Conversational Narrative and the Moral Self:

This article presents material from my ethnographic study in Śringēri, south India, the site of a powerful 1200‐year‐old Advaitic monastery that has been historically an interpreter of ancient Hindu moral treatises. A vibrant diverse local culture that provides plural sources of moral authority makes Śringēri a rich site for studying moral discourse. Through a study of two conversational narratives, this essay illustrates how the moral self is not an ossified product of written texts and codes, but is dynamic, gendered, and emergent, endowed with historical and political agency and an aesthetic capacity that mediates many normative sources to articulate “appropriate” conduct. In so doing, the essay shows the value of including oral narrative in ethical inquiry, especially in narrative ethics, which, for most part, has focused on written sources.     

Between Minimal Self and Narrative Self: A Husserlian Analysis of Person

The distinction between minimal self and narrative self has gained ground in recent discussions of selfhood. In this article, this distinction is reassessed by analysing Zahavi and Gallagher’s account of selfhood and supplementing it with Husserl’s concept of person. I argue that Zahavi and Gallagher offer two compatible and complementary notions of self. Nevertheless, the relationship between minimal self and narrative self requires further clarification. Especially the embeddedness of self, the interplay between passivity and activity, and the problems of uniqueness and persistence are better understood with Husserl’s analysis of person and its central concepts of position-taking, habitualities, and overall style. The embeddedness of self is elucidated by outlining how person is related to its environment, to other people, and to its past. This relational notion of self is both passively constituted and actively shaped: person mediates between minimal self characterized by perspectival ownership and narrative self based on authorship.     

Personal Narrative Revealing Self and Reflecting Other

The telling of personal narratives is one form of presenting self to others that begins early in life and crosses racial, ethnic, and cultural boundaries. Not only do we present ourselves through narrative, those with whom we are involved present us to others through narrative. The purpose of this study was to examine how well one's perception of self is communicated to familiar others. One hundred targets each brought a perceiver to the experiment. The target and perceiver were separated and given a series of questionnaires to complete. The target and the perceiver were then asked to tell a personal narrative about the target. Findings include the following: (a) Self-concept is presented through personal narrative, (b) such self-presentations function as impression management, (c) view of other is presented through narrative, and (d) narrative presentation of a familiar other reflects the familiar other's self-concept.     

Self and social judgments of ability: beyond distributional information

In a given domain, low-skill individuals typically evaluate the ability level of other people more favorably than high-skill individuals. The current study tests whether this tendency continues to occur even when people have unambiguous distributional information available through which to judge others. Students received distributional information detailing their percentile rank in a statistics course and the percentile rank of another student in the course. Then, students were asked to evaluate their own and the other students' statistics ability. Students evaluated the other person's ability more favorably when their own rank in the course was low rather than high. Therefore, people may use themselves as a standard of comparison when they judge others even when more diagnostic sources of information are available.     

To Tell or Not to Tell: Disclosure and the Narrative Self

ABSTRACT Drawing from a narrative identity framework, we present the results of three studies examining the nature of what people do and do not disclose about their life experiences. Across three studies, our findings indicate that (1) the major difference in what people do and do not disclose concerns the emotionality of the events and whether or not the events are transgressions; (2) for everyday memorable events, increased negative emotion is associated with greater likelihood of disclosure; but (3) for more important and/or longer retained events, increased negative and decreased positive emotion were associated with lower likelihoods of disclosure. We also found that socioemotional consequences are an important reason for nondisclosure of important past experiences and are predictably related to the extent to which events induce positive and negative emotions. Findings are considered in terms of their implications for narrative identity.     

The Embodied and Contingent Self in Later Life: A Narrative Understanding

This article examines a narrative understanding of identity and discusses its relevance within the sociocultural contingencies of the postmodern age. Providing an historical overview of understandings of the self, Meador traces the lineage of the self from Augustine through contemporary theories of identity. He focuses on the narrative concept of identity, acknowledging the existence of multiple narratives—those that individuals tell about themselves and those told by others. Finally, he explores the transformative potential available within this context for those in their later years.     

自我的社会建构观与叙事辅导

叙事辅导以自我在话语中形成的社会建构主义观点为理论基础,认为人类依据故事而生活;强势故事和强势话语塑造着人们的生活;生活是不断超越旧我走向新我的非等同圆运动的过程。叙事辅导通过引导当事人解构旧的生活故事,重写新的生活故事而达到对问题的解决。     

“被叙述的自身”——利科叙事身份/认同概念浅析

自20世纪90年代以来,身份问题已发展为批评理论界所关注的热点问题。某种意义上,身份问题由"去中心化"的主体性问题演变而来。鉴于主体哲学中"受伤的我思"的困境,世界著名现象学诠释学家保罗.利科于1985年首次提出叙事身份/认同的重要概念,并分别在1986年和1988年继续展开详细讨论。在众多的主体性或身份研究中,利科的立场可谓独树一帜:1)凸显出叙事在主体构建过程中不可或缺的功能;2)对身份/认同概念内在蕴含的"相同性"和"自身性"进行区分,并藉由两者间的辩证关系来化解身份研究中存在的某种混沌局面;3)肯定伦理维度在身份问题中的重要性。本研究旨在对这一重要概念的背景、内涵、特征和局限做出解析。     

Seeing One's Self: Locating Narrative Memory in a Framework of Personality

ABSTRACT Individuals confront the continuing challenge of attending to the competing demands of internal and external stimuli. The emerging I-Self applies three principles of evaluation, categorization, and subsidiation to organize these informational demands. These principles guide the development of the five systems of personality—cognition, affect, motivation, behavior, and psychophysiology. These systems interact to create various Me-Selves that comprise the different roles and contexts of the personality. Each Me-Self contains evaluations (valenced responses to self and others), categories (self- and other representations), and sequences in time (the self and others in past, present, and future). Narrative is the perceptual expression of a particular Me-Self in consciousness. Narrative memory allows for meaningful analysis by consciousness of specific Me-Selves and the cognitions, affects, and goals associated with those selves. Applications of this position to research and psychotherapy are discussed.     

