Narrative Writing: a Powerful Tool in Coping with Post-Trauma and a Severe

Brain Injury: The Injured Person's Perspective

Prof. Yoram EshetDirector, Research Center for Innovation in Learning

Technologies, The Open University of Israel

The Brain: A Meaning-making Machine

The Brain Injury Paradox• In a brain injury, the ability to create meaning is damaged

– Identify the situation

– Adopt rehabilitation strategies

– Define attitudes/points of view

18.10.1973, Battalion Medical Station west of the Suez Canal

Right Parietal injury

• I didn’t know how it happened

• No awareness to it

• No sense of ownership

• No position towards the trauma and the injury

And thus, thanks to the laws of physics, I was saved from

the horrifying knowledge of my death plunging down from

above. I did not feel the side of my skull crack open like an

eggshell or see pieces of my brain scattered over the

ground,…

God took mercy on me and chose for me an epidural injury,

free of pain and fear. I lost consciousness in the battlefield

and woke up in a hospital bed. And when I opened my eyes,

I had completed my metamorphosis from healthy man to

invalid, from war to peace, from trauma to post-trauma. Like

falling asleep at the beginning of a drive and waking up

when the bus reaches the last stop: disoriented, you shake

your head and try to figure out where you are, how you got

there, and why.

• I find myself paralyzed

• Blind

• Sure I’m a hostage in Egypt

• Can’t read; can’t write

• Don’t understand anything

There is something sly and slippery about brain injury

• It is obscured from the eye

• The wounded person must investigate himself in order to cope with it.

• Mapping the injury takes decades

Assign meaning from Meaningless Memories• Brain injury: A shapeless & meaningless nebula

• Writing process: Framing, demarcating & assigning titles

All I wanted in writing this book was to organize my

murky world. … to bring a little relief to the

unrelenting pain, to shake the dust off dormant

memories, to interpret the events and call them by

their name... And on the way I was reacquainted

with you, my loves, and with spirits I had tried

unsuccessfully to bury. I met myself on the way,

too, and perhaps that was my greatest reward.

Narrative: Creating a Personal Theory

• Defining perspectives & positions

• Resurrection

• Catharsis & redemption

• A Man Walks Home: a personal theory of my trauma &

disability

Once read an interview with a rape victim who described

how her soul left her body during the rape and how she

watched it happen from outside….

Gain Ownership On the Trauma

Therefore, for many years, my disability was like a

stepchild. I had not experienced its labor pains or seen it

emerge from the womb… It is a stranger to me, this

disability that clinged to my flesh uninvited. I do not feel

that I own it. A sharp phantom pain, the echo of an event

I did not experience, yet still—it is the foundation of my

life, and I no longer want it to leave.

Be Your Own Trauma's Director

The curtain is about to fall on the first act of my story. The

actors are in their places, waiting for their cue. The pair of

Egyptian tanks is moving in the distance …

And from his shelter atop a tall structure, the Egyptian

lookout has already located a convenient position. He

watches us from above, seeing but unseen, drawing lines on

the map spread out before him, making calculations, as

lookout officers do, waiting for the signal.

And faraway in the east, my letter makes its way to Noga and

to you, my son. Just a crumpled piece of paper I pushed into

the hands of the soldier who wrote down our names before

we set off to cross the Canal. I wrote because I knew I was

about to die. Just the words of a condemned man whose

heart was frozen by the approaching certainty.

And just as the postal vehicle turned left into the village, the

lookout gave the signal. And in the roads northwards, Noga

travels to visit my parents. She does not know that the signal

has been given, that all her fears are about to come true.

Breaking Free Of the Trap

Of all those memory fragments, I remember to the very last

detail every minute, every second, of the day when I was

struck by my new reality and discovered that my brain

was not as it had been, that I could no longer do the

things intelligent human beings could do, and that

perhaps I was no longer a human being. With the

instincts of a hunted animal, my body filled with

enormous strength - to break through the walls of my

cage, to shake them over and over again until I could be

free.

Intimacy that Comes from a Distance

One night, when he sat down in his usual chair next to my

bed, I stuck out my tongue at the Burnt Soldier and gave him

the finger. “Look what you’ve missed out on, you loser!” I

spat at him. “Look what’s left of you!” I kept on belittling him

and taunting him with my creature comforts until he started

to shrink. His nails loosened their grip and I could feel them

slowly pulling out of my body and the pain gradually melted

away. When I opened my eyes, the Burnt Soldier had

vanished and I was a bird alight, free of pain. He was not

gone forever, …Here and there he even manages to sit down

right next to me. But I am ready for him with welcoming

arms, and I hold him to me as though he were my evil twin.

And with words of love and fondness I imbibe his terrible

catastrophe. Only then does my profound guilt over staying

alive dissipate.

Here you are, telling me everything you wanted to and did

not know how to, I think to myself. Here I am, listening to the

things that so frightened me and sealed off my heart. And I

wonder: How is it that from distance, comes such intimacy?

Defining Attitude Towards Trauma

And then, all at once, like steam from a pressure cooker, we

burst into liberating, belly-shaking, uninhibited laughter.

Commando! In the enemy’s rear! And there we were, a few

dozen men wandering in the desert, abandoned at the foot of

Zayin Sagol, laughing at ourselves, lamenting our misery, still

not knowing that, as they always said in the army, you always

end up getting dicked out of a good day.

Reconciliation Through Writing

you were only two years old, when you slammed your

fists against my door until they bled. Yes, I have many

excuses, and I wish I could offer them to you as

compensation: I was paralyzed, shell-shocked,

suffering from a brain injury. What could anyone expect

of me? Today I am a loaded pistol of longings, hoping

you will forgive me for that moment, for not being able

to contain your fears and be a father to you. And

perhaps the pages I am writing here will be a substitute

for what I could not tell you with my eyes and my

heart—that death had blinded, my child.

Hope I succeeded to say something meaningful to

you

תודה

Tanks

Gracias

תובנות גבוהות שהתגבשו במהלך

הכתיבה

In My Own Way

…like a pedantic researcher, I am relearning my body

by dismantling each movement into countless

components, examining each one and becoming very

familiar with it. Finally, in my own special way, I

reassemble them and manage to create a new

movement—one that works only for me. That is how I

learned to tie my shoelaces my own way, to button my

sleeves in a manner that looks comical but is right for

me, to redraw letters and words with a damaged brain,

and to rethink in my own way. That is how I learned,

and am still learning, to redo almost everything in my

life—in my own way.

Reality Vs. Truth• What really happened there? What did I imagine?

• Private narrative vs. collective narrative

• Where was Zain Segol

?מהו שיקום

עשרות , העובדת הסוציאלית מאגף השיקום שמטפלת בי טוענת שהיום

יש , הרי יש לך בית. אני כבר נחשב נכה משוקם, שנים אחרי שנפצעתי

מה עוד . ואתה מסוגל לדבר וללכת, יש לך אישה ויש ילדים, עבודה

מבית החולים , וייסברודר "ואילו ד. היא שואלת? צריך הבן אדם בחיים

ילדים , אישה, בית, יש לך הכול, נכון. אומר שאני משוקם כנכה, הדסה

, אבל עמוק בפנים אתה חושב כנכה, ואתה מסוגל לדבר וללכת, ועבודה

.פוחד כנכה ופועל כנכה