Rereading Personal Narrative and Life Course E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Serie: J-B CAD Single Issue Child & Adolescent Development
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 217

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

This volume reflects on the place of narrative interpretation inlife course developmental theory. Featuring exciting chapters bythe leading figures in narrative psychology, it provides insightson the narrative character in early childhood, adolescence,emerging adulthood, midlife, and old age. Read together, the chapters form a comprehensive description ofnarrative's origins in childhood conversations and themultiple uses that narrative is used as lives unfold overdevelopmental and historical time. A touchstone text in humandevelopment, it is a way for psychologists to rethink theirapproach to development through the lens of a narrative perspectivethat is sensitive to interpretation and context in humanlives. This is the 145th volume in this Jossey-Bass series NewDirections for Child and Adolescent Development. Its mission isto provide scientific and scholarly presentations on cutting edgeissues and concepts in this subject area. Each volume focuses on aspecific new direction or research topic and is edited by expertsfrom that field.

Leseprobe

New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development

Lene Arnett Jensen Reed W. Larson EDITORS-IN-CHIEF

William Damon FOUNDING EDITOR

Rereading Personal Narrative and Life Course

Brian Schiff

EDITOR

Number 145 • Fall 2014

Jossey-Bass

San Francisco

REREADING PERSONAL NARRATIVE AND LIFE COURSE Brian Schiff (ed.) New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, no. 145 Lene Arnett Jensen, Reed W. Larson, Editors‐in‐Chief

© 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc., A Wiley Company. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher or authorization through payment of the appropriate per‐copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923; (978) 750‐8400, fax (978) 646‐8600. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River St., Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748‐6011, fax (201) 748‐6008, www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

Microfilm copies of issues and articles are available in 16 mm and 35 mm, as well as microfiche in 105 mm, through University Microfilms, Inc., 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106‐1346.

ISSN 1520‐3247 electronic ISSN 1534‐8687

New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development is part of The Jossey-Bass Education Series and is published quarterly by Wiley Subscription Services, Inc., a Wiley company, at Jossey-Bass, One Montgomery Street, Suite 1200, San Francisco, CA 94104-4594. Postmaster: Send address changes to New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, Jossey-Bass, One Montgomery Street, Suite 1200, San Francisco, CA 94104-4594.

New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development is indexed in Cambridge Scientific Abstracts (CSA/CIG), CHID: Combined Health Information Database (NIH), Contents Pages in Education (T&F), Educational Research Abstracts Online (T&F), Embase (Elsevier), ERIC Database (Education Resources Information Center), Index Medicus/MEDLINE (NLM), Linguistics & Language Behavior Abstracts (CSA/CIG), Psychological Abstracts/PsycINFO (APA), Social Services Abstracts (CSA/CIG), SocINDEX (EBSCO), and Sociological Abstracts (CSA/CIG).

Individual subscription rate (in USD): $89 per year US/Can/Mex, $113 rest of world; institutional subscription rate: $388 US, $428 Can/Mex, $462 rest of world. Single copy rate: $29. Electronic only–all regions: $89 individual, $388 institutional; Print & Electronic–US: $98 individual, $450 institutional; Print & Electronic–Canada/Mexico: $98 individual, $490 institutional; Print & Electronic–Rest of World: $122 individual, $524 institutional.

Cover photographs: ©iStock.com/paulaphoto (top); ©iStock.com/vm (middle); ©iStock.com/ericsphotography (bottom)

Editorial correspondence should be e‐mailed to the editors‐in‐chief: Lene Arnett Jensen ([e-mail]) and Reed W. Larson ([e-mail]).

