Narrative Truth and Historical Truth: Meaning and Interpretation in Psychoanalysis

This book is a sympathetic critique of psychoanalysis aimed at both the interested layman and the professional, and it questions the assumptions underlying one of Freud's favorite metaphors: the analyst as archeologist. The author suggests that pure historical truth is probably beyond reach, and every effort by the patient and analyst to assign context and meaning to remembered experience changes the face of historical truth.

Thus the psychoanalytic process is not one of archaeological reconstruction, but it is rather the active construction of a story about the patient's past. The analyst assembles a coherent picture of the patient's life which makes compelling sense out of seemingly random happenings. this account, as it develops during the treatment, takes on a narrative truth that has its own organization, and makes a significant contribution to the healing process.

The patient and analyst are more pattern-makers than pattern finders, and the past is always being created anew as it is put into words.