Prayer as a Religious Narrative: The Spiritual Self and the Image of God

Pastoral Psychology - This article examines William James’s study on prayer in The Varieties of Religious Experience by framing prayer as a form of religious narrative that demonstrates the...     

Narrative Solutions: Using Preferred View of Self to Motivate Individual and Family Change

This article describes refinements of the Narrative Solutions approach to individual and family therapy we first presented in Family Process 22 years ago. The centerpiece of this integrative (narrative‐strategic) model is “preferred view of self,” or the constellation of qualities people would like to see in themselves and have others see in them. We assume that problems generally involve one or more people mismanaging discrepancies or “gaps” between preferred views of self and either their actual behavior or how they see others seeing them and their behavior. Because clients are motivated to resolve such discrepancies, we use specifiable conversational strategies to help people (a) be clear about their preferred view of self, (b) notice gaps or discrepancies, and (c) summon resources to manage these gaps more effectively. Positive clinical effects of these strategic conversations can be rapid and dramatic. Case examples highlight applications to child and family problems, and we discuss some challenges and future directions for the Narrative Solutions approach.     

Narrative ability in school-age stuttering boys: A preliminary investigation

In a preliminary investigation, narrative ability was compared in stuttering and nonstuttering school-age boys using tasks known to be sensitive to narrative deficits. The groups were also compared on the broader domains of receptive and expressive language development using the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals - Revised (CELF-R). The results did not support the popular view that stutterers, as a group, are more vulnerable to language disorders than their nonstuttering peers. A recent hypothesis that stuttering behavior might be a causal factor in delayed expressive language development was also not supported. The importance of examining individual differences in stuttering children is emphasized for both clinical and research purposes.     

Single and Multiple Self Implications for Change Grids: Studies of Consistency

Abstract

This study, derived from the work of Hinkle (1965), explored the short-term test-re-test stability of two forms of Implications for Change grids. In the Single Self implications task, persons considered whether a general self change on one personal construct dimension would influence change on their other dimensions. The Multiple Self implications task followed the same form of questioning. However, in this latter procedure, persons were asked about self change within more specific contexts of activity (e.g., self as friend, self at play). Average consistency levels were calculated for the Single Self and the Multiple Self grids. Predictions were made regarding which subjects would show more or less consistency using measures of self meaningfulness and construct organization at first testing     

Using Narrative Theory and Self Psychology Within a Multigenerational Family Systems Perspective

This paper illustrates how a process of psychoanalytic psychotherapy can be enhanced and extehded by combining ideas from narrative theory and self psychology within a multigenerational family systems perspective. The illustration is based on a summary and discussion of a satisfactorily completed thirty-session psychotherapy for an adult man who sought therapy for relief from his depression.     

Multiple Maltreatment and the Development of Self and Emotion Regulation

Abstract

The impact of multiple victimization on the development of social and emotional regulatory processes is examined. Questions are raised regarding both the quantitative and qualitative impact of singular versus multiple maltreatment. Normal development of self regulation is discussed as well as measures commonly used to assess it. Abuse research findings relevant for considering the development of regulatory processes are reviewed. Finally, the influence of family, individual child, and parenting factors is considered as related to regulation. The recommendation is made for more careful research, guided by developmental theory and using more specific measures of developmental problems and competencies.     

School Counselors,Multiple Student Deaths,and Grief: A Narrative Inquiry

A team of 5 school counselors were interviewed to learn how they professionally and personally experienced the deaths of multiple students in 1 year in their school while attending to the needs of the school community. By using narrative inquiry, 5 themes emerged from the analysis: gravity of the losses, logistics of care, personal vs. professional conflicts, increased student cohesion, and efficacy. Recommendations for counselor preparation, research, and counseling practice are offered.     

Creating a Participant Text: Writing,Multiple Voices,Narrative Multiplicity

This article uses the ideas of social constructionism to explore how families change by investigating the way our perceptions of ourselves in relation to others are formed through language. The idea that language has the inherent potential to generate a reply has strongly influenced our thinking. We propose that the reply to others is shaped by our initial reply to ourselves in inner conversation. Interaction moves back and forth from inner conversation to conversation with others, from monologue to dialogue, becoming the “stuff” of new narratives. The particular focus on language in this article is on how adding writing to the session conversation produces a “participant text,” a therapeutic narrative that is composed of the voices of the family and the therapists. These voices, often newly discovered or invented, allow our narrative discourse to expand and multiply. Using this approach with individuals, couples, and families from different socioeconomic levels, we have worked with mourning, divorcing couples, recovery from abuse, marital conflict, parenting dilemmas, and physical illness.