Lilia Gramacho is a journalist, publicist, psychologist and writer. The different professions have one thing in common and reveal something about them: the love of listening and telling stories. “Journalism is a way of telling a story in search of the real version of the fact; advertising tells stories to seduce us; and psychology is also a space for narratives and narrative creation. We tell stories to know who we are. We are made of stories. What brought me to psychology was my passion for stories, for intimate narratives, fictional or of any other nature” , he states.
Lilia launches through Solisluna, her fifth book, What tale tells us - Literature inspiring clinical practice . Result of research and reflections carried out during the four years of training in Analytical Psychology at the Institute of Analytical Psychology of Bahia, associated with the Jungian Association of Brazil (AJB) and the International Association of Analytical Psychology (IAAP). “We can learn a lot about psychology in literature, because writers are those individuals capable of capturing the soul of the collective unconscious. When we read we can look in depth, a dive that no depth psychology gives up.”
“I understand, with a certain poetic license, that every case study is, in a way, a novel. Each patient returns to the oral tradition of storytellers, recounting life, where truths and lies merge into the fabric of memory.”
The points of intersection between literature and psychology are many. Freud and Jung were psychoanalysts who received important literary awards. Does reading help us understand human beings better?
Reading literature helps us understand ourselves. We often identify outside, in a character's emotion or dilemma, that which we have not yet put into words in our internal world. Narratives have always played a healing role in many cultures. And it still remains an excellent medicine for the soul. Reading makes us aware of ourselves and the place we occupy in the world, it causes us restlessness, reflection, and leads us to encounter our subjectivities and other possible “I’s” . When we read, we can look in depth, a dive that no depth psychology gives up.
You will soon release your fifth book, What tale do you tell us? Literature inspiring clinical practice , published by Solisluna. Talk a little about him.
The book Que Conto nos Conta is the result of reflections produced over the four years of training in Analytical Psychology at the Institute of Analytical Psychology of Bahia, associated with AJB and IAAP. This work, in some way, seeks to show the place from which I operate within analytical thinking and in my clinical practice. In other words, I understand, with a certain poetic license, that every case study is, in a way, a novel. Each patient returns to the oral tradition of storytellers, recounting life, where truths and lies merge into the fabric of memory. We are a little like the way we tell our stories, each with our own rhetoric. So, in this book, I seek to bring together, through points of contact, two areas that are very dear to me: literature and psychology. And show that we can learn a lot about psychology in literature, because writers are those subjects capable of capturing the soul of the collective unconscious.
As the title of the book suggests, you are inspired by literature to carry out clinical practice. How does this process happen?
We can think about literature in clinical practice in many ways, the most important for me is how much I learn in literature both about the complexity of human existence and in theory books. Therefore, it is part of my training as a subject and also as an analyst. However, it can also be a great beacon to provoke possibilities for new perspectives. Because a poem, a short story, are full of metaphors. And the metaphors, Meta (beyond) and Phorein (transport), have this power to evoke images, ideas and associations, beyond rational, logical thought, and current certainties. It works like a dribble in rigid and unilateral perspectives, leading the individual to look through other windows, appreciating unknown landscapes. In this sense, they are management instruments that enrich and transform, as they often allow us to talk about issues without talking about the issues.
Does the opposite also happen? Do you rely on clinical practice to write your literary texts?
As for writing, it is driven by a series of factors that mix and connect: an event, a sentence, a memory, an expression. Without a doubt, being a listener to so many lives, being immersed in this sea of stories, is inspiration, but it can also be an overflow. Writing, for me, is always groping in the dark.
Psychic Reality is the way in which the individual perceives the world and events, and this is very particular to each of us. How can we analyze a patient's behavior if what he brings are versions of his story, given his own experiences and observations?
The role of analysis, from the perspective I work with, is not to analyze, as if seeking adjustments, behavior, but to be a means for each subject to create a dialogue with themselves. For analytical psychology, every subject is made up of a plurality of psychic people. Or, as Fernando Pessoa prefers, “It lives in countless of us”. Most novelists are aware of containing multitudes and that living in a legion is tense. Every point of view is the view from a point. But, if we open up and exercise this multiplicity of subjective states, we can broaden our perspectives, and stop being fixated on a single fiction, which we call truth.
Do you believe it is possible to have impartial stories, based only on facts? (And here I also speak specifically of this exemption so sought after or concealed by journalism)
Epictetus said that what affects human beings is not what happens to them, but what is said about what happens to them. So every story is always contaminated by the subjectivities of those who narrate it, because we are the way we tell our stories. So, if the narrative changes, the way we see events also changes. The external fact is there (date, time, place), but it is the internal events, which are not free from fantasies, that make up each person's truth. Every fact that happens in real life influences psychic life.
One of the most successful literary genres among readers lately is autofiction. Would this, along with autobiography, be the genre that comes closest to self-analysis? Is writing also a search for self-knowledge?
Yes, writing can be an excellent exercise in reflection and salvation. It is a possibility of ordering and dialoguing from the inside out. Free ourselves from the often suffocating condition of our only life. And becoming a reader of your own fiction can lead to other ideas about yourself. “You have to leave the island to look at the island” teaches us Saramago in his beautiful story 'The Unknown Island'. Eliane Brum says: 'I write to not die and not to kill'. Like her, many writers affirm this visceral need. Rilke: 'I did something against fear. I sat up all night and wrote.' Writing can give chaos a new order.
Considering that this is your third book published by Solisluna, how do you evaluate the editorial work carried out by the publisher?
I'm a fan of Solisluna's work. I really like people who enjoy what they do. And this is explicit in the relationship with Solisluna. Valéria, Kin, Enéas are more than competent editors, they have become friends, they are part of this tribe of book lovers to which I belong. A partnership that is established with premises that are very dear to me: respect, transparency, competence, dialogue and much, much affection.
Book What a Tale Tells Us
ISBN: 9786586539950
Presentation: Sara Bertrand
