Tracing childhood trauma, bullying and abuse in Margaret Atwood’s “Cat’s Eye”: Could Elaine Risley be helped by inner child work?

Abstract

Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood is a story about female friendships, childhood bullying, and the way our past almost always follows us into our present. The paper aimed to explore protagonist Elaine Risley’s unresolved childhood trauma and abuse, and whether certain counselling techniques could have helped, with a focus on inner child work. The paper thus attempted to draw parallels between Elaine’s life and the possibility of inner child work in therapy. It also tried to address the problems that might arise during the process, the foremost of it being lack of initiative. The paper serves as a possibility of understanding real world individuals and their early childhood trauma through the hypothetical presence of a fictional character, Elaine Risley, in the therapy room