therapeutic fiction genre
fictions are mental constructs, fantasies by means of which we fashion or “fiction” (fingere) a life or a person into a case history
Portnoy’s Complaint (1969) by Philip Roth
therapy is the theme on which the narrative incidents are hung together … provides the means for focusing and selecting incidents, like a political novel choosing politically relevant events. And usually, the end of the story leads out of therapy into cure and world
Although the listener shapes the tale into the therapeutic genre, the condition of the teller – that which makes him a hospital patient – plays a large part in the form of the tale, especially its stylistics.