Family biographies and mental distress: possible evolutions of narrative entanglements

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between autobiographies, family biographies, and psychological distress. Drawing on theoretical and clinical frameworks, it examines family narrative processes as outcomes of the interplay between storytelling, representation, memory, and transgenerational transmission. Narration, viewed as an essential aspect of human nature, is approached as a species-specific tendency to organize subjective and intersubjective experience into narrative plots. A systemic-relational epistemology helps illuminate how closely narration and subjectivity are intertwined, and how identity emerges as a self-architectural project, shaped and understood within the flow of interactions with others. The human inclination to narrate is seen as a tool for making sense of a complex web of experiences, emotions, relationships, and representations, all embedded in the relational fabric of the family, which provides the context for shared meaning and understanding.