Towards a new philosophy of education: Extending the conversational metaphor for thinking

Recently, feminists like Jane Roland-Martin, Elizabeth Young-Bruehl, and others have advocated a conversational metaphor for thinking and rationality, and our image of the rational person. Elizabeth Young-Bruehl refers to thinking as a constant interconnecting of representations of experiences and an extension of how we hear ourselves and others. There are numerous disadvantages to thinking about thinking as a conversation.We think there are difficulties in accepting the current formulation of the conversational metaphor without question. First, there is danger that we will lose important dialectical connections like that between the self and society. Second, the conversational metaphor alone cannot fully express the way conversations are constructed. We will want to take up the notion of narrative as a metaphor for thinking advocated by Susan Bordo, Alasdair MacIntyre, Jerome Bruner, and others, including Mary Belenky and her colleagues.Eventually, we want to champion narrative and the dramatic narrative of culture as a metaphor for thinking that involves such expressions as sights, insights, silences, as well as sounds, moments of mood and poetic moments. The dramatic narrative provides the structural possibilities needed to criticize certain kinds of conversations, in order to talk about the relations of public and private, self and society and most importantly, about the drama of our lives within and without.The dramatic narrative for thinking helps dispel the dangerous dualisms of mind and body that not even conversation or narration alone can banish, and allows us to frame questions about education that do not require us to separate mind from body. The dramatic narrative metaphor for thinking lets us show who we are, act out what we think, and reconstruct rationality to reflect what many women, and some men, do.     

Changes in Children's Episodic Narratives Through Long-Term Repeated Recall: Longitudinal Case Studies1

This study aimed to investigate whether a child's narrative of a particular past episode would change in repeated reporting over the long term, and if so, how it would change. To answer these questions, I conducted longitudinal case studies of episodic reports by children every 2–6 months, from their early childhood to the age of 10–15 years. Criteria for inclusion were set in advance; seven episodic narratives meeting these criteria were analyzed. Two types of changes in the narratives were observed, as expected: that of including other information, and that of an event suddenly being reported after no recall for several years. Information from the children's surroundings seemed to be substantially involved in these changes in their episodic narratives. The present results also indicate that mothers' episodic memories are not always reliable and that the schema children have can influence their episodic memories.     

Redefining the Meaning of Negative History in Times of Sociopolitical Change: A Social Creativity Approach

This article explores the role negative history plays in political discourse on crisis management and how times of sociopolitical change in turn influence the strategies that can be employed to write a positive historical charter. Choosing Germany as a case study, we analyzed how political leaders negotiate Germany's narrative and political role during the European “refugee crisis” in speeches (n = 332) held between 2015 and 2018. Applying a combination of corpus-based and qualitative narrative analysis, we found that the context of a crisis is used to attach new meaning to Germany's role in World War II. By focusing on the lessons learned from history and pointing out the parallels between the current crisis and sociopolitical developments that took place 80 years ago, Germany is presented as the ideal advocate for a free and united Europe, a narrative that legitimizes its advancingly dominant role within the EU and beyond. The analysis demonstrates how times of change can facilitate social creativity strategies for nations whose past is dominated by negative history, with implications for the theory of identity management.     

Both sides of the story: Narratives of romantic infidelity

We applied a narrative identity approach to the study of romantic infidelity. In Study 1, participants provided narratives of the moment they discovered their partners' infidelity. In Study 2, participants were prompted for narratives of their unfaithful actions. In both studies, measures of personality traits, forgiveness, empathy, and self‐esteem were administered. Narratives were coded for themes of redemption (bad beginnings, positive endings) and exploration (engaging with the experience's emotional implications). After controlling for relevant covariates (e.g., story length), participants who formed redemptive stories of their partner's infidelity evinced higher levels of forgiveness and lower levels of empathy (Study 1), whereas participants who disclosed redemptive stories about their own infidelity demonstrated decreased forgiveness (Study 2). Across studies, exploratory narratives corresponded positively with conscientiousness.     

