The Role of Defense in the Life Story

In modern societies, adults typically provide their lives with some sense of unity and purpose by constructing self-defining life stories that serve as their identities. Such stories are told to others and to an internalized audience or listener who serves as an ultimate judge and interpreter of the narrative. Defense mechanisms specify narrative strategies that persons use to shape how their lives are told to others and to their internalized audiences. Life events and experiences are incorporated into a life story to the extent that the internalized audience can make sense of the telling. Defenses function to make some stories more tellable than they might otherwise be and to keep other potentially storied accounts from ever reaching the status of being told.     

Narratives of trauma,recovery, and growth: The complex role of sport following permanent acquired disability

ObjectivesThe purpose of this study was to explore how participation in sport may assist an individual in working through experiences of physical trauma.DesignAn instrumental, collective case study was used to illustrate the experiences of two men with acquired disabilities.MethodBoth men participated in sport at a high level and suggested that participation was a central feature of their recovery from trauma. Interviews invited participants to describe their lives pre-trauma, the trauma experience, and the recovery process. A narrative analysis was used to focus on the progression of the plot outlined in each participant's story.ResultsOur results exemplify two narrative types: assimilation and positive accommodation. The narrative of positive accommodation demonstrates how sport provided mastery experiences, enhanced relationships, corporeal understanding and enhanced life philosophies. The alternative narrative of assimilation was associated with resilience to trauma. Our case illustrates that such a narrative may be focused on re-capturing previous life meanings and creating an athletic identity using past definitions of sport.ConclusionWhile the narrative of positive accommodation is most frequently associated with posttraumatic growth, our case outlines the occurrence of synchronous positive and negative experiences, even within the same dimensions of growth. The narrative of assimilation demonstrates the challenges presented by the rehabilitation and sporting environments for an individual who aimed to restore their pre-trauma self and pre-trauma beliefs.     

Life story research: A relevant methodology for counsellors and psychotherapists

Aims: This paper introduces, describes and proposes life story research as an important, relevant and appropriate contribution to counselling and psychotherapy research. It shows how narrative knowledge is created and constructed through the stories people tell about their lived experiences and explores the concept of ‘narrative knowing’ (Bruner, 1986). Methods: Drawing on life story research with people who linked their history of problematic drug use with experiences of historic trauma/abuse, the paper contributes to the ongoing discussion related to the similarities/differences between therapy and research and what we might learn from each that informs the other. Implications for practice: The paper offers narrative ideas and practices as ways of researching matters of social and psychological importance. It suggests that therapists (and counselling researchers) could learn from what participants tell us about the therapeutic value of using life story methods which one participant described as helping him to face ‘out into the world, without unduly or specifically delving into, or focusing on [my] emotional state’. This learning may be particularly relevant for therapists working with traumatised clients.     

Theorizing the Narrative Dimension of Psychotherapy and Counseling: A Big and Small Story Approach

In this article, we develop a theoretically substantiated narrative framework for assessing psychotherapy practices, based on a big and small story approach. This approach stretches the narrative scope of these practices by making explicit and advancing small story counseling. We demonstrate how this framework can be a reflection tool by systematically applying six story dimensions to an example from army counseling. Small story dimensions one (multiple storytellers) and three (ways of ordering experience) draw attention to which persons and stories we do not engage with in counseling practices. Small story dimension two (future and on-going temporal orientation) marks a shift towards language of (future) potential, rather than a language of deficit. Small story dimensions four (low tellability) and five (fluent moral stance), reinstate the art of listening to client words, and remind us to resist the inclination to interpret these too easily in terms of a specific counseling theory or moral framework. Finally, small story dimension six (embeddedness) encourages counseling-on-the-move. Finally, we discuss the implications of widening the narrative scope of psychotherapy and counseling, such as the need to develop small story competence and to assess the therapeutic quality of everyday talk.     

Reauthoring One's Own Life in the Face of Being HIV+: Promoting Healthier Narratives with Metacognitive Interpersonal Therapy

We describe here a narrative-based psychotherapy for a woman in her 40s who had been HIV+ since the age of 21 and who suffered from posttraumatic symptoms related to having received the diagnosis. She had also suffered from self-stigma and had lost the capacity to envision a future filled with hope. Treating individuals with HIV who face posttraumatic symptoms and stigma can be challenging for the clinician. A narrative approach to therapy can be helpful for these persons, in order to overcome symptoms, build a more benevolent self-image, feel accepted by society, and promote posttraumatic growth. Current evidence indicates that such an approach is mostly lacking. We describe how we applied metacognitive interpersonal therapy—an approach rooted in narrative constructivism. By using this treatment, the patient could overcome posttraumatic symptoms, participate in social activities after years of avoidance and isolation, and recover her sense of being a person able to make plans for the future with strength and dignity. Discussion includes ideas of how to generalize some of the mechanisms that have likely been effective in this therapy to other individuals with HIV.     

