Psychology of Violence In the public domain

2016, Vol. 6, No. 1, 49 –56 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/vio0000017

COMMENTARY

Talking About It: Stories as Paths to Healing After Violence

Monisha Pasupathi Robyn Fivush

University of Utah Emory University

Martha Hernandez-Martinez
Casa de Esperanza: National Latin@ Network, St. Paul, Minnesota

Objectives: This commentary had 3 main objectives: to introduce the idea of intersecting narratives in the
context of violence; to outline some research-based considerations about how narratives might play a role
in the aftermath of violence; and to do so using a format that reflects intersecting narratives. Method: We
review findings from research across multiple disciplines interwoven with practice related experience and
personal experiences. Results: Narratives intersect at multiple levels, from within the same individual to
across different cultures and nations. Negotiating conflicting narratives across those intersections may be
key for moving forward after violence. Using narratives in this way requires maintaining a complex story,
one that includes potentially irreconcilable perspectives. This requires creating contexts for negotiating
that complex story. Conclusions: Consideration of stories and the way they intersect has the potential to
inform research and practice, and to transform individual and collective experiences.

Keywords: narrative, listening, context, culture

Humans understand themselves and make sense of the world
around them through stories (Bruner, 1990; Ricouer, 1991). This is
one way to understand what happened during our attendance at a
conference on “Values, Narratives and Resilience” at Sewanee,
TN (organized by Sherry Hamby, Victoria Banyard, & John
Grych). Researchers, practitioners and community activists and
members came together to share individual stories, and through
telling and listening across three days our stories intersected with
one another, and all our stories evolved. This process highlighted
that narratives are dynamic and fluid, changing across telling,
contexts, and time. To understand how all of us tell our stories, we
must reflect on how narratives that we tell, and that we listen to,
are always in the process of being negotiated, contested, negated,
and confirmed. In this commentary, the three of us came together
as professionals, as women of different ages, in multiple roles in
our own personal lives, and of different class, country of origin,
racial and ethnic backgrounds, to talk about what it means to live
within intersecting narratives—particularly when those narratives
concern violence. We discuss narratives at three levels: the intrap-
ersonal, the multiple, and sometimes conflicting narratives indi-
Monisha Pasupathi, Department of Psychology, University of Utah;
Robyn Fivush, Department of Psycholgoy, Emory University; Martha
Hernandez-Martinez, Casa de Esperanza: National Latin@ Network, St.
Paul, Minnesota.
We thank Sherry Hamby, Vicky Banyard, and John Grych for organiz-
ing the conference from which this commentary emerged.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Monisha
Pasupathi, Department of Psychology, University of Utah, 390 S. 1530 E.
Room 502, Salt Lake City, UT 84112. E-mail: pasupath@psych.utah.edu
viduals tell themselves; the interpersonal narratives told between
individuals, often with competing story lines, and collective nar-
ratives, the narratives created over time by communities and cul-
tures that are help define a collective understanding, especially of
difficult histories. We structure this commentary as a conversation
among ourselves, as a series of narratives within narratives, that
helped us to explore these ideas and that we hope will set the stage
for ongoing exploration for others.
Before diving into the conversation, we first provide a bit of
background. Narratives create meaningful sequences of events by
integrating what happened with people’s subjective perspectives
on what those happenings mean, and why they are important
(Fivush, 2001; Fivush, Habermas, Waters, & Zaman, 2011;
McLean, Pasupathi, & Pals, 2007). Multiple theoretical perspec-
tives, including intersectionality theory (Shields, 2008), dialogic
selves theory (Hermans, Rijks, & Kempen, 1993), and feminist
narrative theory (Fivush, 2000, 2004; Gergen, 2001), converge on
the idea that narratives emerge in particular contexts for particular
reasons. It matters who is telling the event, to whom, and for what
reasons (Bordo, 1990). Moreover, the very act of narrating changes
the way the teller (and listener) subsequently understands the event
(Pasupathi, 2001). Thus, narratives are always evolving, both
process and product of ongoing interactions. There is no one
“right” narrative that captures “what really happened” but always
multiple narratives and these multiplicities exist at various levels,
intrapersonally, interpersonally, and collectively.
