semi-structured interview which invites participants to recall memories of childhood and to think about them with the interviewer. The interview is taped and then rated using scales developed from linguistic and...