Conference Agenda

This study presents a psychobiography approach to the life of the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama (1929– ). Born in Matsumoto, Japan, Kusama developed an influential international career, living and working in New York from the late 1950s until early 1970s, where she gained recognition for her avant-garde art. From early childhood, she experienced psychotic symptoms, which eventually led to her voluntary residence in a psychiatric hospital in Tokyo from 1977 to the present. Drawing on an adapted version of McAdams’ Life Story Interview, the study examines how Yayoi Kusama constructs her life story based on autobiographical

material. Kusama’s narrative identity appeared to emerge from an ongoing negotiation of antithetical positions, between chaos and control, self-obliteration and unity. Experiences of fragmentation of the self and psychological struggle are reorganized through artistic practice into sources of meaning, agency, and survival. Artistic creation serves as a medium for reframing her experiences of mental struggle into a redemptive life story.

This study explores Post-Traumatic Growth (PTG) following psychosis through the lens of narrative identity theory. Specifically, it explores how individuals reconstruct their selves and derive meaning from psychotic experiences. While PTG is well-documented in various trauma contexts, its exploration within the spectrum of psychosis remains significantly limited, despite recent studies that link psychosis to trauma. Following a qualitative design, the study involved five participants (3 males, 2 females) receiving psychiatric care at the General Hospital of Athens “G. Gennimatas”. Data collection utilized McAdams’ ''Life Story Interview'' to capture narrative structures, complemented by the projective tool ''Draw a Person in the Rain''; to monitor a sense of resilience at a non-verbal level. The data were processed using narrative analysis, focusing on redemptive and contaminated sequences. Analysis revealed diverse life themes across participants. Regarding narrative structure in each participant, a gradual positive progression, following numerous highs and lows, was observed in the verbal accounts, aligning with the characteristics of a redemptive narrative. The projective tool brought to light more burdensome and less integrated aspects of the traumatic experience, a limited sense of resilience. This discrepancy suggests a notable differentiation between verbal narrative reconstruction and ‘underlying’, non- verbal processes. The findings suggest that while individuals may strive for redemptive storytelling, PTG in psychosis is a long process. The study highlights the need to triangulate data using a variety of tools to explore the construction of narrative identity. There is also a critical need for long-term psychotherapeutic interventions focused on meaning-making as essential prerequisites for facilitating PTG in this population.

Ronald Hayman, in his work Nietzsche’s Voices, describes Nietzsche (1844–1900) as a man who heard “voices.” In his view, polyphony lies at the heart of Nietzsche’s work: as a philosopher, he did not speak with one voice but through masks, personas, contradictions, sayings, and characters. In the present psychobiography study, we adopted a Dialogical Self Theory prism to explore this idea further. We chronologically analyzed published personal letters before and after Nietzsche’s mental breakdown. Like Heyman, we recorded at least two voices: a critical voice, associated with self-doubt, and a didactic, balancing voice. In addition, before his breakdown, we recorded a self-reflective voice or metaposition that prevented Nietzsche from losing a sense of reality and balance his various voices: He could speak with many voices, but could also reflect on these voices as external voices of

people distinct from himself. Closer to the breakdown, we recorded the gradual loss of polyphony along with the gradual loss of a self-reflective voice or metaposition. As

polyphony turned into monophony, Nietzsche ''became'' Zarathustra, his principal hero, with no other voices to mentally balance him. The prism of Dialogical Self Theory is discussed as a useful framework for understanding mental illness.

Dialogical self-theory conceptualizes psychosis as the collapse of the dialogical self,

the absence of agency and the disruption of narrative coherence. Previous case

studies have shown that brief fragments of self or I-position emerge in consequent

tellings of a person’s experiences as signs of emotional content. To make meaning of these tellings and enhance empathy in practitioners, literature and other forms of art have been used by practitioners themselves in rehabilitation phases, but not in

admission. The present study explored and combined ways of making meaning of

psychotic speech using a narrative case study methodology. In phase one, we

analyzed the narrative form of a total of 13 short messages and letters of a 46-year-

old male patient (‘Paul’), written prior to and on the day of involuntary

hospitalization. Setting the context of the story aside, and focusing on emotional signs in first person only, we found that Paul’s tellings evolved around the theme of

“seeking help in vain”. In phase two, we compared the narrative content of his

tellings to the novel/film “The Bourne Identity”. This comparison highlighted the

power of narrative as a vehicle for expressing themes of survival, identity

fragmentation, and the search for meaning. We discuss the implications of our method for identifying fragments of I-position that can be further strengthened in therapy, to gradually re-establish agency and narrative coherence. In addition, using literature and the arts can help practitioners make meaning of persons’ psychotic experiences by noticing thematic similarities, pointing to identity and relationship struggles.