But to say that there are multiple narratives is not sufficient.
When events are contested and consequential, it is crucial to
negotiate those intersecting narratives toward a narrative that ev-
eryone can accept and live with. Violence of the sort focused on in

49
50 PASUPATHI, FIVUSH, AND HERNANDEZ-MARTINEZ
this journal is consequential and has great potential to be contested
because both individuals and groups have an investment in view-
ing themselves as not culpable (e.g., Baumeister & Hastings, 1997;
Schüutz, 1999). We need to consider how such narratives can be
negotiated, and what we know from research findings about con-
ditions that could facilitate this process. Failure to negotiate inter-
secting narratives of violence is a barrier to healing and moving
on—for victims, perpetrators, and witnesses alike.
The good story, the story that helps people to move on, will be
complex, not easily resolved, and not unitary. Holding this com-
plexity may be difficult given how we have learned to tell stories.
Research on memory and stories tends to show that stories get
simpler and less detailed over repeated tellings (Bartlett, 1932/
1995). But for consequential stories it may be important for the
story to contain dissent, to acknowledge multiple, sometimes di-
vergent, and sometimes irreconcilable, perspectives on the events
(Hammack, 2006). And that is somewhat at odds with a straight-
forward positive resolution. So the need for complex stories re-
quires people—individuals, groups, and communities—to work
hard to avoid losing complexity and over simplifying. This is what
we try to achieve in our conversation: complexity through telling,
listening, negotiating, and restorying. Our conversation ranges
freely among the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and collective levels
in exploring what intersecting narratives mean for our profession
and our practice, and how telling our stories to and with others and
listening to their stories, can help heal experiences of violence. We
weave together our own viewpoints and research findings, and we
struggle with how to bring these ideas into the research and
practice communities.
Intrapersonal, Interpersonal, and Collective
Intersecting Narratives
MP: Perhaps the most obvious level of intersecting narratives is
the interpersonal one—the one reflected in the notion that there
“two sides to every story.” Different people have different expe-
riences of the same event—as witnesses, as victims, as perpetra-
tors, and all can become narrators of those experiences later. In
fact, researchers have shown that perpetrators and victims narrate
the same events of harm in quite different ways—at least when you
are talking about everyday harm (e.g., Schüutz, 1999; Baumeister,
Stillman, & Wotman, 1990; Wainryb, Brehl, & Matwin, 2005).
But there are also different, but intersecting narratives intraperson-
ally, within each of us, about the same event (Hermans et al.,
1993). In our lab, one of our students’ masters theses (Bourne,
2013) showed that children asked to narrate about harming some-
one when the harm was their fault or not their fault often change
their perspective in the course of narrating—this suggests that they
often hold two different stories about the harm (it was my fault,
and it was not) and actively try to put them together. So perpetra-
tors can be of two or more minds.
RF: Holding different intrapersonal narratives reflects different
kinds of multiplicities. As discussed by intersectionality theory
(Shields, 2008), each of us sits in multiple places simultaneously,
so the way I narrate any given experience will depend on which
place I am narrating from, more stable positions such as a person
of a particular race, class, and gender, with a particular develop-
mental history, and more fluid positions, such as sitting in a
particular role at this point in time as a professional, a friend, a
partner, or a parent. Other commentaries in this volume also
highlight the importance of “social location” (Shaw, McLean,
Taylor, Swartout, & Querna, 2016) and the transactional and
contextual nature of narratives (Chan, Hollingsworth, Espelage, &
Mitchell, 2016). Intrapersonal narratives also shift over time, as we
think about events, but especially as we talk with others. Neuro-
science demonstrates that each time we call up a memory and
discuss it with others, the neural signature changes (Dudai &
Edelson, in press), and there is a great deal of research from
developmental and social psychology demonstrating that conver-
sations with others changes our subsequent narratives of an event
(Cuc, Ozuru, Manier, & Hirst, 2006; Fivush et al., 2011; Pasupathi,
2001; Pasupathi & Hoyt, 2010).
MH: An important aspect to consider is the time of the event,
and the context in which the event occurred, which also influences
the version that a person, a dyad or at times, an entire country will
choose to share with others. As more fully discussed by Chan et al.
