The Textual Confessional
41
For years following the affair, Harrison was wracked with guilt over
the societal taboo she had committed and over the secret life she led that had
resulted in so much deception. But upon learning of her father’s death, Harrison
felt free to follow her artistic instincts and write about the experience, not only
to relieve guilt and begin the healing process, but to textually attempt to bring
meaning and significance to a part of her life that remained chaotic and
unresolved. This act of catharsis reflects the psychotherapeutic approach known
as expressive therapy, in which creativity serves as a means of overcoming
resistance in treatment. Here, resistance refers to everything in the words and
actions of the patient that obstructs gaining access to what is not conscious.
Expressive therapy calls upon the therapist to use creative tools (for example,
metaphor, symbolism, imagery, creative word play, and poetic narrative) to
facilitate the communication process between patient and therapist, and to break
down the barriers shielding the subconscious from analysis (Robbins, 1980, 4345).
In Harrison’s case, she utilizes the literary form of the memoir as a
means of self-analysis, with the creative act freeing her from the bonds of selfdenial and allowing her to confess to (and place within a psychological context)
having broken the taboo of incest. It was through this textual self-therapy that
she came to terms with what she had been denying for so long: that the affair
with her father had less to do with his having been out of her life for so long
than it did with the subconscious longing to punish and humiliate her selfabsorbed, emotionally distant mother. By gaining the obsessive attention of the
man whom her mother never stopped loving, Harrison retaliated against her
mother who had abandoned her at such a young age.
Harrison is not interested in trying to change people’s perceptions of
her (after all, she’s the one who chose to publicly disclose her secret); instead,
the author’s aim, in the course of the writing process, is to bring to the surface
painfiil memories, lies, and deceits, seeking the psychic connections between
them in an attempt to achieve a heightened sense of understanding, which is a
prelude to healing. From the psychoanalytical approach, the reliving or re
experiencing of traumatic moments from one’s past helps to alleviate the
emotional suffering of the present. Freud (1961) acknowledged that more than
remembering the past is involved in the cathartic method; that is, the patient
must re-experience the past. He said the patient “is obliged to repeat the
repressed material as a contemporary experience. . .the patient must re
experience some portion of his forgotten life” (12-13). For Harrison, re
experiencing her troubled past played itself out textually, with words on paper
rather than the psychoanalyst’s couch serving as the cathartic vehicle.
Meanwhile, other memoirs of confession involve the autobiograp