The role of narrative in career construction theory

Career construction theory (CCT) (Savickas, 2005) approaches career counseling and career development from a constructivist and narrative perspective. As career theories move towards incorporating holistic approaches that take into consideration individuals' subjective experiences, narrative theory offers a means to draw out and clarify this story. Career construction theory, effectively integrates narrative and career conceptualizations to holistically create clarity in understanding what, how, and why individuals author their lives and careers in order to help individuals develop a cohesive identity, adapt within their environment, and construct the next chapter of their career story.     

Thinking ethically about inclusive recreational sport: A narrative of lost dignity

Through narrative reflections of Jack’s story of inclusive recreational sport, the meaning of dignity in professional practice is explored. Jack’s story is one of respect, strong humiliation and embarrassment, and vulnerability. Through the lens of relational ethics, the aggression of a stranger illustrates how the lack of mutual respect, compassion and knowledge creates experiences of indignity. Jack’s story highlights how relationships can shape, constrain and enable lives. Understanding that which constitutes a dignified recreational sport context for instructors and participants opens opportunities for authentic social relationships based upon respect of oneself, as well as others to emerge. Jack’s narrative further reinforces the need to create pedagogical spaces for discussions of various forms of dignity and ethical professional practice in inclusive recreational sport contexts.     

Self-Control Depletion and Narrative: Testing a Prediction of the TEBOTS Model

This study tests propositions derived from the larger notion that entertainment narratives offer the individual a means by which to alleviate the psychological demands of the self. Specifically, individuals in a state of reduced self-control were expected to experience greater enjoyment, audience response, transportation, and identification during narrative exposure. After a manipulation that depleted self-control resources, participants were exposed to a short story. They then reported their enjoyment and response to the story, as well as their transportation and identification during reading. Results supported the predictions, as enjoyment, audience response, and transportation were significantly greater in the depleted group. Identification showed a nonsignificant difference. Additionally, transportation was found to be a mediator of self-control depletion's effect on enjoyment. Subsequent analyses ruled out alternative mood management and emotion regulation explanations, demonstrating that depleted self-control resources, rather than affect or story valence, accounted for greater narrative engagement.     

Parents’ Autobiographical Narratives: Setting Events for Their Contemplation of Mindful Changes

The ability to tell a coherent and rich story about one’s personal life is an important marker of an individual’s capacity and willingness to contemplate personal change. We review research on correlations between the coherence of parents’ narrative accounts of life experiences and their responsiveness during interactions with their children. Based on this review, we explore ideas about the nature of narrative coherence, how parents might be taught to improve this structural feature when telling their stories, and why a well constructed story might enhance the parents’ objective study of the here and now. We discuss how the effects of narrative restructuring may enable parents to be more cognitively mindful of their interactions with their children. We present our speculations in the spirit of promoting discussion of new clinical strategies for parents and new research strategies aimed at experimental analyses of observed connections between parent narratives and their willingness to contemplate personal change.     

Both sides of the story: explaining events in a narrative

Our experience of narrative has an internal and an external aspect--the content of the narrative’s representations, and its intentional, communicative aetiology. The interaction of these two things is crucial to understanding how narrative works. I begin by laying out what I think we can reasonably expect from a narrative by way of causal information, and how causality interacts with other attributes we think of as central to narrative. At a certain point this discussion will strike a problem: our judgements about what is a relevant possibility within the narrative’s story depend on our judgements of probability; but these latter judgements depend, in turn, on factors external to the world of the story, and cannot be explained in terms of causal relations available within the story. We need the external, author-centred perspective at this point. These different perspectives, the internal and the external, correspond to different types of explanations we may give of events in a story; I call these internal and external explanations. I show how these different explanations are made use of in two contrasting arthistorical projects. I use these examples as the basis for a generalisation about the structure of the two explanatory forms. Finally, I suggest some ways in which explanations of these two kinds relate to one another, and to our thinking when we are engaged by a narrative.

Narrative of “Here-and-Now”: Cancer Survivors in a Group Psychotherapy Using SCT® (Systems-Centered Therapy)1,2

This study focused on “here-and-now” narrative and examined the process of group psychotherapy for cancer survivors using systems-centered therapy (SCT). In contemporary society, cancer survivors have a vital need for psychological support, and group psychotherapy and peer support are used as part of this need. In most of these interventions, participants are encouraged to speak freely and share their experience of cancer. This generally means speaking about “there-and-then” experience. It has been argued that one reason that narrative therapy produces a psychological effect is that the meaning of an experience changes when the experience is spoken about. SCT differs significantly from other group interventions in that it requires participants to talk about their here-and-now experience through the format of SCT's “functional subgrouping.” Functional subgrouping requires participants to listen, reflect, and build on similarities in their experience. In this study, we qualitatively examined how participants' experiences unfolded in the SCT group by directly addressing the group process. The study findings revealed that even though the participants did not directly share their cancer experiences in the group, they experienced an inexplicable sense of connectedness that had a positive psychological effect on them. They also experienced deep emotions through talking while using the SCT narrative style. In the process, the effects of the SCT narrative were discussed.     

