ABSTRACT
This chapter presents ethnographic data within an anthropological framework and very different perspective of narrative healing. It provides a narrow definition of self that includes consciousness and free will based on recognized foundational thinkers in narrative theory. The two structural functions of narrative include referential and evaluative. The temporal sequence of the narrative, one of the important defining properties, proceeds from the referential function, which allows a recapitulation of experience. The second necessary requirement in the structure of narrative is the evaluative component. The cognitive psychologist Jerome Bruner argues that narrative forms experience, but provides an example where a "perceiving self" developmentally predates the ability to construct a narrative. Sometimes narrative is linked to publicly knowable self, a cultural or scripted person who could be distinguished from a private, inaccessible inner self. Narratives are also imbued with societal norms, an essential component for meaning making.
