Only Stories Matter: The Psychology and Neurobiology of Story

Towards enriched narrative political ecologies

“…As Brockman (2013: 452) notes: “the task of a good playwright, a good listener, a good doctor, is not necessarily to know which stories are true, but rather to know which stories count.” The same is true for our research, writing, and policy engagements. Blaser (2013) also provides a clear call to attend further to narrative.…”

“…Emphasizing other aspects of transformative potential, Brockman (2013) offers that stories have always been essential to human history, and are likely to be particularly useful for things that are uncertain, to allay doubts about events past, or to cast hope or potential in terms of the present or future. Recent work in psychology has furthered the idea that stories serve as psycho-social resources that help to foster resilience, empathy, and enable us to navigate difficult situations.…”

“…Apart from how we assign meaning to difficult events through story and emplotment, the retelling of stories of the past also can have the effect of altering our own sense of those events, or how we experienced them. Again, from a neurologic perspective, Brockman (2013) notes that storytelling-just as sleeping and dreaming-helps to consolidate new learning or memories. He discusses the power of story to recast past experiences, with opportunities to performatively shift and recreate memories with each retelling, and thus are subject to disruption.…”

“…They help us connect to the past, and to each other, including enacting connections to place and more-than-human worlds. Stories are mechanisms to help us deal with uncertainty-narratives told through drawing, song, or ritual have long been used to reduce fear, allay doubt, and pose and answer questions about the unknown (Brockman, 2013). What is more, our experiences can be lived again, shared, and even refashioned through story.…”

The Power of Stories

“…They can recall themselves in the past, imagine themselves in the future, and inhabit fictive realms. Contemporary experts on memory from all fields—neurology, cognitive science, and psychoanalysis—now know that memories are never static; every consolidation of a new memory is a reconsolidation of older memories (Person 2006; Solms 2015; Brockman 2013; Lane 2018; Bristol 2019). These findings reinforce the psychoanalytic concept of Nachträglichkeit , that is, the revival and reshaping of repressed memories at later times (Freud 1895).…”