The feeling of the story: Narrating to regulate anger and sadness

Admonitions to tell one's story in order to feel better reflect the belief that narrative is an effective emotion regulation tool. The present studies evaluate the effectiveness of narrative for regulating sadness and anger, and provide quantitative comparisons of narrative with distraction, reappraisal, and reexposure. The results for sadness (n?=?93) and anger (n?=?89) reveal that narrative is effective at down-regulating negative emotions, particularly when narratives place events in the past tense and include positive emotions. The results suggest that if people tell the “right” kind of story about their experiences, narrative reduces emotional distress linked to those experiences.     

Narrative self-appropriation: embodiment,alienness, and personal responsibility in the context of borderline personality disorder

It is often emphasised that persons diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD) show difficulties in understanding their own psychological states. In this article, I argue that from a phenomenological perspective, BPD can be understood as an existential modality in which the embodied self is profoundly saturated by an alienness regarding the person’s own affects and responses. However, the balance of familiarity and alienness is not static, but can be cultivated through, e.g., psychotherapy. Following this line of thought, I present the idea that narrativising experiences can play an important role in processes of appropriating such embodied self-alienness. Importantly, the notion of narrative used is that of a scalar conception of narrativity as a variable quality of experience that comes in degrees. From this perspective, narrative appropriation is a process of gradually attributing the quality of narrativity to experiences, thereby familiarising the moods, affects, and responses that otherwise govern ‘from behind’. Finally, I propose that the idea of a narrative appropriation of embodied self-alienness is also relevant to the much-debated question of personal responsibility in BPD, particularly as this question plays out in psychotherapeutic contexts where a narrative self-appropriation may facilitate an increase in sense of autonomy and reduce emotions of guilt and shame.     

For the Love of Cybernetics

This narrative is a response to an invitation to share my story regarding cybernetics. I begin with an exploration of what “for the love of cybernetics” means to me. Tracing experiences and connections to cybernetics over the course of 50?years I explore how I observe and give voice to my relation with people and situations both personal and professional. I explore life and how it is enriched by knowing cybernetics. Recent projects to encourage systems and cybernetic literacy building on work with ocean, earth, air, and energy literacies are described.     

Who Dares,Speaks: Critical psychotherapy and the poetics of suffering

It is proposed that a critical psychotherapy could be developed by combining ideas from psychoanalysis with concepts from poetics, as Lacan originally suggested. Taking a narrative and personal style, and using examples of two men silenced by trauma and a clinical vignette, the author combines Laplanche’s psychoanalytic concept of fourvoiement with some examples of the poetics of ambiguity as an example of how such a critical psychotherapy could develop. Studying how words express more than their literal meaning is combined with the idea that we are continually going astray from the original decentring concept of the unconscious that Freud introduced to psychotherapy.     

Physicians, Patients, and Medical Dialogue in the NYPD Blue Prostate Cancer Story

Extending literature on health information to entertainment television, we analyze the prostate cancer narrative presented in the police drama, NYPD Blue. We explain how the physician-patient interaction depicted on the show followed (and sometimes did not follow) the medical dialogue model. Findings reveal that the producers of this show advocate a more dialogic model of medical interaction. Portrayals of incompetent, ineffective physicians are contrasted with the superior, effective efforts of other physicians. The audience learns that a non-dialogic approach characterizes "bad doctors," while the dialogic method typifies "good doctors." Likewise, medical professionals can use such texts to enhance physician-patient interaction.     

Culture tales. A narrative approach to thinking, cross-cultural psychology, and psychotherapy

Narrative (or storytelling) approaches to understanding human action have recently become more popular in several areas of psychology. Treating human thinking as instances of story elaboration offers numerous implications for many domains of psychological theory, research, and practice. For example, several instances of cultural diversity take on a different hue when viewed from a narrative perspective. Finally, several authors (e.g., Bruner, 1986; Howard, 1989; Mair, 1989; McAdams, 1985; Polkinghorne, 1988; Sarbin, 1986) see the development of identity as an issue of life-story construction; psychopathology as instances of life stories gone awry; and psychotherapy as exercises in story repair.     

The Limits of Narrative and Culture: Reflections on Lorrie Moore's “People Like That Are the Only People Here: Canonical Babbling in Peed Onk”

This article provides a discussion of the limits of both narrative and culture based on a close textual analysis of the short story, "People Like That Are the Only People Here: Canonical Babbling in Peed Onk," by Lorrie Moore. In this story, a mother describes her experiences on a pediatric oncology ward when her infant son develops Wilms' tumor. The authors examine how the story satirically portrays the spurious claims of language, story, and culture to protect us from an unjust universe and then exposes their false promises. The various personal, professional, and genre-specific narratives we use to create order and coherence from the terror of serious illness are ultimately ineffective. Similarly, the superficially comforting culture of the hospital ward cares more about creating the illusion of control than it does about the suffering of sick children. Language and culture cannot make sense of human anguish, the article concludes, yet they are all we have to hold back the chaos. Mystery and uncertainty, as part of the human condition, must become part of our stories and part of our culture.