The Storied Analyst: Desire and Persuasion in the Clinical Vignette

Abstract

Beginning with the quintessentially psychoanalytic tales of Freud, the case history has held a privileged position in the history and practice of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysts grow up with, grow into, and grow out of these narratives as clinical practitioners. Alongside the representational aspects of these case histories, there is a rhetorical or persuasive force that significantly influences us. The author contends that the theory of narrative and rhetoric can inform the how, the why, and the “so what?” of our relationship to these stories of psychoanalysis.

• Clinical vignette
• narrative
• analytic writing
• epistemology
• rhetoric
• plot
• characters
• metaphor
• masterplot
• poetics