ABSTRACT
J. Hillis Miller begins his essay, "Narrative," by asking: "Exactly what psychological or social functions do stories serve? Just why do we need stories, lots of them, all the time?" (Miller, 2005: 67). One answer is that stories help us "go into" that place inside where we collect feelings of grief and loss in an attempt to avoid them. Working-through is a term of art in psychoanalysis that indicates a complex process in which a repressed traumatic response is re-experienced and integrated. However painful the process, the result is the healing of the traumatic wound that has been festering in the unconscious. It takes an enormous amount of psychological energy to keep from remembering a painful experience, but once faced it is no longer the same and it is no longer threatening. All of the psychological energy used to repress that pain is freed up. Often the only sign that working-through has occurred is a sudden increase in energy.
