Leiden University Student Repository

Hsiao, Dustin C. (2015)

Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals and the Psychosocial Rebuilding of the Traumatized Self: An Eriksonian-Inflected Approach to Autopathography

Master thesis | Literary Studies (MA)

The experience of illness produces profound disturbances in a person’s sense of self and integrity. Beyond the uncertainty caused by the incongruence between the sickened person’s self-concept and his or her state of illness, there comes also an experience of uncertainty over the concept and potential prospect of death. The process of autopathography—defined by Smith and Watson as “[creating] first-person illness narratives”—often serves as a therapeutic outlet for those stricken by serious illnesses, allowing for them to both reflect on the past, as well as prompt for social change within the greater society. With reference to Erik Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development, and their resultant “virtues”, the study considers the tramatized’s intrapsychic and social orientations. It describes a functional method for analyzing autopathographical works for evidence of their authors’ working through of their trauma from these dimensions. Aude Lorde’s “The Cancer Journals” is used as...Show moreThe experience of illness produces profound disturbances in a person’s sense of self and integrity. Beyond the uncertainty caused by the incongruence between the sickened person’s self-concept and his or her state of illness, there comes also an experience of uncertainty over the concept and potential prospect of death. The process of autopathography—defined by Smith and Watson as “[creating] first-person illness narratives”—often serves as a therapeutic outlet for those stricken by serious illnesses, allowing for them to both reflect on the past, as well as prompt for social change within the greater society. With reference to Erik Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development, and their resultant “virtues”, the study considers the tramatized’s intrapsychic and social orientations. It describes a functional method for analyzing autopathographical works for evidence of their authors’ working through of their trauma from these dimensions. Aude Lorde’s “The Cancer Journals” is used as a proof-of-concept case study.Show less

Autopathography

Trauma Theory

Lorde

Freud

Erikson

Kardiner

Cancer

co-witnessing

self-identity

Biography

Author

Hsiao, Dustin C.

Note

This study includes the following major sections —— Introduction — This section introduces the study by providing general information on trauma theory, death anxiety, and autopathography. Definitions and parameters for the proceeding discussions are provided herein. —— Chapter 1: The Sociality of Trauma and the Autopathographical Experience — Primarily focusing upon the co-witnessing model for working through trauma, this chapter discusses and expands upon the socially inflected models of trauma, considering their implications for the traumatized’s perceptions of his or her internal self, both during and after the acute traumatic experience. —— Chapter 2: Trauma as the Active Search for Identity — This chapter considers philosophical and psychological conceptions of trauma as an abrupt disillusion of an individual’s self-identity. Incorporating aspects from both of these approaches, it then provides an Ericksonian-inflected model for critically analyzing autopathographical works for markers of their authors’ working through of their trauma. —— Chapter 3: Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals and the Psychosocial Rebuilding of the Traumatized Self — This chapter presents a proof-of-concept case study where the method outlined in the previous chapter is applied in a reading of Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals. This reading intends to serve both as a model for future applications of the method to other works, as well as a further investigation into The Cancer Journals as an autopathographical work itself. —— Conclusion — This section examines possible limitations of the method as described and performed, while also suggesting directions for further study. General discussion of the method, its groundwork, and its outcomes is conducted herein.

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Specialisation

English Literature and Culture

Supervisors

Kardux, J.C.

ECTS Credits

20

Language

en