The Hermeneutics of Self-Understanding: Narrative, Fiction and the Potential of Creative Writing

In this article, we propose that engaging in creative writing can constitute a significant source of self-understanding, enabling forms of self-disclosure where self-narratives often remain inhibited. To develop this perspective, we begin by outlining the broader challenge of a hermeneutics of the self. Building on this, we argue that creative writing processes can bypass several limitations associated with self-narrative as a mode of self-understanding—such as the selectivity of narrative ordering and the normative regulation of self-presentation. We then unpack how creative writing fosters self-understanding by highlighting two key principles: aesthetic distancing and engaging the subface. The value of these principles is richly illustrated through extensive qualitative material, drawn from in-depth phenomenologically grounded qualitative interviews with participants in a creative writing course called REWRITALIZE, offered to in- and out-patients in psychiatric care.