This paper aims to contribute to the critical psychological literature on a narrative psychological approach to emotion, particularly with regard to the ways in which critically reflective and metaphorically rich writing enhances our theoretical conceptualization of culturally constituted emotional experiences. We engage the concepts of sjuzet and fabula, initially introduced to the study of literature by the Russian formalists, and later extended by Mikhail Bakhtin, to consider how political dimensions of literary practices in cultural context strengthen reflexive narrative analysis. To illustrate our arguments, we provide analysis of passages from an article by Theodore Sarbin, working with an interpretation of sjuzet and fabula from a Bakhtinian theoretical perspective.
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