Jossey‐Bass Web address: www.josseybass.com

Contents

1: Introduction: Development's Story in Time and Place

The Self Is a Narrative Project

Developmental Periods Have a Distinct Narrative Character

Narratives Are Always Told in (Personal and Historical) Time

Persons Strive for Coherence

Plan of the Work and Chapter Summary

Development's Story in Context

References

2: Narrative Making and Remaking in the Early Years: Prelude to the Personal Narrative

Stories of Personal Experience: An Early Bridge to the Personal Narrative

Rendering Personal Experience Intelligible

Expanding Temporal Horizons

Narrative Dynamics

Future Directions

References

Notes

3: Contextualizing the Self: The Emergence of a Biographical Understanding in Adolescence

Coherent Life Narratives Develop Only in Adolescence

Contextualizing as a Fifth Aspect of Global Coherence of Life Narratives

Internal Contexts in Life Narratives

External Contexts of Life Narratives

Conclusion

References

4: Narrative and the Social Construction of Adulthood

Narrative as Interpretive Activity

Adulthood in Social and Historical Time

Narrative and Identity in Emerging Adulthood

Conclusion

References

5: The Life Narrative at Midlife

Actors, Agents, and Authors

Narrative Identity in Midlife

Conclusion

References

6: Narrating Your Life After 65 (or: To Tell or Not to Tell, That Is the Question)

Introduction

Cohler and Butler—Pioneering Ideas

Description of My Studies

Discussion

References

Notes

7: “Personal Narrative and Life Course” Revisited: Bert Cohler's Legacy for Developmental Psychology

Narrative and Development

Developmental Transformations in the Personal Narrative

Rethinking the Story of Development

References

Index

End User License Agreement

Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

1

Pages

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

50

51

52

53

54

55

56

57

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

71

72

73

74

75

76

77

78

79

80

81

82

85

86

87

88

89

90

91

92

93

94

95

96

97

98

99

100

Schiff, B. (2014). Introduction: Development's story in time and place. In B. Schiff (Ed.), Rereading Personal Narrative and Life Course. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 145, 1–13.

1Introduction: Development's Story in Time and Place*

Brian Schiff

Abstract

In this introductory chapter, I place Bertram J. Cohler's (1982) seminal essay Personal Narrative and Life Course in the context of the history of narrative psychology and developmental theory. I describe four theses from Personal Narrative and Life Course, which impacted developmental theory and research: (a) the self is a narrative project, (b) developmental periods have a distinct narrative character, (c) narratives are always told in (personal and historical) time, and (d) persons strive for coherence. I briefly describe the chapters to follow. However, my main goal is to argue for the implications of narrative for developmental science. Following Cohler, I argue that narrative has a central role to play in understanding human lives and can provide substantial benefit to developmental theory and research. A narrative perspective allows for a complex and nuanced description of developmental phenomena that accounts for the subjective and unpredictable nature of human lives. The narrative interpretation of experience is a primary human activity that alters the meaning of experience and potentially sets development on a new course, rendering the prediction of developmental outcomes a difficult venture. The narrative perspective provides detailed insights into how development unfolds, how persons actually interpret and reinterpret life in time and place, and can help psychologists to engage fundamental questions about the meaning of experience. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Rather than viewing personality development either in terms of continuing stability over time or in terms of a number of well-ordered phases or stages, lives seem to be characterized by often abrupt transformations determined both by expected and eruptive life events and by intrinsic, but not necessarily continuous, developmental factors, including biological aging. These events taking place across the life course are later remembered as elements of a narrative which provides a coherent account of this often disjunctive life course. The form of this narrative is based upon a socially shared belief in Western culture that all narratives, including history, literature, and biographies, must have a beginning, a middle, and an end related to each other in a meaningful manner. (Cohler, 1982, pp. 227–228)

This volume is a reflection on life course developmental theory. In particular, the volume argues for the centrality of narrative interpretation for human development. As a point of departure, we begin from Bertram Joseph Cohler's (1938–2012) seminal contribution to our understanding of developmental psychology. During his prolific career, Cohler published over 200 papers and book chapters. But, Cohler's (1982) chapter Personal Narrative and Life Course is clearly one of the most influential. The chapter is one of the first published manuscripts in psychology on the process of storytelling for establishing selfhood and identity and one of the first essays on what would later become narrative psychology. In fact, the chapter was published before Theodore Sarbin (1986) coined the term “narrative psychology” or Jerome Bruner (1990) heralded the “narrative turn in psychology.”

