Memoir-Writing: A Mode of Self-Care and Patient Empowerment in Annabel Abbs's The Joyce Girl (2016).

Abstract

This article examines the clinical care communication between Lucia Joyce (the daughter of James Joyce) and Carl Jung in Annabel Abbs's The Joyce Girl. This paper particularly scrutinises how Lucia employs Jung's clinically prescribed mechanism of memoir-writing as a tool for patient empowerment and for exercising agency in talking cure sessions. Abbs's novel opens with Lucia's descent from being damned to fame with her triumphant and enchanting performance as a mermaid at the Bal Bullier to being doomed to quit dancing. The novel creatively resurrects Lucia's emotional turmoil on leaving dancing, familial turbulence, failure of romantic pursuits, and her eventual inescapability from clinical confinement. Between the extremes of a chaotic familial environment and a disciplined clinical restraint, Jung's prescription of memoir-writing is the only cathartic and artistic culvert for Lucia to express her suppressed trauma and unbridled emotions. This paper discusses how Lucia employs Jung's clinical prescription of memoir-writing as a mode of self-care and a tool to exercise her agency, thereby, following the good patient script.