Psychic Relief and Nonnarrative Configurations in Graphic Memoirs About Mental Health

Abstract

Abstract In this chapter, the concept of nonnarrative configurations is introduced to account for abstract, nonnarrative and poetic devices that are frequently employed in graphic memoirs about mental illness. Narrative medicine and health humanities approaches to graphic medicine, and in this case to graphic memoirs about mental illness, often hypothesize that composing graphic memoirs afford measures of psychic relief, and, furthermore, that this catharsis lies in the action of turning the experience of illness into a coherent narrative. That position is not refuted, but the author claims that the focus on catharsis rooted in the act of narration has overshadowed the fact that multiple nonnarrative configurations are employed for the same purpose. These configurations can either dominate (hence, the work presents itself as comics poetry), or they can be employed to produce meaning within the narrative. Nonnarrative configurations are then explored in interpretations of graphic memoirs by Art Spiegelman, Terian Koscik, and Ellen Forney.