The trans-autobiographical writing in the psychiatric context

Autobiographical narration workshops are widely used in psychiatric contexts to support pharmacological and psychotherapeutic treatments. However, telling of oneself in the first person could expose a person with schizophrenia to excessive psychic pain. Then, new methodologies are needed to promote narrative processing. The present study explored whether a trans-autobiographical narrative (which combines autobiographical and fictional narrative) allows the schizophrenic patient to narrate differently from the classic autobiographical narrative. One female participant with Schizophrenia read an autobiographical phrase (initial stimulus) and wrote three fictional stories taking as a starting point the initial stimulus. At each of three steps the participant commented on how she mediated between autobiography and fiction. Content and formal aspects of texts have been analyzed with qualitative approach derived from criteria of dynamic psychology, narratology, and textual semiotics. At the third step, the text is more metaphorical (symbolisation increases), defense mechanisms are more mature, the author moves from internal focalisation to zero focalisation. Trans-autobiographical narrative helped the author to decentralise his point of view and to look at himself from the outside. It was useful to soften the defence mechanisms in self-representation, to process negative emotions through a playful and fictional perspective and to retrace parts of the author’s personal story.