Retrieving and Constructing Memory: The Use of Creative Writing by Women Survivors of Sexual Abuse

摘要

Memory is our means of the constructing the past and present and constructing audself and versions of experience we can live with, to doubt is to doubt ourselves,udyet doubt we must for it is treacherous (Greene, 1991, p.293)udThis chapter draws on my research into women survivors’ use of creatingudwriting in which I found that women survivors used writing broadly to breakudsilence, as therapy and as autobiography. Its focus is on the exploration ofudmemory through writing, one element in the process undertaken by womenudsurvivors to create an autobiography. Memory loss and retrieval have beenudcore concerns of survivors and therapists working in the field of sexual abuse.udExploring memory is a central theme in the writings of survivors. Howeverudthere are feminist critical concerns that survivors’ accounts of abuse adopt anudunreflexive approach to memory. In the light of the debates about the wayudmemory is conceptualised in survivors’ accounts, I will explore how oneudwoman in my study described her use of writing to retrieve memory andudconstruct a chronology of her childhood.