LA NARRAZIONE AUTOBIOGRAFICA E IL FUNZIONAMENTO DEL SÉ

figures… with my grandma there was a sort of affect, but how she was able to get something human … Very
rarely…
CLINICIAN: how old were you when you grandmother died?
CLIENT: 97 and so 10 or 11.
CLINICIAN: and your grandfather was dead before…
CLIENT: yes I wasn’t born yet. My siblings have never known him too so I don’t have any close stories from
them…
CLINICIAN: what does your mum tell about grandparents?
CLIENT: about my grandma Paola, she describes her as a cold woman… while about my grandfather she links
him with all the funny stories… I don’t know, it sounds like an idealization…
CLINICIAN: in a positive way?
CLIENT: yes, while with my grandma’s description she is more rational.
CLINICIAN: What does she tell about her relationship with them?
CLIENT: well… she was grown up with baby-sitters, in the sense that the relationships were really strict, for
example parents had lunch at a table and the children at an other table… and something like that so I don’t
have many things to say about that…. My mum has ever talked well about them. A lot of stories and
memories… but…
CLINICIAN: well, she lived all these fictionalized stories too… [shift- end Segment 14]
Example 2.
This segment is identified by a client introductory statement about a specific event; at the end of the segment
the clinician summarizes the issue.
CLIENT: I can’t tell all these things … I don’t know… because I find it very difficult (XXX)
CLINICIAN:…CLIENT: perhaps I’m going to think…. [shift- end Segment 16]
[theme change - Segment 17 – event past]
CLIENT: an event that usually my father tells
CLINICIAN: about your mother’s grandfather?
CLIENT: yes
CLINICIAN: so your dad tells something about his father in law…
CLIENT: first, my grandfather was against my father who isn’t noble and so he sounds as a strict and
intransigent … and at the end when my father conquered my mother, my grandfather said him “well, you
know that she is crazy”. I don’t know because it sounds very strange that a father would say these things to
his future son in law… something like that… It’s a strong judgment….
CLINICIAN: and what did you dada think?
CLIENT: I don’t know I think he decided to go straight... a little bit level-headed my father…
CLINICIAN: so have your parents never had difficulties in the relationships with your grandparents [shift- end
Segment 17]
STEP TWO : NARRATIVE COMPLEXITY CODING
To Labov and Waletsky (1996), narrative is “a method of recapitulating experience by matching a verbal
sequence of clauses to the sequence of events that actually occurred”.
The following five principles concerning narratives components can aid the coding:
• what differentiates narratives from other ways of reporting is causal linkages between the events: the
occurrence of a subsequent event locates the event that was prior in time and stands in a causal relation to
it. The sequences of ordered clauses form the complicating action which is the skeletal structure of a
narrative segment. (“I thought that my sister felt alone in the new town so I travelled all night to visit her”)
• The second most important aspect is to establish if the causal linkages is a temporal juncture: a relation
of before-and-after that holds between two independent clauses and matches the order of events in time. So,
this means that the narratives segments should have a clear time marker (“in the 1980’s winter”; “each
summers when I was a child”; “the first day of the high school” )
• Each narrative should include an outcome of the event (Luborsky, 1990): a destination that is desirable
or undesirable for the protagonist of the narrative. (“I thought that my sister felt alone in the new town so I
travelled all night to visit her because I wanted to stay with her and help her to feel better”)
• Narrative may have include descriptions of details, as the place, where the event takes place (“I
travelled from Boston to New London”), or examples of actions and behaviours;
• Narrative may include general description of emotions, physical sensations and thoughts and characters
or actors details that clients refer to what happened. (“My sister is a very fearful person and she suffers
loneliness”).
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