Role of Narrative-Memory Synergy in Memoirs Discussing Mental Illness

Abstract

Life narratives have gained significant traction lately with the influx of different types of literary forms within them. Autobiographical memory plays a pivotal role in formulating life narratives, imparting insight into the way memory encapsulates life and embodies experiences. Narrative and medicine come at a crossroads in the medical humanities that aim to enhance the interdisciplinary network between medicine and the humanities. Narratives offer a salient space for articulating the sufferings and embodying the inextricable conditions of an individual’s life. By allowing a vent to the bottled-up emotions and memories of hallowing experiences, autobiographical narratives like memoirs aid in distancing oneself from those unsettling experiences and embodying and encapsulating them authentically and effectively. The interdisciplinarity of the emerging medical and health humanities disciplines primarily stems from the illness narratives that aim to counter and interrogate the dominant voices of the biomedical approach. The present study qualitatively approach first person narratives of mental illness in the framework of Mad Studies, which is an emerging, activism-oriented theoretical framework, that rethinks madness by challenging prevailing understandings around it by  It is a  This paper explores how pertinent it is to integrate narrative-memory synergy into the field of medicine and specifically the mental health discipline to reiterate the power of narratives to bolster the subjectivity of those individuals often deemed as marginal and passive recipients in the discourse of medicine.