Dissertation - World Federation of Music Therapy

analysis of the tragedy, but ‘any objectivation of human action’, including also the
therapeutic narrative.
In Aristotle’s theory of tragedy mythos covered the organisations of events, while
mimesis covered the imitation of (human) action. In a tragedy we find the three phases
of beginning, middle, and end, and the successful organisation of the phases in time
(mythos, a plot) imposed upon or configuring a recognizable and relevant content
from human life (mimesis) is what makes a good tragedy. Aristotle’s basic narrative
theory was limited to the tragedy. Ricoeur broadened the theory to encompass all
narrative constructions of experience. He divided the concept of mimesis into three
moments, and the main thesis is that “…the very meaning of the configurating
operation constitutive of emplotment, is a result of its intermediary position between
the two operations, I am calling mimesis I and mimesis III, which constitute the two
sides [l’amont et l’aval] of mimesis II.” 16 (Ricoeur 1984, p.53)
Metaphors belong in the first place to mimesis I, together with memories and records
of life events. It is the emplotment, the configuration of 'who, what, where, how and
why' in a time perspective – mimesis II – that makes the narrative coherent and
understandable. Or with Ricoeur's own double metaphor: In order to understand
himself man needs to make a detour through the ambiguous signs in which the subject
makes a masked performance for itself.
In the following table definitions of the three moments of mimesis are presented (an
adaptation of the moments as they are found in psychotherapy will be presented in
section 3.5.3)
16 "Time and Narrative" has a fundamental distinction between historical narrative (historiography)
and fiction, and a great deal of Ricoeur's work deals with the differences - especially concerning the
time problem and the truth problem. However, he explicit states that this distinction is irrelevant for the
thesis shaped as the 'threefold mimesis model'. Ricour’s hermeneutic treatment of historical discourse
is discussed by Polkinghorne (1988, p. 64-69)
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