Although Personal Narrative and Life Course is difficult to locate (PsycInfo doesn't even index the chapter), it has had a substantial impact on how developmental, personality, and clinical psychologists understand identity formation and mental health. But, the chapter can also be viewed as an innovative contribution to developmental theory, an alternative to other perspectives (e.g., biological, cognitive, evolutionary), which argues that development is an interpretative, narrative project.

The formulation, personal narrative and life course, elegantly summarizes three critical developmental processes. First, personal narrative captures the fact that persons are engaged in the process of interpretation, often self-interpretation, constantly figuring and refiguring their life and their past into a story of the self through time. Second, life course captures the fact that development is not only subjective and individual but also collective and contextual. Persons always find themselves inside a definite horizon of social and cultural conditions, which are historical and changing. Subjective interpretation and contextual forces are essential components for understanding development's path. But, finally, putting together personal narrative and life course highlights the tension between our place in the world and how we make sense of it.

From the first moments of our lives, and even before birth, persons are engaged in the process of making interpretations about life and their place inside it. We need to quickly gather: Whose voice is that? What sounds should I concentrate on? When does a word end? Who are others? What are people talking about? What kind of world do I live in? What are the dangers? What am I? What is a person? What do persons know, think, and feel? What kind of a person am I? What are the goals of life for a person like me? What is the meaning of life? Such facts about the world that we are thrown into are interpretations that each person must make. They are also interpretations that are vital to our survival and well-being.

Of course, newborns are, biologically and socially, prepared for making such interpretations. And, they are not alone in their endeavors. Babies find themselves in sustained interaction with others who are more knowledgeable about the world and its ways and help them to devise provisional answers to these questions and many others (Bruner, 1985; Vygotsky, 1978; Wertsch, 1988). With the support of others, children also learn the forms that persons in their community use to talk about self and others and to express the quality of their experience, intentions, and emotions (Miller, Chen, & Olivarez, Chapter 2 of this volume; Miller & Fung, 2012; Nelson & Fivush, 2004; Wiley, Rose, Burger, & Miller, 1998).

Cohler's great insight, which he developed in numerous publications during his long career, is that storytelling is our way of wrestling with the dilemmas and disruptions that define human existence. Persons make sense of life—of the life that they have, of the life that is given to them. We need to. The challenges are unrelenting, from birth until death. And, the solutions that we arrive at have consequences for our sense of being whole, vital, and progressing toward worthy goals. We advance, or we don't, on the basis of our capacity to create adaptive narratives that make sense to ourselves and to others.

Personal Narrative and Life Course was at the avant-garde of the narrative psychology movement, which gained momentum in the late 1980s and 1990s and continues with considerable energy today (Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach, & Zilber, 1998). Thirty years after its publication, there is now a large literature, from early childhood to old age, on the role of narrative in human development. But, in my opinion, the themes that Cohler advanced in Personal Narrative and Life Course are still fresh and future oriented, prescient of an innovative, interpretive, developmental psychology.

The Self Is a Narrative Project

To readers in 2014, the thesis that self is a narrative project is hardly revolutionary. But, in 1982, it was. Cohler's chapter was published shortly after the 1979 conference Narrative: The Illusion of Sequence, organized by W. J. T. Mitchell, and the 1980 publication of a Critical Inquiry special issue based upon a selection of conference papers from luminaries such as Hayden White, Roy Schafer, Paul Ricoeur, Jacques Derrida, and Frank Kermode. The special issue, republished soon after (Mitchell, 1981), is regarded as a turning point—when the conversation on narrative became widespread and interdisciplinary (Bruner, 1991a; Hyvärinen, 2006).

