One of the problems with narrative is its psychological application in a practical manner. Describing narratives scientifically is a difficult task. A story, however presented, consists of a complex set of rules and statements, which do not necessarily lend themselves to a straightforward analysis, particularly if the analysis must be inked to other variables, such as scores on a measure of PTSD.

The narrative approach, as we have seen, was largely developed in the social sciences, particularly sociology, being ‘brought over’ to psychology in a number of ways by a variety of people. While this has added enormously to psychological understanding, there have been, and remain, issues regarding the scientific use of narrative approaches in psychology, approaches that are acceptable to the broader group of psychologists, many of whom are embedded in the quantitative tradition. For many quantitative psychologists, qualitative approaches are still anathema, so there is a need to demonstrate the utility of such approaches. One example is presented here. This chapter is based on the PhD work of Dr Karen Burnell, whom I jointly supervised with Peter Coleman.

As already discussed, narrative is key to our understanding of our lives, the ways in which we think and the ways in which we interact with other people. It is in our nature to (it is unavoidable to) talk to each other in story form, to explore our identity and to share experiences.