In a disproportionate conflict between the state and a few individuals, the Oufkir family’s survival seemed next to impossible. The Oufkirs’ three narratives to be examined in this essay portray a 20-year life of incarceration in which the working of memory serves to heal up their traumatized psyches due to the process of imprisonment. Drawing on memory studies and trauma studies and deploying the concepts of transnational trauma, conflict, and violence in the context of prison narratives, we propose to examine the destructive aspects of violence meted out on the family members during imprisonment. The torture inflicted on the victims has produced several forms of trauma with which the family members have worked to cope. In all the Oufkirs’ memoirs, the narration of the violence suffered by the family is coupled with the evocation of the strategies that enabled the family as a whole and the individual members to resist. The stylistics of family narration and the use of imagination serve as crucial instruments of what may be termed “therapeutic memory. In this type of memory, the protagonists indulge in a process of narration inspired by both factual and fictional memories to procrastinate their despondency. The power of narration for the Oufkirs is existentially crucial and inspires its elements from what we choose to call "narratotherapy." We highlight that “narratotherapy” builds on what may be termed "taleotherapy," referring to the impact of oral telling in getting healed, and what Suzette Henke refers to as "scriptotherapy," defining the relationship between the act of writing and healing. It is through these two strategies that the incarcerated members have developed a “therapeutic memory," which has eventually succeeded in optimizing their conditions not only for survival but also for an ultimate “fantastic and surreal” escape.
Oudadene et al. (Mon,) studied this question.