However, even in 2014, the implications of a narrative perspective for developmental psychology are yet to be realized. We remain very far away from a developmental psychology that takes meaning and context seriously. It is my hope that this volume of NDCAD will serve as a reference point for psychologists who would like to re-think their approach to development through the lens of a narrative perspective that is sensitive to interpretation and context in human lives.

For Cohler, narrative is part of the everyday interpretative orientation that humans take in the world. By emphasizing the role of the interpretive process in what Bruner (1991b) would call “self-making,” Cohler identified and developed the central tenet of a narrative perspective in psychology—narrative is an interpretative, hermeneutic enterprise (Brockmeier, 2013). Persons are meaning makers engaged in the project of understanding life. Narrative is the means for testing out, fixing, and revising interpretations, for bringing together disparate aspects of our experience and for making self and world comprehensible. Over the course of development, we use narrative in various ways, but beginning in adolescence, we begin to tell stories about our lives, which integrate past experiences with the present and projected future in order to describe a “self” or “identity” (Cohler, 1982; Habermas & Bluck, 2000; Habermas & Hatiboğlu, Chapter 3 of this volume; Habermas & Paha, 2001; McAdams, 1996).

The self becomes a story, an interpretation of our place in the world, which is progressively made and remade over developmental and historical time. Certainly, there is a subjective side to human development in which persons take account of their lives and create themselves, shaping the contours of who they were in the past, who they are now in the present, and what is possible for them in the future. One of the more interesting implications of this argument is that the self is nothing more than an interpretative action (Schiff, 2012). The meanings that persons employ are vitally important in shaping their identity and well-being. In a sense, Cohler's narrative theory radically individualizes the developmental process, making development a personal project that relies heavily on how each person experiences and organizes their past (McAdams, Chapter 5 of this volume).

Developmental Periods Have a Distinct Narrative Character

Cohler argued that life challenges, adversity and discontinuity, are key moments when narrative is required to reinterpret the past in order to experience a sense of continuity in the face of rupture. Certainly, persons encounter adversity at unique points in their life. Life is full of nonnormative events, which become part of the narrative project and require new interpretations. But, there are also common developmental challenges, both universal and social-cultural, which provide a common narrative character to particular epochs (Hammack & Toolis, Chapter 4 of this volume).

Cohler's work contains a tension between the individualized personal narrative and the normative course of development. Although narrative interpretation provides substantial freedom, understandings are always constrained by biological, cognitive, and social development. Cohler described the transformations in form and content of narratives in three normative developmental transitions (from early childhood to middle childhood, from childhood to adolescence and adulthood, and from adulthood to middle age). Each transformation requires a rebalancing of the person's orientation to the past, present, and future. Cohler (1982) suggested that middle childhood is characterized by turning away from the past, adolescence by “remembering the future” (p. 218), and middle age by a returning concern with the past. Recent work has suggested that early childhood and emerging adulthood are also candidates for life course periods with distinct narrative characters. But, as Lieblich (Chapter 6 of this volume) argues, the character of developmental periods is not uniform or sacrosanct. One of the goals of the chapters collected in this volume is to refine our understanding of narrative across the life course with reference to the emerging scholarly research in this area.

Narratives Are Always Told in (Personal and Historical) Time

Although biological, cognitive, and social forces may initiate transitions, persons always make sense of these challenges in the context of history, culture, and relationships. In order to understand their lives, persons are always inside a definite temporal and cultural horizon. Persons can only tell a “presently understood” version of the self at a specific moment in developmental time. We can understand the past only through the perspective of the present, an act of narrative reflection or hindsight (Freeman, 2010) in which persons read the past backward through the eyes of later experiences and present circumstances (Schiff & Cohler, 2001).

