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)

open access

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...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