A tale of two anxieties : If anxiety is fundamental to a relationship with narrative, is the characterisation of anxiety as a 'disorder' detrimental to that relationship?

Jones, Melanie Louise (2025) A tale of two anxieties : If anxiety is fundamental to a relationship with narrative, is the characterisation of anxiety as a 'disorder' detrimental to that relationship? PhD thesis, Birkbeck, University of London.

Abstract

This practice-based PhD thesis is comprised of a critical essay and a collection of stories that together investigate the concept of narrative anxiety and its parallels to lived anxiety. The critical essay explores whether the forms of anxiety generated through an engagement with fiction are comparable to characterisations of a pathologized mental state. Chapter one, Dark and Stormy, uses a close reading of M. R. James’s story ‘Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to You, My Lad’ (1904) to ask how fiction is able to elicit the mental and physical symptoms of disordered, ‘real-world’ anxiety. Once this link has been established, I analyse arguments for why this might be a desirable outcome for the reader with a focus on challenging the arguments that consider an engagement with anxiogenic fiction a form of Faustian bargain in which a painful experience is tolerated in a ‘safe’ fictional space free of consequence. Chapter two, Once Upon a Time, considers historical and modern accounts of anxiety, arguing that the characterisation of anxiety as a disorder ignores essential functions that it has for the individual. Chapter three, Happily Ever After, considers what, if anything, is lost when narrative writing is used as a therapeutic tool for a condition such as anxiety. The story collection, How They Get You, seeks to answer these same questions. The stories presented are semi-autobiographical and represent an inability to separate fictional and lived anxiety. These anxieties take a variety of forms: the anxiety of womanhood, motherhood, sisterhood, broken families, physical presence, social conformity, sexuality, friendship and belonging. The collection is also an engagement with trauma through creative writing. The thesis and stories will advocate for a nuanced relationship with anxiety that challenges the binaries of ‘functional’ vs. ‘dysfunctional’, ‘ordered’ vs ‘disordered’, and ‘fictional’ vs. ‘lived’.

Metadata

Statistics

DownloadsShow export options

Export as XMLCSVJSON

Activity Overview

6 month trend

0Downloads

6 month trend

22Hits

Additional statistics are available via IRStats2.

Archive Staff Only (login required)

Edit/View Item