Mental Illness and Narrative Complexity

Dr Melanie Kreitler is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Giessen at the Department of Anglophone Literary, Cultural and Media Studies and MSCA fellow at Ghent University, Belgium. She is the author of Mental Illness and Narrative Complexity (Edinburgh University Press, 2025) as well as co-editor of the volume Diversity Issues in the USA (with Greta Olson, transcript, 2024) and the special issues “Illness, Narrated” (with with Silvia Boide, Benjamin Brendel and Maaike Hommes, On_Culture 2021), “Queer Politics in Media and Legal Cultures” (with Laura Borchert, Amerikastudien/AmericanStudies 2024) and “Mental TV” (with Marta Lopera-Mármol, Series 2025).

• List of Figures Introduction: American Psychology, or Mental Illness in Medicine, Media and CulturePart I. In(ter)ception, or Mental Illness and Complex Narratives1. From Classical Structures to Cultural Effects of Complex Narratives of Mental Illness2. An Experiential Approach to Narrative ComplexityPart II. No Country for Old Narratives, or Mental Illness in Puzzle Films3. The Experiential Plot Twist in Fight Club4. Looping Truths in Twelve Monkeys5. Reading an Unreadable Mind in Memento6. Blueprints of Lived Experience, or Mainstreamification and Consciousness-EnactmentPart III. The Unusual Suspects, or Mental Illness in Impossible Puzzle Films7. The Framedness of Experience in I’m Thinking of Ending Things8. Breaking out of the Blueprint, or Character Duplication and Consciousness-AttributionPart IV. Once upon a Time … in American Television, or Mental Illness in Complex TV9. Blending Narrative Scripts in the First Season of Legion10. Metalepsis and Musical Numbers in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend11. Beyond the Blueprint, or Self-Narratives, Metaplots, and the MetaverseConclusion: The Experientiality of Narrative Complexity, or Again(st) Empathy?BibliographyFilmographyIndex

Melanie Kreitler's book stages an important intervention in debates on narrative complexity. It shows convincingly how complex form is not only a source of attractive puzzlement but a tool of serious cognitive and even phenomenological exploration of mental illness. Developing this argument through a series of case studies drawn from contemporary film and TV, Kreitler overturns assumptions about cognitive approaches to media by demonstrating how cognitive and social meaning-making can work in tandem.