The good story : exchanges on truth, fiction and psychotherapy / J.M. Coetzee and Arabella Kurtz.
Material type:
TextPublisher: New York : Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, [2015]Copyright date: ©2015Description: viii, 198 pages ; 22 cmContent type: - text
- unmediated
- volume
- 0525429514
- 9780525429517
| Item type | Home library | Collection | Call number | Materials specified | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Adult Book
|
Main Library | NonFiction | 616.8914 C673 | Checked out | 06/22/2024 | 33111008085462 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
J.M. Coetzee's latest novel, The Schooldays of Jesus , is now available from Viking. Late Essays: 2006-2016 will be available January 2018.
J.M. Coetzee: What relationship do I have with my life history? Am I its conscious author, or should I think of myself as simply a voice uttering with as little interference as possible a stream of words welling up from my interior?
Arabella Kurtz: One way of thinking about psychoanalysis is to say that it is aimed at setting free the narrative or autobiographical imagination.
The Good Story is a fascinating dialogue about psychotherapy and the art of storytelling between a writer with a long-standing interest in moral psychology and a psychotherapist with training in literary studies. Coetzee and Kurtz consider psychotherapy and its wider social context from different perspectives, but at the heart of both of their approaches is a concern with narrative. Working alone, the writer is in control of the story he or she tells. The therapist, on the other hand, collaborates with the patient in developing an account of the patient's life and identity that is both meaningful and true.
In a meeting of minds that is illuminating and thought-provoking, the authors discuss both individual psychology and the psychology of the group: the school classroom, gangs and the settler nation, in which the brutal deeds of ancestors are accommodated into a national story. Drawing on great writers like Cervantes and Dostoevsky and psychoanalysts like Freud and Melanie Klein, Coetzee and Kurtz explore the human capacity for self-examination, our wish to tell our own life stories and the resistances we encounter along the way.
First published in Great Britain by Harvill Secker.
Includes bibliographical references.
"The Good Story" is an exchange between a writer with a long-standing interest in moral psychology and a psychotherapist with a training in literary studies. Arabella Kurtz and J.M. Coetzee consider psychotherapy and its wider social context from different perspectives, but at the heart of both their approaches is a concern with stories. Working alone, the writer is in sole charge of the story he or she tells. The therapist, on the other hand, collaborates with the patient in telling the story of their life. What kind of truth do the stories created by patient and therapist aim to uncover: objective truth or the shifting and subjective truth of memories explored and re-experienced in the safety of the therapeutic relationship? The authors discuss both individual psychology and the psychology of the group: the school classroom, the gang, the settler nation where the brutal deeds of the ancestors have to be accommodated into a national story. Drawing on great writers like Cervantes and Dostoevsky and on psychoanalysts like Freud and Melanie Klein, they offer illuminating insights into the stories we tell of our lives.