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Laplanche begins by defining narration as an approach to the human being that gives primary importance to the way in which he formulates his existence to himself in the form of a more or less
coherent account.17 In psychoanalysis, the narrative attitude consists in privileging the recall of the past or true reconstruction of this— a construction that is coherent, satisfying, and integrated. Vider-man, Spence, and Schafer place the accent on the importance of this narrative as the motive for treatment, a work in common between analyst and analysand.
The criticisms of this viewpoint are many; immediately, the charge of relativism or even “creationism” is raised. The narrative may be a fiction created à deux in the analysis, without regard for any reality or truth. According to an extreme view, the analyst, without regard to the patient's reality, causes fantasies to come into being in the patient's unconscious. This seems to be the case with some passages in Spence and Schafer. A weaker view limits creativity to preexisting, basic structures in the analysand, along with theories of the analyst. Viderman here speaks of “original fantasies,” while Schafer talks of “narrative structures” or “scenarios.” La-planche sees this as a refurbishing of the idea of a retroactive fantasy, which Jung maintained in opposition to Freud.
Another criticism is the narrativists' presentation of the “historical truth” in a caricatured form, in a way that no empiricist would maintain. The historical truth seems to be regarded by these authors as a chronological sequence of atomized facts of which one could give a neutral account. Those who share a hermeneutic bent have raised this as a criticism against both Spence and Viderman.
An important issue is, therefore, the relation between narration and hermeneutics. Hermeneutics, taken in the larger sense of a theory of interpretation, of clarification or intentionality, has many points in common with narration. But hermeneutics is of Heideg-ger