Therapeutic Patterning in Doris Lessing

The theme of self is closely integrated into the act and art of writing and analysing it invites a multidisciplinary focus. Similarly, a study on the aspects of self is broadened within various disciplines like historiography, psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, narratology, hermeneutics, literature and creative writing, to cite a few. The present study explores the enigmatic self within the praxis of narration, and in general focuses on the reciprocal relationship between writing and therapy. Doris Lessing experiments with interactional and relational patterns that act similar to the analyst-analysand modelling in psychotherapy. Her persona as self-writer manipulates intrapersonal interactions among her multiple selves. Similarly, her characters involve in self-reflexive interpersonal dialogues and relationships that leads to a therapeutic goal. The work also attempts to resolve certain complexities in Lessing: for example, she is marked for her obsessive autobiographic interest, an attempt to blur fact and fiction, an ambiguous approach to memory, purposefully problematizing truth and reality, banking on unnatural modes of perception, and ignoring conventional genre distinctions.