ABSTRACT
I think of clinical papers as having two axes. The horizontal or narrative axis is organized temporally and is composed of clinical phenomena, description, and narrative details at the first level of abstraction (pp. 106-109). Arranging these for presentation is an exercise in plotting in Brooks’ (1992) sense of the word. The vertical axis of your paper is organized conceptually and is composed of the links you create between what’s on your paper’s narrative axis (at the first level of abstraction) and your ideas about that material in the form of interpretations, concepts, and theory, etc., that are represented at higher levels of abstraction (chapter 13). Most clinical papers can be distinguished by the relative emphasis on the work they do along one of these axes. Clinical narratives emphasize the lived experience of psychotherapy as a story that moves through time (chapter 3). Lyric narratives explore clinical experience as it unfolds in the lyric present (chapter 7). Conceptually organized papers put narrative details in service of ideas at higher levels of abstraction.