(2016), the role of culture in shaping our narratives is critical. For
instance, in Latin America there have been different wars and civil
conflicts over the past several decades that have forced those of us
from these countries to have different versions of the events. A
couple’s incident(s) of violence could be explained as part of, or a
result of, the violence occurring in the country around them
(Martin-Baró, 2012). For instance, in the 80s, in my native coun-
try, during the last civil war, there were many violent incidents in
which women were abused and victimized by their partners. For
example, it was well-known that the Minister of Finance at that
time battered his wife. He was never prosecuted or charges were
never brought against him for his violence. One primary reason
could have been that at that time, any action that a woman would
have taken to protect herself, and her children would have been
perceived as an act of disloyalty, betrayal, and disobedience to “the
revolution.” Furthermore, any kind of violence perpetrated by
those “in charge” was accepted and justified. Because the violence
against his wife was occurring during time of war, many would say
that it was necessary or just given the circumstances. In other
words, the violent context in which it was happening justified its
occurrence and lack of response.
MP: These different narratives about a single event— both be-
tween two people, and within the minds of each individual—as
well as the example of justifying domestic violence within a
violent cultural context, call into question the idea that there are
always clear distinctions between perpetrators and victims—and a
lot of research on victim and perpetrator accounts of everyday
harm shows that the same individual tells a different story as a
perpetrator and as a victim (e.g., Baumeister et al., 1990; Wainryb
et al., 2005), which just underscores that we are all victims and we
are all perpetrators.
RF: Yes, and these differing versions matter. Especially when
they are contested, the question arises as to which one becomes the
“accepted” version of what happened, in what we tell ourselves,
what we tell others and what others believe. This raises the issue
of power, who has the authority to author the story (Fivush, 2000,
2004, 2010). Those who are allowed voice, who are allowed to
both say what happened and what it means, have power, real
power to create and maintain economic, political, and cultural
structures that perpetuate certain belief systems and silence others
(Bordo, 1990).
 INTERSECTING NARRATIVES ABOUT VIOLENCE
MH: And please let’s also consider that there is a risk of
perceiving the suffering caused by violence as an “individual
suffering” (Bracken, Giller, & Summerfield, 1995) and not as an
interpersonal experience. Suffering should not be seen as an indi-
vidual construct but as a collective experience. This is an important
theme that is developed throughout many of the commentaries in
this volume (Chan et al., 2016; Howell et al., 2015; Shaw et al.,
2016).
MP: Martha’s points about the larger context of violence and
that suffering is collective encompasses another narrative level—
the collective level—and of course, it’s also important for people
to agree on what happened in a collective violent episode, and it
matters for current concerns. Consider that there is broad consen-
sus on what happened during the Holocaust, which has allowed for
efforts at reparations, memorial-building, and other collective ap-
proaches to coping (e.g., Young, in press) At collective levels,
media coverage, historical research, and formal structures (e.g., the
truth and reconciliation commissions in South Africa and other
places) provide a forum within which contested narratives can be
negotiated (Villa-Vicencio & Verwoerd, 2000). But narratives can
also be silenced at the collective level. For example in the United
States, government efforts to annihilate Native cultures and peo-
ples have often silenced Native American stories, and Native
individuals are shockingly absent from all kinds of public media
(Leavitt, Covarrubias, Perez, & Fryberg, 2015).
MH: But it is not only in the United States, another good
example of a collective narrative that was silenced is what hap-
pened in Chile long after the coup d=etat in 1973. Years after the
change in government, the world learned how many people were
taken and tortured during the 80s (U.S. Department of State,
1985), and how Chileans learned to live in fear, denial, and guilt
(Comas-Diaz, & Padilla, 1990). So it is not just one person or
group that can be silenced by another, it can also be an entire
nation that chooses to silence a collective memory.
