The Good Story: Exchanges on Truth, Fiction and Psychotherapy by J.M. Coetzee

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


"... we can entertain the notion that we are continually engaging with constructions (fictions) of others, rather than with their 'real' selves [...] We can also entertain the more plausible (and more interesting) notion that our engagements are with a constantly changing interplay between shadows (fictions) and glimpses of the real."

The Good Story (2015) by J.M. Coetzee and Arabella Kurtz is based on a fascinating premise. This non-fiction volume is framed as a discussion between Mr. Coetzee, the Nobel Prize winning writer (and one of my most favorite authors), and Dr. Arabella Kurtz, a British psychotherapist. This combination of specialties is not as farfetched as it might seem: we read in the Authors' Note that literature and psychotherapy have a lot in common: for instance, the interest in human experience, the use of language as the "common working medium," and the analysis of "narrative structures."

The book is divided into chapters that focus on topics such as truth, memories and their repression, relationships between people, group experiences and mentality. The authors discuss issues of subjective truth, dynamic (evolving) truth, intersubjective truth and the closely related topics of malleability of memory, self invention, and psychotherapy as a scheme to create (reconstruct) a patient's memories.

I have found everything in the book interesting but the theme that I relate to most strongly is the one I refer to in the epigraph: human relationships as interactions between projected fictions. Here Mr. Coetzee even mentions the so-called Turing test for dialogue where one has to decide whether their interlocutor (who is not visible) is an actual human being or rather a computer program. Another of his key observations is:

"[...] relations between people as a matter of interlocking fictions. When the fictions interlock well, the relation works or seems to work (I am not sure that there is a difference between the two). When they don't interlock, conflict or disengagement follow."

When noting the human tendency toward creating fictions about themselves, Dr. Kurtz claims "We need the fictions of others to know ourselves", Mr. Coetzee clarifies the claim:

"We need the fictions of others about us in order to form our fictions of ourselves."

If it were proper to take sides in the discussion between Mr. Coetzee and Ms. Kurtz, I would certainly be on the author's side. I agree with most everything he says in the discussion and - more importantly - I believe that the ideas he puts forward are deeper and more fundamental. To me, Ms. Kurtz is too immersed in the Freudian canon with its limited and restrictive intellectual toolkit. To me her most important contributions are the fascinating insights into the practice of psychotherapy.

A captivating, illuminating, and deep read which I would rate with five stars if not for the fact that the authors too often talk past each other and not necessarily with each other. Still, a great book!

Four and a quarter stars.



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