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JOAN E. CHAPMAN
Managing Editor’s Note

The moment one gives close attention to any thing,
even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious,
awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.
—Henry Miller


As a psychotherapy intern at a low-income crisis clinic in San Francisco, I spent some harrowing days and nights. People came to the clinic with depression, psychosis, erotomania, tweaked out on amphetamines—you name it. It was my job to coordinate assessments. This care was composed of three interventions: 1) the initial interview by the psychiatric technician, 2) my interview, and 3) the psychiatrist’s assessment. I quickly saw there was often narrative confusion: the story I got from a client was different from the one the psych tech recorded in his interview, which was not the same version the psychiatrist heard. For example, in one case a client was a) having social problems and needed support (the psych tech’s opinion); b) was suicidal and needed hospitalization (my opinion); c) was faking symptoms of anxiety to get medication (the psychiatrist’s view).
So I decided to do a narrative study. With the proper permissions, I recorded some interviews and studied them carefully. What I discovered was that the questions we asked—the psychiatric technician, the psychiatrist and I—elicited certain answers from the clients. The threads we followed in the interview were connected to the tasks we performed, and these tasks often “wrote” different narratives. So it was common that each interview resulted in a different assessment.
When we write a memoir, we follow threads, we gather memory fragments together into something meaningful. Whether we realize it or not, we ask ourselves questions about what happened and we draw conclusions. The facts may remain consistent, but the meaning we create can change. Last week I saw a flyer for a workshop entitled “Write Your Life Story.” I read this as an invitation to write one of an infinite number of versions.
What is most difficult in memoir writing—in life generally—is to speak the mysterious. The moments of insight and instances of change; the minutes we found courage or lacked decency; the ways we failed, we did something awful. That element of the mysterious is why I keep reading, I think. I’m fascinated not just with the “what happened” but the junctures and ruptures inside a story that speak the mysterious things we do. “And then we kissed.” “And then I turned away.” Of what do those moments consist? And how do we convey that to someone? That’s what’s important. I’ll bet Candida disagrees.
 

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