RF: Absolutely. How cultures interpret and reinterpret their own
history, both the dominant narratives and the emerging marginal-
ized narratives inform both collective and individual memory (Erll
& Nunning, 2008). We see this, for example, in how individual
Germans tell their own stories about the Nazi atrocities depending
on if and how they understand their parents’ and grandparents’
involvement (Tschuggnall & Welzer, 2002), or how young Pales-
tinians and Israelis’ shape their individual stories through the
cultural narrative (Hammack, 2006). For narratives to become
collectively shared, they must be listened to and heard. This
happens at the collective level, as just discussed and also at the
interpersonal level. Work from my lab has shown that, during the
preschool years, when mothers validate their children’s versions of
events, children show higher levels of emotional understanding
(Fivush, 2004), and as children enter adolescence, families that are
able to negotiate and elaborate multiple family member’s perspec-
tives on stressful events have adolescents who show higher levels
of self-esteem and psychological well-being (Bohanek et al., 2009;
Marin, Bohanek, & Fivush, 2008).
MP: That work shows that the negotiated narrative has real
impact on well-being. Importantly, as Howell et al. (2015) discuss,
well-being must be conceptualized as a positive construct; it is not
the absence of illness, but the attainment of satisfaction, having a
sense of meaning and purpose in life. Negotiated narratives also
impact what people remember going forward. But it’s worth think-
51
ing about how listening, and being heard, might happen. We know
that at the interpersonal level, people who listen can foster explo-
ration of distressing experiences—this is true for friends, romantic
partners, and parents (Jennings, McLean, & Pasupathi, 2013; Pa-
supathi & Hoyt, 2009; Weeks & Pasupathi, 2011), as well as for
interviewers (Josselson, 2003; Twali, 2013). Sometimes listeners
help people do that exploration just by being there, attentive, and
responsive— but other times, they help foster particular perspec-
tives—asking the narrator to consider alternative explanations for
the experience. In fact, listeners who express disagreement effec-
tively can help people consider alternative perspectives on events
and avoid an overly simplistic story (McLean & Jennings, 2012;
Hirst & Manier, 1996). But it’s tricky—we need to allow people to
tell their own narrative in their own way, and also in their own
time; forcing people to talk about their experience when they are
still too “raw” can backfire, as discussed by Taylor, Jouriles,
Brown, Goforth, and Banyard (2016). Disagreement can also result
in more rigid and polarized views, as narrators sometimes
respond to disagreement from listeners by elaborating the rea-
sons for their own view (Pasupathi & Rich, 2005). Because we
are all listeners, we can strive to be open and help people
explore when possible.
RF: This kind of “negotiated narrative” exists intrapersonally as
well. We see this in studies where individuals are asked to narrate
stressful events across several days. Individuals who are able to
create more coherent narratives across time, but especially those
who can integrate multiple perspectives into their narratives, see-
ing it from multiple people’s points of view, show higher levels of
both psychological and physical health (Graci & Fivush, 2015;
Pals, 2006; McAdams, 2006; McLean et al., 2007; Pennebaker &
Chung, 2007).
MP: Work on forgiveness often emphasizes the process by
which victims explore and consider the perspective of the perpe-
trator—not in dialogue with the perpetrator, but rather within their
own minds—again, suggesting that people have multiple stories
“inside” their own heads (Knutson, Enright, & Garbers, 2008;
Twali, 2013). Moreover, in these cases, coming to that story that
also includes the perpetrator’s perspective is an important aspect of
eventually reaching a kind of forgiveness. Some people think that
open, responsive listening from another person actually enables the
varying internal narratives and voices within the person to be heard
(Castro, Cohen, Tohar, & Kluger, 2014; Kluger, 2015; Rogers,
1961). On that note, when groups make space for constructive
dialogue between people, about difficult, traumatic, and violent
events, that can allow varying narratives between different indi-
viduals to be heard. For example, victim-centered aspects of court
cases are, in part, about allowing victim’s stories to be heard. And
restorative approaches to justice both at the interpersonal and the
collective levels often involve creating a context and process for
negotiating all the different narratives about violent events that
exist. The prototypical example, really, is the South African Truth
and Reconciliation Commission (TRC; Villa-Vicencio & Verwo-
erd, 2000; Pennebaker & Banasik, 1997). For me, some of the
most interesting ideas here actually come from thinking “across
levels”—about how the collective and interpersonal contexts can
make space for more versions of the story to be told even intrap-
ersonally. There’s certainly a lot more work researchers can do
here—it’s hard to evaluate whether efforts like the South African
TRC have been effective, because there isn’t any way to easily
52 PASUPATHI, FIVUSH, AND HERNANDEZ-MARTINEZ
compare with the alternative approaches. One can compare across
different historical conflicts, but this of course introduces a lot of
differences that make it complicated to draw conclusions. And you
can look at perceptions of effectiveness, but again, that may fall
short of a full accounting (Vora & Vora, 2004). So of necessity,
researchers interested in collective issues will need to be doing
interdisciplinary work, with sociologists, anthropologists, political
scientists, lawyers, and historians.
