Traumatic experiences and life-stories: on narrative identity and existential creativity

Understanding the psychopathology of trauma requires acknowledgment that symptoms of mental disorders are hybrid combinations of neurobiological and cultural processes manifested in intersubjective meaningful experiences. Meaning-making and symbolic social interactions are critical to discern the “why” and “how” of traumatic suffering; for an experience is only traumatizing and distressing if it is perceived, felt, and appraised as a threat to one’s identity, dignity, and freedom. Therefore, understanding trauma implies understanding life stories and their tragic (dis)continuities. “Trauma” denotes a fracture in one’s narrative identity, revolving around the repetition of a disquieting event or series of events which disturb the whole person and the whole lifeworld. The existential and social-political depths of traumatic experiences demonstrate that overcoming the self-loss is possible through a creative process oriented toward the generation of new future possibilities, inspired and sustained by a kind of responsible and projective tragic optimism.