Critical Hermeneutics

Narrative Identity, Memory, and Narrative Therapy

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Cover

Preface

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In a famous letter addressed in March 1636 to his friend Marin Mersenne, René Descartes writes that the aim of his Discourse on the Method is trying “to demonstrate the existence of God and of the soul separated from the body…”. The progress of modernity has decreed that such an attempt must be regarded as entirely outdated — at least in terms of apodeixis, that is, of demonstrative proof — and that, although subsequent tradition has rightly placed its author and la methode he proposed among the great founding moments of modern subjectivity, Descartes’s original intention must be relegated to the antiquated remnants of thought.

Introduction

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In January 2025, in Rome, within the framework of the PRIN/PNRR project Aesthetics and Therapeia, funded by the European Union (Next Generation EU) and the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MUR), an international conference entitled Memory, Identity, Narration took place. The essays we publish in this issue of Critical Hermeneutics are a reworking of the presentations given by some of the Italian speakers (with the exception of Kearney) who participated in that conference. This issue, as with the conference that inspired it, aims to offer an interdisciplinary perspective, combining different approaches from theoretical and aesthetic philosophy, cognitive psychology, and narrative medicine.

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Storytelling

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This work aims to highlight the importance of storytelling as a tool for thinking and orienting oneself in reality. Some basic concepts such as narrative and story will be defined first. Since storytelling is a way of using language, what is story and what is not will also be clarified. Using a Brunerian-type theoretical framework, the properties of the stories will then be specified. Subsequently, the central theme of this work will be addressed: storytelling as a tool, in particular the functions it performs and their transformative meaning on memory and thought, leading them to be activities aimed at others and the external world. The final part of this work will also highlight the dangers inherent in storytelling for both the narrator and the listener.

Methodological Aspects in the Study of Autobiographical Memory

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Although the last three decades have seen an increased use of objective assessments of autobiographical memory, contemporary memory researchers agree that self-report instruments remain a fundamental method for investigating autobiographical memory phenomena. The present article focuses on two specific types of self-report instruments used in the field of autobiographical memory psychology: narrative tasks and questionnaires. The author carefully retraces the development of these instruments throughout the history of scientific psychology, paying particular attention to those most commonly used in contemporary cognitive psychology research. Finally, the findings of a recent methodological study investigating the relationship between narrative and questionnaire assessments of autobiographical memory are presented and critically discussed.

The Way of Narrative Identity between Substantialism and the Theatre of Self-representation

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We can transform the world of text into an imaginative and reflective laboratory for personal (re-)interpretation and renewal. This is possible not only because we can (re-)constitute ourselves as narrators of our own story, but also, because by making us a ‘character’ opens the way to a possible reconfiguration and redefinition of who we are, of the sense of our experiences, actions and initiatives. This is a key aspect of Paul Ricœur’s philosophy of the capable human being – a conception that defines a middle-way position between substantialism and anti-substantialism in anthropological philosophy.

Narrative Identity and the Three Fundamental Theses of the Hermeneutics of the Self

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The article aims to show how the three fundamental theses underlying Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of the self can be reformulated at the narrative level. Thanks to this reformulation, the notion of narrative identity appears grounded in a conception of the subject that is equally distant from the postmodern destitution of the “I” and from its exaltation in modern transcendental egologies. The first thesis (reflection is always mediated) is reformulated by showing that narrative is the principal means through which self-understanding is achieved. The second thesis (selfhood is different from sameness) is reformulated by showing how narrative clarifies the temporality of character and of the promise. The third thesis (otherness is constitutive of the self) is reformulated by showing that the three forms of otherness distinguished by Ricoeur (the otherness of the body, intersubjective otherness, and the otherness of moral conscience) have a precise counterpart at the narrative level.

