ABSTRACT
Long before I became interested in the healing power of storytelling in psychotherapy, I was simply interested in stories. For a while, I was particularly interested in personal narratives and autobiographies, perhaps because they seemed to promise some clue about the future or, perhaps, a prescription that would immunize me against the danger of an unlived life. In 1968 André Malraux, who was then French minister of culture, published an autobiography of sorts in the United States, with the characteristic title Anti-Memoirs. I was almost Šnished with college and was faced with a number of very real, very adult decisions. Although I did not think about it in those terms, masculinity operated powerfully and
silently in my deliberations, like a riddle that I did not know I was answering. At that time, Malraux was, for me, a masculine ideal. ‡e quintessential artist-hero, he maintained a brash, imagistic, transcendent vision of art and lived a life of opposition that bridged the gap between the life of the imagination and the life of action. Malraux played a role in the political upheaval in Indochina and China, organized and led the air force of the republic of Spain in the civil war, fought in the French army, was captured by the fascists, escaped, joined the French resistance, and so forth. His books include Man’s Hope, Man’s Fate, e Temptation of the West, and e Conquerors. In one of them, a character asks, “What is a man? a collection of secrets?” ‡e other responds, “A man is what he does.”