MH: Yes and even the South African TRC has not been ex-
empted of critiques regarding its effectiveness on bringing recon-
ciliation (Summerfield, 1997). And I totally agree it is vital to have
a space where different versions or opinions of a story can be
heard, and I would add to that the need to include the community
and utilize the notions of traditional justice as vital elements that
have proved to make a difference, such in the case of the Liberia
Truth and Reconciliation Commission (De Ycaza, 2013). And we
need to really understand how the community defines their own
problems and how they think resolutions needs to be achieved, as
discussed by Yuan et al. (2016). In my work in domestic violence
prevention with Latino men, I have found myself witnessing the
value that community involvement and dialogue can have in
addressing difficult issues or creating a narrative around violence.
A couple of years ago, I facilitated a conversation with one group
about how to engage Latino men in prevention efforts against
domestic violence. This was possible because we created a space
for a constructive dialogue by not diving into the problem imme-
diately. As an icebreaker, we asked people to talk about who they
were, where they came from, what challenges they faced as well as
about what -their expectations of the meeting were. This ice-
breaker was really the key to our conversation; it allowed the
group to feel comfortable enough to admit that domestic violence
was an issue in their community. Instead of avoiding or denying
that violence happens, the group termed violence as a “problem.”
Some even acknowledged witnessing or knowing couples who
were dealing with it. From there, the group began to discuss the
reasons why violence happens, listening to others and expressing
their agreement or disagreement with their viewpoints. When one
of the men used the term “power” to describe the experience of
violence caused by perpetrators, another man in the group chal-
lenged that idea. For the second man, power did not have anything
to do with violence. Both men exchanged words for a few minutes,
until the man who brought the term of power made this comment:
“Oh, my brother. Brother, when women die, it is a problem, and it
is all about power. Sorry but it is true.” I will never forget that
exchange, we had some minutes of silence, and it was really
intense I could feel that it was very emotional for all of us.
However, after one of them broke the silence, I saw in these men
an impetus in trying to offer ideas about what we needed to do to
engage other men in prevention efforts. That day, at that meeting
we had the context and the space to open ourselves to a construc-
tive dialogue and the ideas that emerged from that dialogue have
become the cornerstone of our engaging men initiative—Te Invito
(I Invite You; National Latin@ Network, 2014). We were all able
to talk through difficult topics and to listen to one another’s
narratives. I have heard similar stories from our advocates about
how important it is to have the right space and to create the
moment. In our shelter, that moment is always in the evening, after
all the tasks are completed. Participants sit around the kitchen table
and talk. As one of our more senior advocates said, “That is when
the real work is done, when we get together and have the chance
to talk and let things out.” This experience of talking and
sharing has proved to be so vital for us that it is now part of our
new staff orientation. We make sure that we have the time to
listen to others and to listen to ourselves. Otherwise, we think,
it would be difficult or even impossible to do the work that we
do every day.
RF: So active listening is key. As we tell our stories to others,
to those who agree and validate what we say, to those who disagree
in a respectful and constructive way, and to ourselves over time,
the narrative changes. And as individuals and groups change the
narrative, the cultural narrative begins to shift, and begins to
provide different “master narratives,” different ways in which
individual experience is cast as meaningful for the collective
(Fivush, 2010; Thorne & McLean, 2003; McLean & Breen, in
press). In a very real way, intrapersonal, interpersonal, and collec-
tive narratives are always intersecting, always influencing each
other. So listening to any individual narrative means simultane-
ously listening to our own narrative and the collective narrative as
frames for what we are hearing.