This presently understood account of self intersects with a specific moment in not only personal history but also world history. Cohler preferred the term “life course” over “life cycle” in order to emphasize development's context and the synergy of personal development with historical, sociological, and cultural circumstances. He was inspired not only by Mannheim's (1928/1952) sociology of generations but also by the innovative work of life course sociologists, such as Neugarten and Elder, who connected historical and social circumstances with subjective experience. Neugarten (1996), Cohler's mentor at The University of Chicago's Committee on Human Development, argued that persons understand their own development in relationship to socially constructed, but normatively shared, expectations and time tables. For Cohler, Elder's (1974/1999) Children of the Great Depression provided solid evidence for Mannheim's thesis that generational cohorts, being similarly “located” in developmental and historical time, share substantial aspects of their mentality while those from previous or later generations experience self and the world differently.

Cohler's conception of personal narrative and life course should also be understood in light of other anti-Piagetian theories of its day in their common effort to move beyond individualistic models of human development, which separate the unfolding of individual development from the social world. Riegel's (1976) notion of dialectics and dialogue in human development and Sameroff and Chandler's (1975) transactional model argue for a dynamic conception of the relationship between persons and the social world, through which, in their exchange, person and world are transformed. Gergen's (1977) aleatoric model argued for the nonuniversal, idiosyncratic, progression of lives over time.

In 1982, Cohler emphasized aspects of historical time in the process of self-interpretation, but it is a short move from history to culture (Cohler, 1992; Cohler & Galatzer-Levy, 2000). Of course, developmental psychology has progressed in the past 30 years. Vygotsky-inspired (Cole, 1996; Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, & Cain, 1998; Rogoff, 2003) and other cultural conscious theories (LeVine & New, 2008; Stigler, Shweder, & Herdt, 1990) have significantly revised our conception of the universality of human development. There is also a revival of nonlinear theories, including dynamic systems theory, and the continuing influence of transactional models (Sameroff, 2009; van Geert, 2011).

Nevertheless, the notions of personal narrative and life course are still insightful and fresh. Development is never out of context but always inside it. This realization has never been fully appreciated in developmental psychology, which continues to look at itself, deceptively, as generating laws that are true about all humans in all times and all places. Cohler didn't only discuss context but the way that persons make sense of their lives in context. In such a way, he aligned the interpretative capacities of persons with life course theory. Persons are constantly making sense of themselves and the world, in the midst of a changing personal situation and a changing world.

Persons Strive for Coherence

Although interpretations are forever limited by the present moment, these self-constructions strive for intelligibility on the personal, social, and cultural levels. Narratives should make sense to the teller, capturing the necessary facts about their past. But, stories must also present a followable story to listeners, fulfilling the immediate social and larger cultural expectations of storytelling. Cohler (1982) called this the dual interpretative task, whereby “the account…must be an accurate reflection of the subjectively experienced personal narrative” and it “must do so in a manner which is followable or which makes sense to others” (p. 208). In other words, the personal narrative needs to render the past in a way that is subjectively accurate and makes sense to others to whom we address our stories. We need to answer both the demands of our experience and the demands of the social world to tell our experience cogently.

Finally, Cohler argued that the sense of being coherent through time, narrating a story that successfully brings together past, present, and future, is connected to psychological well-being. In response to ruptures and discontinuities, brought on by a variety of life events, including physical and psychological growth, the personal narrative represents the attempt to maintain a sense of self as continuous, whole, and vital through time. As Cohler (1982) wrote, “transformations are characteristically dramatic and require considerable self-interpretative activity in order to preserve a sense of continuity in the personal narrative which fosters cohesiveness or congruence” (p. 215). The ability to author and reauthor a coherent personal narrative is a characteristic of adaptability—of personal resilience (Cohler, 1987). This is a point that has inspired considerable research in developmental psychology; it also has strong connections with psychoanalytic theorizing, particularly in Self Psychology. As Cohler (1982, 1987) recognized, the sense of coherence communicated in narrative nicely coalesces with Kohut's (1977) contention that the coherence and wholeness of the self are necessary for psychological health, productivity, and vitality. And, “the failure to maintain a coherent life history is characteristic of psychopathology of the self” (Cohler, 1987, p. 400).

