Re-performing trauma making use of outsider witnessing : a pastoral narrative approach

Abstract

The study focuses on women’s experiences of abuse resulting in trauma. This research performance was conducted within a practical theology framework guided by a de-centred participatory action research process. The study was conducted against a postmodern background and was informed by social construction discourse. Its aim was to explore whether and how narrative pastoral counselling using outsider witnessing could be helpful in finding new preferred ways of living, resulting in healing, resilience and hope for women who had experienced abuse and trauma. The outsider witness group explored practical ways of listening, observing and responding to the pain and suffering of others, resulting in a new performance of the self as valuable, competent, and enabling those who are witnessed to believe that they are survivors that have lived through and beyond the limited life span of abuse and trauma. The research report ends with a play, New Seasons, which is to be performed in front of live audiences in the course of 2012.