Narrative Research as Intervention
Community practitioners understand the power of intersecting
narratives and use it, at least implicitly, in their work. This is a
theme that resonates throughout the commentaries in this volume.
But within the academic research community, we need to reflect
on how and what we are asking of our research participants and
how we enter into a narrative world with them in ways that are
meaningful for the research context, as well as for the researcher
and participants as individuals interacting in a significant interper-
sonal exchange (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990). The majority of
research within psychology takes a logical positivist position,
assuming the researcher to be an objective observer of some
standardized behavior produced by a subject. This is never an
accurate assessment of the research interaction (see Rosser &
Miller, 2000, for a full discussion), but especially not for narrative
research (see Fivush, 2013, for a full discussion). Here, the re-
searcher and the participant come together in an interaction in
which the researcher asks the participant to share intimate and
often difficult details of their life experiences, and this interaction
changes, even if subtly, both the researcher and the participant.
As illustrated in our conversation above, through the very act of
telling and listening, individuals influence each other. Here, we
provide personal accounts and reflections on ways that the
conference and our broader experiences have changed our nar-
ratives:
RF: I had done a good bit of research on narratives of various
forms of traumatic events, but in this one study, I was interviewing
women who had been severely sexually abused by a family mem-
ber during childhood (Fivush & Edwards, 2004). I started with my
“research protocol,” the standardized set of interview questions, as
I sat down with each of these women. The women knew why they
were being asked to participate, yet they asked me if I was sure I
wanted to hear what they had to say, especially the details. Many
expressed concern about how hard it would be for me to hear their
stories. The interviews quickly changed from a researcher–subject
standardized protocol to two women discussing very difficult
experiences. Although I had not experienced childhood sexual
 INTERSECTING NARRATIVES ABOUT VIOLENCE
abuse, their openness to sharing their stories with me changed me,
both as a person and as a researcher. I began a process of under-
standing how individuals who participate in research are an inte-
gral part of the research process, essentially coresearchers in
exploring what these events mean and how to understand them. By
listening to their stories and really trying to hear them, I changed
(I hope) in my ability to listen and to be open to what they were
saying rather than to my preconceived notions. Just as the partic-
ipants were really coresearchers, as a researcher I was really also
a coparticipant; these “lines” that we create are blurry at best;
interacting with others through narratives is always a process that
changes all the interactants; as Martha put it in one of our con-
versations, “We are all subjects. We never end where we start;
there is always transformation.” This changed my theoretical un-
derstanding of how and why narratives of trauma may be benefi-
cial and/or detrimental, and helped me as a researcher to develop
new theoretical models that I believe better express lived experi-
ence. (Fivush, 2004, 2010) Importantly, I think the research expe-
rience changed many of the women too. Many of the women said
that this was the first time they told many of the details of their
stories, and that the telling itself was healing. In fact, there is
evidence that simply participating in a research study and telling
difficult narratives of violence and trauma just once to a researcher
has positive benefits for the teller (Legerski & Bunnell, 2010;
Newman & Kaloupek, 2004). What I take from this, and subse-
quent experiences, is that who we are as researchers, the questions
we ask, and the theoretical frameworks we use to interpret our data
are interleaved with who we are as individuals; our own intersect-
ing personal and professional narratives are dialectically related
both intrapersonally and with the narratives of our multiple re-
search participants. Research occurs within the tapestry of com-
plex lives, in which researchers and participants come together, all
with complicated histories and agendas, to create new ways of
understanding. Knowledge is not imposed, but created in these
moments of intersecting narratives (Gergen, 2001). And each time
we are involved in a narrative interaction, both researcher and
participant leave that interaction changed, each contributing to the
other in significant ways.
MH: Yes, absolutely, in my case in my own personal experience
with war, poverty, immigration, and with a mother who was a
survivor of domestic violence, all these events and circumstances
have always affected my work. It is impossible and unrealistic for
me to try to separate my own experience from my research
(Martin-Baró, 2012). I am always trying to understand what hap-
pened, what was going on during the war, what were the condi-
tions in which I grew up, were those conditions the ones that have
allowed the violence to persist and to spread to other places? Has
my native country been able to create a narrative where other
participants are included? Is there a space for dialogue and recog-
nition of different narratives? Have we been able to move and
create a different future? Unfortunately, I do not have answers for
these questions, but I am glad that I am able to express them,
because for those like me that have lived through these experiences
the first step in healing is being able to talk and then to share our
narrative with the rest of the world to learn.