文学阅读如何影响读者的心理理论

文学阅读不但能提高读者的文学修养, 还能影响其心理状态。然而, 文学阅读经验是否一定能提高读者的心理理论仍然存有争议。近年来有关文学阅读与心理理论关系的实验性探讨不断增加。鉴于此, 作者从文本体裁、测量手段和个体差异角度分析了争议产生的原因。在此基础之上, 归纳了文学阅读影响心理理论的潜在机制, 即镜像神经系统和默认网络很可能是文学阅读促进心理理论提高的重要神经基础。     

“The Frog Ate the Bug and Made his Mouth Sad”: Narrative Competence in Children with Autism

This study compares the narrative abilities of 13 children with autism, 13 children with developmental delays, and 13 typically developing children matched on language ability. Although groups did not differ in their use of causal language or internal state terms, children with autism and children with developmental delays were less likely than typical children to identify the causes of characters' internal states. Rather, they tended simply to label emotions and explain actions. Children with autism and children with developmental delays also relied on a more restricted range of evaluative devices, which both convey point of view and maintain listener involvement. In addition, the narrative abilities of children with autism were linked to performance on measures of theory of mind and an index of conversational competence, whereas this was not the case among children with developmental delays. Findings are discussed in relation to the social, cognitive, and emotional underpinnings and consequences of narrative activity.     

Joyce's Argument with Himself/Or, Reading Joyce's Inside Narrative

James Joyce's argument with himself about where he should practice his art and with what literary tradition he should identify—Irish, British, or European—is represented by several of the characters and episodes in his short story The Dead.In the main character, Gabriel Conroy, Joyce represented the conflicts that he himself experienced. But in many of the minor characters Joyce also reflected parts of his own wishes and fears.In this story, Joyce rejects the possibilities of artistic identification with Ireland and England, and, in the dynamics of the tale, arrives at the understanding that to fulfill his artistic aspirations, he must make an identification with the great European tradition, and also live in Europe; if he stays in Ireland or attempts to be an English author, he will be, as he portrays Gabriel to be, paralyzed, imitative, and a failure as an artist. Joyce himself took the decisive path that Gabriel could not choose.     

“The Dead”

Gabriel Conroy, central to James Joyce's novella, The Dead, keys the reader's experience of the evening portrayed. A third-person narration allows for distance, but Gabriel's closely depicted thought processes and actions, and his insistent self-consciousness, shape the story. As such they invite psychoanalytic interpretation and reward it. Gabriel's shocking discovery and reaction to it can be seen to be informed by rendered psychodynamics and a credible internalized past. Joyce and Freud, actual contemporaries, can be seen as contemporaneous in imagination as well.     

Indian Women’s Experience of a Narrative Intervention Using Art And Writing*

International and minority populations tend to underutilize mental health services, including marriage and family therapy. Models of marriage and family therapy developed in the West may reflect Western values and norms inappropriate for diverse cultural contexts. This article presents an exploratory, qualitative study of a narrative therapy approach with Asian Indian women. This study adds to the small body of narrative-based empirical studies, and has a unique focus on intercultural applications and the experience of participants. Participant experience was examined along four phenomenological dimensions. Findings indicate the suitability of narrative interventions and nontraditional treatment delivery for this population.*This research was presented in 2004 at the annual conference of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy.     

Relational frame theory,acceptance and commitment therapy,and a functional analytic definition of mindfulness

The present article interprets mindfulness from the point of view of the effects of language and cognition on human action. Relational Frame Theory is described to show how human suffering is created by entanglement with the cognitive networks made possible by language. Mindfulness can be understood as a collection of related processes that function to undermine the dominance of verbal networks, especially involving temporal and evaluative relations. These processes include acceptance, defusion, contact with the present moment, and the transcendent sense of self. Each of these components of mindfulness are targeted in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and there is some evidence that they underlie the therapeutic changes induced by this approach. The relation between the present approach to mindfulness and other approaches is discussed.