ABSTRACT
Experts in psychology and literary studies agree that psychoanalysis is not only closely related to auto-biographical practices but also an important theoretical framework for establishing life writing as a therapeutic tool. This chapter examines the aspects of The Sorrows of an American in more detail, and sketches out the intersections between psychoanalysis, life writing, trauma, and black counter-memory, which constitute the conceptual core of author's argument. The author's analysis opens with a discussion of Siri Hustvedt's view on psychoanalysis and life writing and their strategic function in The Sorrows of an American. This short introduction is followed by a close reading of mainstream and minority trauma narratives in the novel. Sigmund Freud laid the basis for establishing the healing power of trauma narratives. In Studies on Hysteria, he and Josef Breuer applied the talking cure to trauma cases in which the disturbing event is repressed from conscious memory.