MP: Martha’s and Robyn’s points here raise, for me, the ways
that even laboratory research is an intersection of participant’s
stories, researcher’s own stories, and the larger world we all
live in.
53
For me, I came to the conference feeling like, for the most part,
I do research on what interests me, not on what will help anyone
else or make the world better. And this has increasingly nagged at
me over time. So I was interested in trying to understand whether
I am positioned, as a researcher, to offer something of value in
trying to make a more just world. In talking about intersecting
narratives, across the intraindividual, interpersonal, and collective
levels, I think there are important and unanswered questions about
what level of consensus in narratives is required— how much
contested meaning can be “held” within a relationship or a
collective?
Agreeing to disagree means holding a complex narrative— one
in which there might be no satisfying resolution. That is hard to do.
It also seems likely that how much disagreement can be “held” is
not some constant—it is likely to be contextual—for example, at
the interpersonal level, are the perpetrator and victim to maintain
a relationship? What kind of relationship—in the case of domestic
violence—is this coparenting or trying to salvage a marriage? At
the within-person level, we seem to have a capacity and tolerance
for internal inconsistency of which we are not aware (Shoda,
McConnell, & Rydell, 2014), but less tolerance for internal incon-
sistency of which we are aware (Festinger, 1957). So, the more we
are aware of competing narratives within ourselves, the greater the
press to organize those competing narratives. To make matters
more complicated, our tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty
also seems to vary by persons (Neuberg, Judice, & West, 1997). In
the case of collective violence, what levels of dissent can leave
different factions on relatively equal grounds for opportunity and
life in the future? Group differences in perceptions about negoti-
ated narratives may or may not be congruent with actual remaining
disparities in society—in South Africa, the group most satisfied
with the effectiveness of the TRC may arguably still have the least
economic and political power in the current, post-Apartheid era
(Vora & Vora, 2004). So, I think that for myself as a researcher, it
may be important to start addressing the kind of questions about
consensus that our discussion raises for me across all levels of
intersecting narratives.
The End of One Conversation and the
Beginning of Another?
The three of us came to this conference and this writing project
with different stories and different agendas. What we gained
through our conversation for ourselves is the beginning of a
relationship and a dialogue. What we hope sharing our conversa-
tion with others will accomplish is a reflection on how the stories
we tell ourselves and others matter for how we understand the
ways in which narratives of violence both perpetuate and hopefully
heal those experiences for individuals, communities, and cultures.
We underscore several key points raised in this commentary:
1. Both research and community practice highlights the
need to provide a safe space for individuals to tell their
own story in their own way. This, in turn necessitates that
all of us reflect on what it means to come to these
interactions with our own stories, and that our own sto-
ries shape what we hear and what others can tell us.
54 PASUPATHI, FIVUSH, AND HERNANDEZ-MARTINEZ
2. Any given story is, by definition, a snapshot. We must
always keep in mind that stories are told differently in
different contexts, with different listeners for different
reasons, and that stories evolve over time. Stories are
always a process.
3. Individual narratives are embedded in cultural and his-
torical narratives that constrain, and sometimes silence,
what can be said.
4. Especially for narratives of violence and trauma, the
process of coming to a shared cultural and historical story
is difficult, and we must acknowledge that stories are
complex and sometimes irreconcilable. We must be cau-
tious about privileging any one version over any other,
but rather, we must strive to be able to hold complexity
and discrepancy as valuable tools for healing.
5. We can all invest on our own well-being by investing in
our narratives, giving ourselves the chance to develop our
resilience in stories.
We need to start investing more in opportunities for real and
difficult dialogues among all of us, in all our roles, and through all
our narratives. We are all survivors, perpetrators, and witnesses,
although to differing degrees. Perhaps, through this dialogue and
story sharing, we will all find a way to heal.
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Received July 15, 2015
Accepted August 10, 2015 䡲