Do personal narratives heal? – Julie Reich

The expression on my mother’s face was one I rarely see: a withdrawn, discomfited and coy blank stare. The incapacity to conceal an uncomfortable repulsion only reveals itself when forced to face her Jewish heritage. As if facing a mirror imposes on her reflection, facing memories related to her culture and religion are painfully avoided. She calls it: “opening the floodgates”. Ironically, the attempt to evade her relationship with Judaism only reinforces an inescapable bond it; in my opinion, a familiar response to memories of experiences related to evil and suffering. In particular, her silence and suppression manifest as coping mechanisms, and emphasize the identity she wishes to reject. Ironically, in her case a memory usually triggers a narrative; emerging from the depths of the unconscious is a desire to tell. In this case, it was after I mentioned my film selection for independent study in a summer course: “Sophie’s Choice”. The floodgates had been opened.

My mother vividly recalled when this movie opened in theaters because she was pregnant with me. Apparently, when she agreed to see the movie she claims to have been unaware that Sophie’s choice was one that forced a mother to select which of her two kin would be immediately ‘exterminated’ in an Auschwitz concentration camp. My pregnant mother was not anticipating a reminder of the suffering her relatives endured during the Holocaust. As it turns out, she left the theater midway through the film and to this day she holds a grudge on the friend who ‘brought’ her to see this movie while she was pregnant.

My mother’s desire to tell can be thought of as a manifestation of the need to cope with suppressed pain associated with her cultural and religious identity. Accordingly, the theme concerning the role of narrative as a means to cope with traumatic personal experience is apparent in films, documentaries and novels. For instance, the role of narrative is not only a dominant theme in the film Sophie’s Choice, but is also salient in the novel Night, by Elie Wiesel and can be identified in the documentary film The Corporation, directed by Mark Achbar and Bart Simpson.

In The Corporation, justification for lack of personal responsibility is evident in the narratives of those interviewed, such as with the ‘corporate spy’. In particular, this individual attempts to justify his responsibility to evil through narrative. Moreover, the use of narrative in Night, is used as a means to express a sentiment of guilt over remaining silent and passive during the Holocaust. Additionally, the nature of the novel is structured as a memoir, and exemplifies how narrative is an inherently human characteristic and serves as an adaptive means to heal. In my opinion, the role of narrative not only demonstrates an attempt to remedy residue of personal experiences with suffering and evil, but also emphasizes an inability to ever fully forget.

Therefore, I propose that this inability to forget is a new form suffering, a form of torture induced by memory, disassociated from events with which they were created and altered by the effects of time.

Memory is a construct that requires time, and can be understood from a multiplicity of interpretations. However from a process strictly confined to deduction, I propose that memories are mere representations of previous experiences, therefore the ability to ‘relive’ an experience is not possible. In my opinion, memories are new experiences of past events in the present moment. In particular, long-term memories are influenced by time and are thus subject to change. Consequently, time inherently alters and confounds the ability for memory to truly represent actual experience. As a result recall is a novel experience triggered by, and related to a previously encoded and stored experience. In other words, just as narratives related to suffering and evil may enable an element of healing they also represent a manifestation of a novel experience related to painful memories and therefore, they may also serve to punish.