Plan of the Work and Chapter Summary

This volume is authored by Cohler's students, friends, and colleagues. Each in our own way, we were touched by Cohler's scholarship and life. Authors were selected to represent major developmental epochs in narrating the self: childhood (Peggy J. Miller, Eva Chian-Hui Chen, & Megan Olivarez, Chapter 2), adolescence (Tilmann Habermas & Neşe Hatiboğlu, Chapter 3), emerging adulthood (Phillip L. Hammack & Erin Toolis, Chapter 4), middle age (Dan P. McAdams, Chapter 5), and old age (Amia Lieblich, Chapter 6). Authors were also asked to address one or more of the central theses that Cohler argued in his 1982 chapter and outlined above: (a) the self is a narrative project, (b) developmental periods have a distinct narrative character, (c) narratives are always told in (personal and historical) time, and (d) persons strive for coherence. Mark Freeman was asked to write an epilogue and comment on the chapters.

Read together, the chapters form a larger description of narrative's origins in conversation and the various uses that narrative is put to over developmental time. Miller, Chen, and Olivarez (Chapter 2) argue that the personal narrative has its beginnings in early childhood's stories of personal experience, in which specific episodes of recent experience are jointly told and scaffold children's emerging understanding of what it means to be a self over time and within a particular cultural world. Habermas and Hatiboğlu (Chapter 3) argue that adolescents begin to draw in larger segments of time and sweeping themes about the self, provocatively suggesting that contextual coherence, seeing the place of the self in history and culture, is a feature of adolescent narratives. Hammack and Toolis (Chapter 4) argue that the functions and themes of narrating in adulthood display a greater openness than adolescence; through the activity of narrative engagement, persons negotiate an individual conception of adulthood that responds to socially and culturally imagined master narratives of adulthood. In middle adulthood, McAdams (Chapter 5) argues that narratives respond to the developmental challenge to view life as purposeful and the projects of adulthood as having a larger meaning. Although the notion of purpose in life could be variously conceived in different cultural settings, in American history, folklore and media, the redemptive narrative is especially well articulated and conceived for sustaining generative projects. In old age, Amia Lieblich (Chapter 6) questions the ubiquity of reviewing the past for the construction of a coherent personal narrative as a requisite for positive aging. Lieblich argues that social and cultural contexts need to be considered as motivating forces for engagement with the past or other strategies for managing identity in old age. Finally, Mark Freeman (Chapter 7) provides critical insights into the nature of narrative over the life course and the legacy of Cohler's work.

Development's Story in Context

Although celebrating Cohler's scholarship and the research that it inspired is a worthy goal, this volume is essentially concerned with the future direction of developmental psychology. What is the legacy of these ideas for a more complex, and more realistic, understanding of developmental process? Or, why should developmental psychology take narrative seriously?

Following Cohler, I believe that narrative has a central role to play in understanding human lives and can provide substantial benefit to developmental theory and research. Human development is not only about objective circumstances that can be reliably measured and quantified in variables but it is equally about how persons interpret themselves and the world around them. Variable-centered research is important and complementary, but it conceals central aspects of human development. A narrative perspective can contribute to the project of developmental psychology by revealing the interpretative processes in which persons make connections between actions, experiences, and emotions. Narrative provides the tools to understand how people make sense of life, self, and world, and the consequences of meaning making.

This descriptive research activity of apprehending, in a more grounded and realistic light, what happens during development is a critical contribution in and of itself. Indeed, one way of viewing the significance of narrative for developmental psychology is fulfilling the goal of describing, and understanding, the phenomenon of development itself. The longstanding orientation toward understanding, verstehen