What is it about?
Virginia Woolf talked of her sexual trauma regarding the abuse by her half-brother George Duckworth in a number of autobiographical texts decades apart. The paper examines the narrative strategies she used, i.e. prolepsis, irony and escalation. All her attempts were organised around a central theme, that of "divisions". In earlier attempts divisions within persons were emphasized but toward the end of her life divisions of an era and culture were additionally introduced, emphasizing, among other topics, the lower position of women in Victorian times. Clinical implications for narrative-informed psychotherapies are discussed.
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Why is it important?
The study sheds light on Virginia Woolf's biographers' question on whether or not Virginia was actually telling the truth regarding her trauma or she was simply entertaining her audience/readership given certain contradictions in her tellings. The study draws on the the Dialectic of Trauma Theory of Judith Herman combined with the results of this narrative inquiry to answer the above question. Findings also direct attention to the way traumatized clients may be talking of trauma in therapy.
Perspectives
This article is the result of studying the life of Virginia Woolf for more than a decade. Recently, another publication I co-authored, investigated letters and diaries of Virginia Woolf to help solve the mystery of her suicide at a time when she was also planning visits to friends and future books. Virginia Woolf's psychological thinking is what I find most intriguing in the study of her life and death.
Athena Androutsopoulou
'Logo Psychis'- Training and Research Institute for Systemic Psychotherapy, Athens, Greece
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: “My broken chrysalis”: Narrative processes in Woolf’s autobiographical writings of sexual trauma., Qualitative Psychology, October 2019, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/qup0000139.
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