Meditations on an Expanded, Narrative Inquiry Methodology Combining Clinical Dynamic Understanding and Biography

Abstract

As a meditation on a method of narrative inquiry, this paper describes an ongoing project which integrates a narrative, portrait-based approach to clinical storytelling with a clinically-focused dialogical process. Expanding upon previous narrative work completed by Michael O’Loughlin and colleagues, this research is a single-case, longitudinal, qualitative exploratory study of an individual who has struggled with psychosis, been exposed to the psychiatric care system, and transmuted their life history through artistic sublimation. In addition to producing a biographical portrait, the purpose of this study’s expanded methodology is to invite a reflective, dialogical process that allows for autobiographical engagement, verification and co-construction of the emerging life story, and deepening conversations about the complexities of human struggle. It is my hope that, through a version of dialogical exchange and narrative practice in the tradition of Michael White, this research provides a way in which clinicians and researchers can facilitate curative, biographical spaces for those with painful lived experience and inherited trauma. By receiving, tracking, and validating human thought and experience, this work aims to combine the portraiture of rendering a life with an in-depth exploration of the complexities of and intersectionality between subjectivity, severe psychiatric distress, creativity, counter-storying, and narrative healing.