Re-authoring trauma through the polyphony of the self. Clinical and psychosocial reflections on three stories in psychotherapy

The role of narrative as a human activity through which people understand themselves and the world has been emphasized by several traditions, and narrative and cultural psychology emerge as pioneering (Bruner, 1990; Sarbin, 1986; White & Epston, 1990; Smorti, 2011). Several studies underline the importance of personal narratives in therapeutic processes with people who have experienced traumatic events (Demborough, 2006). This contribution aims to discuss the role of narratives in therapies of traumatic experience from a social constructionist (Gergen, 2009) and dialogical perspective (Konopka, Hermans & Goncalves, 2019), both contemplating the idea that the individual is inhabited by a multiplicity of voices or I-positions. Through the exemplification of three clinical situations (one related to the trauma of chronic illness, one to the trauma of refugees and one to the trauma of sexual trafficking) we will illustrate the importance of the multiplicity of the self that clients and therapists host to co-construct alternative narratives to the one related to the traumatic experience. Our contribution ends by emphasizing the relevance of relational approaches to trauma oriented towards the construction of polyphonic narratives (cf. Lannaman & McNamee, 2020).