Memory and Dignity

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Paul Ricoeur’s studies have left us with a significant legacy of reflections on memory, identity and history. Today, this legacy can help us uphold a fundamental moral value: dignity. Building on reflections on the dual nature of dignity as “active” and “passive”, this contribution considers the narrative construction of individual and collective memory, particularly with regard to the attribution of memories and dignity to the moral subject. The vanished squares of medieval Rome, Ajax in Sophocles’ tragedy, the protagonist of George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four who cannot forget a particular gesture: these are the figures we turn to in order to explain how we can save human dignity. Finally, we aim to establish whether the concepts of dignity and memory, as interpreted by Ricoeur, can still serve as ethical guides when faced with the challenges posed by biomedical technologies and robotics.

Narrative Hospitality

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This article argues that exchanging memories can foster peace by allowing individuals and communities to share and reinterpret their histories. The author outlines the concept of narrative hospitality, understood as the capacity to welcome the memories of others. Narrative hospitality manifests in three ways. First, narrative plurality highlights the possibility of recounting the past in diverse ways. Second, narrative transformation shows how storytelling can alter the person who receives it. Third, narrative forgiveness refers to the story’s capacity to heal past wounds. The article concludes with examples of individuals from communities long divided by conflict who have reconciled with their enemies through the practice of narrative hospitality.

Caring for Memory

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This article explores the potential for artistic experiences to address dementia, a growing global health challenge with no pharmacological cure. The role of arts-based approaches in dementia care is reviewed, with a specific focus on applied theatre experiences. Drawing on the World Health Organization’s report and syntheses of recent evidence, it highlights how artistic engagement – through multimodal stimulation involving aesthetic, emotional, cognitive, and social elements – supports psychological well-being, social connectedness, and quality of life for people living with dementia and their caregivers. The paper then presents applied theatre methodologies, characterized by participatory workshops emphasizing subjectivity and different languages (not cognitive, but primarily bodily) that make these methods particularly feasible for work in the field of dementia. An Italian case study, “Teatro Fragile” by Compagnie Malviste, is presented as an exemplary applied theatre project, Alzheimer Cafés, which are integrated into the local social care system and are yielding measurable improvements in both patients and caregivers’ wellbeing.

Spatial Images in Collective and Autobiographical Memory and Their Therapeutic Use

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This article examines the role of space in collective and autobiographical memory through a close engagement with Maurice Halbwachs’s work. After presenting the theory of memory as reconstruction in dialogue with Walter Benjamin and discussing the relationship between individual and collective memory through Paul Ricoeur’s interpretation, the article analyzes space as one of the central frameworks of memory. This role derives both from the analogy between orientation in space and orientation in memory, explored by Mary Carruthers in her study of medieval ars memorativa, and from the concrete function of space in the everyday practices of groups, as reflected in their collective memories and revealing a narrative organization of space (de Certeau). Through the experience of physical or represented space, individuals can adopt a group’s perspective and reconstruct its collective memory. The final section discusses two videotherapy practices that make use of spatial images, highlighting their therapeutic potential.

Autobiography, Words and Memories

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Autobiographical memories are a defining feature of our existence, and their disappearance harms or compromises our experience of the self. What are the conditions of emergence of our memories? Are we the only living beings capable of having them? This paper offers a phenomenological reflection on autobiographical memory, in dialogue with insights from psychology. Our autobiographical memories are not, so to speak, solely ours, originally ‘internal’ and ‘autonomous’ formations. Having to pass through language and community in order to form ourselves, the external world and the other shape us from within. So-called autobiographical memories are therefore always hetero-autobiographical. This in no way detracts from our singularity; it simply highlights the conditions that make it possible, as well as its limits and the inextinguishable debt that accompanies it: autobiography is always hetero-auto-biography.

Beyond the Archive

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The present work aims to reflect on the relationship among autobiographical memory, narrative, and the relational context in which life events are narrated and received, with the aim of examining the elaborative and transformative properties of the latter. Through a review of theoretical models and empirical evidence concerning the relationship between memory and narrative, the author reflects on the elaboration of the personal past by moving beyond the view of memory as a mere archive of contents and instead proposing a plastic and continuously evolving conception of the autobiographical repertoire of memories.

"Beyond the Post-Colonial Gaze" (P. Furia)

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book review

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Contents