Healing Fictions by Linda Quennec (Associate Counsellor)

Feb 22

“Poetic, dramatic fictions are what actually people our psychic life. Our life in soul is a life in imagination”
—James Hillman

Photo Credit: Nong V

If someone were to tell the tale of your life, what would it look like? Would it be a grand, sweeping saga with a discernible arc, or a non-linear narrative, more subtle and complex? Perhaps it’s a quieter tale reminiscent of a Jane Austen novel, no less rich for its intricacies and intertwining relationships? Maybe your story combines elements of all of the above and more? Of course, there are stories others tell of us, and those that we ourselves recount. There are family legends and mismatched recollections. Which of these are true? Might they all be?

Multiplicity

When we hear the word “fiction,” we tend to think of untruths, of tales fabricated or constructed from imagination. By doing this, we relegate the imaginal to positions inferior to the rational, the literal, the explainable. But any avid reader, music lover, or appreciator of the arts knows that a story well told, a song evocatively scored, or a painting well-conceived (the list goes on) has transportive elements that can take us out of the practicalities of our daily lives and into a world where we can become intimate with other people and places far from our own neighbourhoods—where we entertain questions, thoughts, and emotions that are greater than the mundane, and where we ultimately recognize that we are not alone in our humanity.

This is a visceral endeavour, one explored via body, mind, heart, and soul. If a work of art does its job well, no matter the form, it can bring us closer to a felt sense of understanding than any textbook might attempt to do, and research supports this assertion (Morris et al., 2019). Stories are vitally important. In his book Healing Fiction, Post-Jungian psychologist James Hillman wrote,

“there are two perspectives toward events, an inner psychological one and an outer historical one.”

Both are significant, and neither ought to be privileged. In this book Hillman also expressed his “polytheistic” psychological perspective; one that acknowledges the multiplicity of stories, archetypes, feelings, and experiences that exist within one human life. We are complex, nuanced, and complicated beings. As Walt Whitman once wrote, we “contain multitudes.”

Soul Stories

While our lives are multi-storied, most of us are in the habit of choosing a few familiar tales to narrate our circumstances. This might look like telling ourselves and/or others that we are not good at romantic relationships, that we are clumsy, or socially awkward. Over time, these stories can concretize, becoming ways in which we define ourselves. They can be self-perpetuating, and eventually, we can get mired in the muck of our more “sticky” stories, believing them to be literal, definitive truths.

We ought not to forget however, that the psyche is more than the brain. Derived from the Greek, psyche originally translated as “breath, spirit, and soul.” To breathe life into our souls or to breathe soul into our lives we might entertain the idea that apart from the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves (and others), there are other narratives that linger outside our consciousness, ones that we might be enriched by if we dare to explore more deeply. In narrative therapy, we externalize our problems, which means acknowledging that we are not defined by our struggles; we are in relationship to them. What might it look like to shift your perspective in this way? If your problem took on the form of a person or other type of figure, what would it look like? What might it say to you? What images or metaphors come to mind when you envision this problem as separate from your core being—your brilliant, beautiful, and enduring soul?

This may sound like a strange endeavour at first, but many have vouched for the power of a metaphorical, imaginal approach to working with the psyche. Some believe that metaphors themselves carry healing capacity. We can certainly face our challenges by using our will, and this can be very effective for a time, but will power makes use of the ego, which, as Swiss psychiatrist C.G. Jung expressed, is the center of only our conscious existence. There is so much more to us than this. To reach the depths of the unconscious, where there is much we might learn and benefit from, we need the rich intensity of the imaginal. As Hillman wrote,

“Problems call for will power, but fantasies evoke the power of imagination. Through imagination we disempower ‘problems’.”

By exploring the images and metaphors that come to us as we journal, meditate, engage in art, or talk about them with trusted others, we may come to see that our problems are not, in fact, problems at all. Perhaps they have something to say to us. Maybe they have their own stories to tell, and maybe those stories are designed to help us find our way to healing.

Holding the Stories of Our Loved Ones

One of our more unfortunate western cultural myths involves the pathologizing of grief. We tell ourselves and each other that when a loved one dies, we must “move on,” that we must resume our regular lives as quickly as possible, engaging a linear progression of stages initially suggested by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. I will not name them here because you are likely familiar. What many are unaware of however, is that Kübler-Ross did not initially intend these stages to be instructions to the griever, they were qualities of processes she witnessed in the experiences of the dying. Her work was vital in moving conversations about grief into the common culture at a time when dying had become a medically managed, antiseptic process that took place mainly in hospitals, but it has since taken on the form of a prescription of sorts, when grieving can look very different, person to person. In our past, death was a communal and public affair, which was marked by rituals (Hedtke, 2019). Grieving could be a very messy and unpredictable experience.

Another perspective explored by Lorraine Hedtke and John Winslad in their book The Crafting of Grief, asks us to consider that when a loved one passes, we become the keepers of their stories. While bodies die, relationships can continue, and we can make a concerted effort to highlight and continue to tell the stories of our person. Many cultures hold practices that honour the ancestors. As Hedtke and Winslad write,

“Our narratives are governed by what we value, hold dear, stand for, and might even on occasion be prepared to die for.”

Again, stories are very, very important. Grief is one of the most agonizing experiences we can go through as living beings. It has an energy, and we can do things to move that energy, to move ourselves through our grief in a way that is authentic to ourselves and our relationships. Psychotherapist Francis Weller wrote,

“there are few things as genuine as a person grieving.”

In its immediate stages, grief is often accompanied by a striking sense of clarity, a seeing through of the superficial. Authentically expressed, our grief may take the form of writing a letter to our loved one, engaging in imaginal dialogue, crafting an epitaph, or performing a dance. Our grief, and our expression of it, is as unique as our storied lives.

Conclusion

What stories are you currently living? Who are the characters that populate these stories? Are there other ways in which to tell them? Are there quieter visions that whisper to you in your dreams? What seemingly disparate strands might weave together to form a new tapestry of untold tales? Exploring our storied lives comes with an invitation to be playful, to not take ourselves too seriously no matter how daunting the circumstances we face, and we are collectively facing some very daunting ones at present. Our circumstances can be met with the power of our imagination and the energy of all we have come to grieve. From this, many new stories may come to be told.