Narratives of childhood sexual abuse: healing through music in Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach.

Abstract

Narratives of survivors or by survivors offer useful and compelling insights into the experiences of abuse and its consequent effect on health. Reading such narratives can help a physician or clinician to understand the complexities of abuse. Furthermore, the critical study of narratives can open multiple therapeutic options for survivors of abuse to cater both their mental health and medical problems. In this article, we deal with the genre of childhood sexual abuse survivor's narrative and its clinical application adding to the discourse of medical humanities and then critically examine one such narrative (On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan) in particular and explore the therapeutics of music in abused victim's clinical care.