The flow of narrative in the mind unmoored: An account of narrative processing

Verbal narratives provide incomplete information and can be very long, yet readers and hearers often effortlessly fill in the gaps and make connections across long stretches of text, sometimes even finding this immersive. How is this done? In the last few decades, event-indexing situation modeling and complementary accounts of narrative emotion have suggested answers. Despite this progress, comparisons between real-life perception and narrative experience might underplay the way narrative processing modifies our world model, as well as the role of the emotions that do not relate to characters. I reframe narrative experience in predictive processing and neural networks, capturing continuity between fiction, perception, and states like dreaming and imagination, enabled by the flexible instantiation of concepts. In this framework, narrative experience is more clearly revealed as a creative experience that can share some of the phenomenology of dreams.     

Stories Matter: Narrative Themes of Counselor Educators' Religious and Spiritual Competency

Using narrative inquiry, the author explored the multicultural aspects of religious and spiritual experiences, assumptions, and patterns of 9 counselor educators to understand the impact that experiences and beliefs have when supervising and teaching counseling students. A gap exists between counselor standards, ethics, competencies, and practice, because counseling students receive mixed messages about addressing spiritual and religious concerns. Through hermeneutic analysis, 6 themes emerged: (a) religious and spiritual journeys, (b) religious and spiritual practices, (c) relationships, (d) marginalization, (e) modeling, and (f) risk and taboo. Trustworthiness strategies, implications for counselor education, limitations, and directions for future research are described.     

A Case Study of a Consultation Using the Two-Circles Method With a Junior High School Teacher1

To resolve various problems in schools, a “school as a team” approach for teachers to cooperate with other professionals as well as other teachers has been introduced in Japan. Consultations are one method school counselors use to support teachers as a team. This study examines a consultation case using the two-circles method based on narrative therapy and discusses the possibilities and challenges when using this method in Japan. Using a case study analysis, the author found that the two-circles method contributed positively to the consultation by externalizing the problem, gathering local knowledge, visualizing the participants' narratives, and applying scaffolding to develop the consultee's story. The results suggest that this method could be useful for achieving the “school as a team” approach because it combines teachers' narratives to resolve problems in schools.     

CHANGING THE PAST: RETROCAUSALITY AND NARRATIVE CONSTRUCTION

Abstract: This article is a reply to Jeanne Peijnenburg's argument for retrocausality in “Shaping Your Own Life.” Although it is perfectly possible to make sense of the way Peijnenburg deals with the subject of changing the past, there is no need to think this implies retrocausality.     

Minimizing Bias and Maximizing the Potential Strengths of Autoethnography as a Narrative Research

Up to the current time, psychology has provided very limited space for qualitative research to contribute to the discipline, even though psychology has a lot to do with subjectivity and intersubjectivity in its work. This article discusses autoethnography, which by some qualitative researchers is still being debated. The author argues that autoethnography contains strong narrative components or analysis with potential contribution to provide new understanding and to build knowledge. The article discusses criticisms against autoethnography, followed by its distinctive characteristics, which at the same time bring significant potential power. Clear guidelines and steps are needed to minimize biases and to bring about the potential power of autoethnography, and this article aims to address the issues through discussions on intersubjectivity, reflexivity, and ethics. At the end, it might be concluded that autoethnography is a method to investigate not merely the researchers, but to reveal certain phenomena and issues. Autoethnography is one good alternative among other methods that can contribute to developing understanding and knowledge through the construction of substantive theories about a particular issue.     

‘Left to your own devices’ – the missed potential of adult career guidance in Denmark

In 2008, the European Council agreed on a Resolution on better integrating lifelong guidance into lifelong learning strategies. The Resolution promoted lifelong guidance as a policy to support people during the multiple transitions provoked by a more volatile labour market. However, when looking into the guidance policy of Denmark, the Resolution does not seem to have taken effect. Whereas, the career guidance system is relatively developed in terms of transitions from basic schooling into youth education and from youth education to higher education, when it comes to transitions during a working life, adult career guidance structures are patchy and scattered across different policy areas and institutions. The objective of this article is to investigate the potential of adult career guidance as a support structure for Lifelong Learning, career transition and labour market mobility. To this end, we draw on Holzkamp's concept of ‘disruption of the cyclicity in everyday life’ to analyse working life narratives. We focus on the potential contact points between the individual and public structures supporting working life transitions. This article hereby contributes to ongoing discussions concerning access to career guidance as part of a social contract underlying flexible labour markets.     

BETWEEN MT. MORIAH AND MT. GOLGOTHA: How Is Christian Ethics Possible?

In this paper, I explore a new way of understanding Christian ethics by critically interconnecting the theological meanings of the Aqedah (“binding”) narrative of Mt. Moriah and the Passion story of Mt. Golgotha. Through an in‐depth critical‐theological investigation of the relation between these two biblical events, I argue that Christian ethics is possible not so much as a moralization or as a literalistic divine command theory, but rather as a “covenantal‐existential” response to God's will in the impossible love on Mt. Moriah as well as in the Son's willing embrace of God's will on Mt. Golgotha.     

Warriors,authors and baseball coaches: the meaning of metaphor in theories of family therapy

This article examines the metaphors family therapists use in their theories to reveal aspects of the theories which are not explicitly stated, using Whitaker's symbolic experiential therapy, Minuchin's structural therapy and White's narrative therapy as examples. Such examination, drawing on social constructivist understandings of metaphor and meaning making, reveals that Minuchin's metaphors of family as organism and therapist as artist and warrior emphasize the family as relatively holistic and the therapist as relatively interventionist. In contrast, Whitaker's metaphor of family as ecological system or team and therapist as coach emphasizes the interdependence and context sensitivity of the family and relative powerlessness of the therapist to impose change. Finally, White, reflecting his explicitly post‐structural commitment, uses the metaphor of therapy as a journey undertaken with a map and as therapy as an act of re‐narrating a story.     

Interpreting our emotions

This essay looks at the important, but often neglected, contribution that self-interpretation makes to emotional self-knowledge. We engage in acts of self-interpretation when (A) we try to understand what it is that we are feeling, or, relatedly, what it is that we ought to be feeling. On such occasions, we draw upon social and personal narratives as well as on the emotional conceptual repertoires at our disposal. We also engage in acts of self-interpretation when (B) we try to ascertain the meaning or significance of an emotion, treating it as a datum, or piece of evidence, upon which to make inferences or further Interpretations. Although we often seem to have first-person privileged access to our mental states, the third-person strategy of self-interpretation can be a valuable source of self-knowledge. I focus here upon the role that self-interpretation plays in providing us with knowledge about our emotional experiences.