Comics, Narrative Structure, and Meaning-Making in Psychotherapy
Abstract
This article examines how engagement with comic narratives may support shifts in how individuals understand and organize their experiences in psychotherapeutic contexts. While graphic medicine has emphasized comics as a means of representing lived experience, less attention has been given to how they may function as structured narrative environments through which continuity, narrative positioning, and meaning can be reconsidered. Drawing on anonymized, practice-informed case examples, this article explores how clients engaged with selected comic narratives understood as contemporary mythic storytelling. Through journaling, visual annotation, and guided reflection, clients examined origin events, narrative roles, and patterns of continuity within their own stories. Across cases, engagement with comics supported recognition of how experiences such as responsibility, unresolved harm, and silence had come to function as ongoing narrative conditions rather than discrete events. Rather than replacing existing narratives, shifts occurred through changes in how these narratives were understood. These observations suggest that graphic narratives may offer a complementary pathway for narrative-oriented psychotherapy, supporting movement at the level of meaning-making without requiring resolution of underlying events.
Keywords
graphic medicine, narrative therapy, comics, meaning-making, psychotherapy
How to Cite
Coghlan, T., (2026) “Comics, Narrative Structure, and Meaning-Making in Psychotherapy”, Graphic Medicine Review 6(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.7191/gmr.1235
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