Narratives of Therapy and Trauma: Representations of Mental Health in Contemporary Pakistani Fiction

Abstract

This paper examines how contemporary Pakistani Anglophone fiction represents trauma, therapy, repression, and healing, focusing on Uzma Aslam Khan’s The Geometry of God, Bina Shah’s Before She Sleeps, and Mohammed Hanif’s A Case of Exploding Mangoes. Using trauma theory (Cathy Caruth; Dominick LaCapra) alongside psychological criticism, the study asks whether these novels normalize clinical therapy, treat it with suspicion, or refigure therapeutic practice in culturally specific ways. Through close readings and comparative thematic analysis, I show that formal strategies—silence and fragmentation in Khan, dystopian collectivities in Shah, and satire in Hanif—function as alternative modalities of psychic negotiation. Rather than foregrounding institutional psychiatry, the texts stage therapy as (1) protective silence that doubles as psychic injury; (2) clandestine relational practices that approximate working-through; and (3) humor and parody that operate as communal coping mechanisms. The paper argues that while Caruth’s notion of belated trauma and LaCapra’s acting-out/working-through remain analytically useful, they require cultural calibration: testimony and clinical recovery are not universally available or desirable in contexts marked by stigma, honor politics, and authoritarian risk. By situating these novels within both global trauma studies and Pakistan’s socio-cultural landscape, the study contributes a pluralistic framework for reading literary therapies—one that recognizes silence, solidarity, and satire as legitimate, politically inflected forms of healing. The paper concludes with suggestions for interdisciplinary work linking literary analysis to culturally sensitive mental-health practice.