Exploring Plural Identity Through Creative–Critical Autoethnography

Elayne Smith

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2026
• Print ISBN:
  9781041127277
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781040627167
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Medicine Biographies
• Index: Literature

This book rethinks the relationship between creative practice and critical inquiry in mental health writing. Combining scholarly analysis with lived experience, it develops a distinctive account of dissociative identity disorder, positioning plural subjectivity not only as its subject, but also as its method. The work blends evocative and analytical approaches to explore how writing can embody unknowing, rupture, and difference: What becomes of life writing and identity processing when memory is discontinuous? Focusing on the often-overlooked early stages of the therapeutic journey— help-seeking, psychoeducation, and meaning-making before "living well" narratives take hold— it engages critically with life writing, memoir, autobiography, and autoethnography, while interrogating the social, clinical, and media frameworks that shape understandings of Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), one of the most marginalised forms of neurodiversity. The text theorises as it feels and critiques as it creates, ultimately asking what it means to write—and to be written by—plurality. It will appeal to scholars in the Health Humanities, Literary Studies, especially those with interests in narrative theory and experimental autoethnography, as well as psychologists and sociologists interested in neurodiversity, dissociation, and writing therapy.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction: Dissociative Identity Disorder
• 1 Auto(?)-Biography
• 2 Autoethnography: A Form of Therapy?
• 3 Seeking Help: Poaching Words
• 4 Being Diagnosed: Exploring Etymologies
• 5 Shaping From All Sides
• 6 Experimental Data Curation: Creative and Critical Journalling
• 7 Theoretical Emotions: Poaching Scaffolding
• 8 Calming Safety Storms: Evocative Metaphorical Processing
• 9 Accepting Polyphonic Narrators: Pre-Writing
• 10 Mapping Internal Landscapes: Relational Taxonomies
• Conclusion: We/Us Acceptance
• Bibliography
• Index