Bifurcations à partir/en direction de carrières artistiques : analyse structurale de récits biographiques

Referring to the artistic careers that particularly attract young people today, the article seeks to clarify the process of changing direction in the light of the chain of experienced events and the thinking involved when choosing a professional career. Considering training periods as a valuable opportunity to look back at past experiences and look forward to a professional future, it examines four cases in which the subjects decided to retrain, involving a shift to or from artistic careers. Structural analyses of the biographical interviews enabled us to compare the main life events of the subjects, viewed in relation to the past, present and future, the agents intervening in their career path, and the arguments underlying their decisions. On this basis, the factors that triggered the bifurcation, the interventions of significant others, and the relationship with time when making the change, are described and discussed from a counselling perspective.     

A cacophony of theories: contributions towards a story-based understanding of analytic treatments

The article addresses problems associated with analytic formulations from the founders of psychoanalysis, including C. G. Jung. Although no longer able to claim a scientific basis for these theoretical constructs, analytic practitioners still use this outdated terminology when presenting their work with patients. By now there is a cacophony of theories often concealing rather than explaining. Denial of loneliness, notions of special knowledge, and idealization of the 'The Founder' seem to perpetuate formulations which no longer carry a clear meaning. The article explores three proposals for describing analytic treatments based on the works of the psychoanalyst Roy Schafer and the cognitive psychologist Roger Schank: analytic attitudes, therapeutic narratives and specific treatment perspectives. The first addresses findings from psychotherapy research about the centrality of analytic attitudes. The second applies the findings about story-based memory and narratives to therapy relationships, and the third takes note of the fact that analytic attention often is more complex than can be described with terms such as transference/countertransference.     

Narratives About Specific Romantic Conflicts: Gender and Associations With Conflict Beliefs and Strategies

Using a sample of 145 predominantly heterosexual emerging adults, the authors examined constructive and destructive interpretations of romantic conflict via narratives and studied how gender affected conflict interpretations and relationship functioning. Destructive interpretations were related to negative conflict beliefs for women and dating aggression for men. Across gender, constructive interpretations were related to more problem solving but were more strongly related to less aggression for men. Understanding conflict interpretations through narratives may enhance relationships skills training for emerging adults.     

Contextualizing narrative identity: A consideration of assessment settings

We examined the influence features of assessment contexts exhibited on the content of the key autobiographical scenes often considered by personality psychologists. Participants (N = 402) narrated life high points, low points, and turning points within a 2(interviewer; present, absent) × 2(response format; written, spoken) study design. Narratives were quantified for 15 linguistic (e.g., negative emotion words) and six conceptual (e.g., affective tone) variables. We noted that 93% of linguistic variables and 83% of conceptual variables differed as a function of assessment context in the form of main effects for, and/or interactions between, study variables. The narrative materials commonly assessed by personality psychologists are highly sensitive to features of the contexts in which they are assessed.     

Freud,Jung and The Great Chain of Being

For some time, it has been clear that psychoanalytic theories are built upon the kind of master narratives Roy Schafer, a New York psychoanalyst, described in 1980. As such, psychoanalytic theories may today have lost some of their initial scientific credibility in that they can no longer be seen as summarizing findings from data collected in a research environment. As aids in participating in their patients’ process of healing, however, narratives continue to be used by practitioners and reflect allegiance to core beliefs and propositions with roots in long‐standing Western thought. In this article, the metaphors in master narratives of Freud and Jung are compared with a conceptual system identified by cognitive linguists as ‘The Great Chain of Being’. Based on this analysis, the article proposes that theoretical formulations have mainly a secondary role to play in achieving good outcomes. The most critical element is the therapist's capacity to access a specific narrative for what transpires throughout each treatment.     

Regaining a sense of agency and shared self-reliance: the experience of advanced disease cancer patients participating in a multidimensional exercise intervention while undergoing chemotherapy--analysis of patient diaries

Evidence is emerging that exercise can reduce psychological distress in cancer patients undergoing treatment. The present study aimed to (qualitatively) explore the experiences of advanced disease cancer patients participating in a 6-week, 9-hours weekly, structured, group-based multidimensional exercise intervention while undergoing chemotherapy. Unstructured diaries from a purposive sample of three females and two males (28-52 years old) who participated in the program served as the database. Data were analyzed using a phenomenological, narrative method. The analysis yielded three themes: shifting position, self-surveillance, and negotiated strength. The intervention highlighted situations making it possible for the participants to negate psychological and physical constraints. The concept of structured exercise contains viable psychotherapeutic potentials by allowing the development of alternative bodily and mental realities complying with cancer patients' demands and abilities to regain autonomy and commitment to discover and adopt a sense of agency and shared self-reliance.     

Resurrection Debates: Qur'anic Discourse and Arabic Christian Apology

Abstract :  That God will raise the dead is a conviction of Christians and Muslims alike. The Qur'an proclaims and defends the reality of the general resurrection; Christian theologians who lived in the Islamic world attempted to make an apology for the career of Jesus by narrating it as a divine demonstration of that reality. This article provides an exegesis of the resurrection-discourse of one surah of the Qur'an; summarizes a Christian-Muslim discussion about the death and resurrection of Jesus from the ninth century; and offers suggestions for how Christians and Muslims might learn from one another in the 21^st century.