Narrative-Therapeutical Relationships between So-called Disabled and Abled Characters in Alex Michaelides' Silent patient

Silent Patient is a novel about postmodern, artificial, and socially-based needs such as to love, to be loved, trust, and to be a precious member of the society which mostly remain unfulfilled and make a character disabled. These social disabilities create puzzles in the storyline needed to be solved. Other characters' credentials, abilities, or even disabilities put them in an eligible position to solve the puzzle, thus not only the storyline but even the solution relies on disability, hence disability study and narrative therapy are related fields because the disability of a character may become a cure for the other character and in this position it must be called an ability. Therefore; the present study explores narrative-theapeutical relationships of characters who are socially considered disabled and characters who are socially considered abled. Other types of additional needs such as needs of recreation, rehabilitation, communication, entertainment, and even non-medical therapy persuade people including reader and writer, to choose literature for their needs satisfication. Alex Michaelides, who was being under individual and group therapies for a decade, externalizes his problems indirectly by the use of storywriting which is one of aims of narrative therapy. Readers who also feel for aforementioned needs can use Michaelides′ novel based on their needs whether to be entertained or healed by learning that there are other tellings toward a treumatic event. Accordingly, finding other narratives about an event which are overlapping and reinforcing is also the focus of this study.

Keywords:

Narrative therapy , Disability study , Silent Patient , Alex Michaelides.