Listening in the Silence, Seeing in the Dark: Reconstructing Life after Brain InjuryUniversity of California Press, 2002 M03 22 - 248 pages Traumatic brain injury can interrupt without warning the life story that any one of us is in the midst of creating. When the author's fifteen-year-old son survives a terrible car crash in spite of massive trauma to his brain, she and her family know only that his story has not ended. Their efforts, Erik's own efforts, and those of everyone who helps bring him from deep coma to new life make up a moving and inspiring story for us all, one that invites us to reconsider the very nature of "self" and selfhood. Ruthann Knechel Johansen, who teaches literature and narrative theory, is a particularly eloquent witness to the silent space in which her son, confronted with life-shattering injury and surrounded by conflicting narratives about his viability, is somehow reborn. She describes the time of crisis and medical intervention as an hour-by-hour struggle to communicate with the medical world on the one hand and the everyday world of family and friends on the other. None of them knows how much, or even whether, they can communicate with the wounded child who is lost from himself and everything he knew. Through this experience of utter disintegration, Johansen comes to realize that self-identity is molded and sustained by stories. As Erik regains movement and consciousness, his parents, younger sister, doctors, therapists, educators, and friends all contribute to a web of language and narrative that gradually enables his body, mind, and feelings to make sense of their reacquired functions. Like those who know and love him, the young man feels intense grief and anger for the loss of the self he was before the accident, yet he is the first to see continuity where they see only change. The story is breathtaking, because we become involved in the pain and suspense and faith that accompany every birth. Medical and rehabilitation professionals, social workers, psychotherapists, students of narrative, and anyone who has faced life's trauma will find hope in this meditation on selfhood: out of the shambles of profound brain injury and coma can arise fruitful lives and deepened relationships. Keywords: narrative; selfhood; therapy; traumatic brain injury; healing; spirituality; family crisis; children |
Contents
| 4 | |
Waiting in Crisis | 27 |
Uncertain Deliveries | 55 |
Becoming Again | 80 |
The Scattered Self | 116 |
Improvisational Selves | 146 |
Accepting Vulnerability | 179 |
Crossing the Threshold | 208 |
Acknowledgments | 215 |
Notes | 219 |
| 223 | |
| 229 | |
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ability accident agitation asked attention became behavior body Bracy Camden challenges child cognitive coma communication consciousness continued conversation CT scan desire despite Diary doctors Dupont Earlham Earlham College echolalia emotions Erik began Erik's condition Erik's injury Erik's rehabilitation ethics experience eyes fear feelings felt friends Glasgow Coma Scale grief hope hospital human ical intracranial pressure knew language later Lawrence learned lives medical professionals memory Mike months move narrative Nel Noddings neurosurgeon night nurses ourselves parents Pat and Mike patients physical pressure Prince Caspian Princeton Day School psychological questions reconstruction response Robert Ronald McDonald House seemed selfhood silence simply social sometimes Sonia space staff story struggle therapist therapy thought THRESHOLD tion told trauma unit traumatic brain injury tried tube vulnerability waiting walk wanted watched weeks wondered words
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Page 6 - Our two souls, therefore, which are one, Though I must go, endure not yet A breach, but an expansion, Like gold to airy thinness beat. If they be two, they are two so As stiff twin compasses are two: Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show To move, but doth if th
Page 5 - As virtuous men pass mildly away, And whisper to their souls to go, Whilst some of their sad friends do say 'The breath goes now,' and some say 'No'; So let us melt, and make no noise, No tear-floods nor sigh-tempests move; 'Twere profanation of our joys To tell the laity our love. Moving of th...
Page 6 - I must go, endure not yet A breach, but an expansion, Like gold to airy thinness beat. If they be two, they are two so As stiff twin compasses are two ; Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show To move, but doth, if th' other do. And though it in the centre sit, Yet when the other far doth roam, It leans, and hearkens after it, And grows erect as that comes home. Such wilt thou be to me, who must Like th' other foot, obliquely run ; Thy firmness makes my circles just, And makes me end where I begun.