When Werther goes to therapy

(Dis)encounters between literature and clinical practice

Abstract

This article explores the intersection between literature and clinical psychology practice, using Goethe's novel The Sorrows of Young Werther as a basis for creating a clinical-literary case study. This case study, inspired by clinical observation and field/clinical diaries, aims to understand how literature can unveil master narratives that shape the expression of suffering, while simultaneously prompting the reader and their process of listening-reading the text to question the psychologist's role. It is argued that reading literary texts demands inhabiting a place of listening where one is urged to lean into the other's text. In this proposal, the encounter between medical humanities and literary analysis is adopted as a methodology to address the complaints reported by the Werthers, whether Werther, the narrator-character of the novel, or Werther, the contemporary subject of the clinic, a composite character constructed as an ethical and aesthetic exercise of reading and listening. The findings highlight the traces of master narratives of restoration, redemption, and probation; the repetition of patterns of interdiction and suffering that emerge in strategies such as the idealization of the female figure; and the role of literature in informing clinical practice based on relational listening taken as an ethical pact.