Autoethnography as Therapy for Trauma

Abstract

This article challenges Western clinical protocols to address trauma resulting from an automobile accident as the preferred method of treatment. Framed by feminist theory that research can be therapeutic, the authors use a feminist informed autoethnographic approach to identify and deconstruct oppressive practices embedded in the evidence-based medical approach to trauma. Writing from the standpoint of the therapist and patient, the authors chronicle their journey of clinical sessions over a 2-year period through the sharing of counseling/field notes. They put forward the proposition that the act of healing cannot be private, for risk of perpetuating current discourses of shame associated with trauma, but instead to make visible oppressive, genderized, and structural acts that are ignored by medical approaches. As such, the authors use their actual names, locations, and events in the article.