Ch 11 Narrative Psychology Flashcards
What is narrative psychology primarily concerned with?
Narrative psychology is concerned with how people organise and bring order to their experiences by constructing narratives, allowing them to make connections between and interpret events in their lives.
What is a key agreement among narrative researchers?
Narrative researchers agree on the importance of narratives in human interaction and share an interest in the structure and forms of the stories people narrate.
How do narrative researchers differ in their approaches?
While they agree on the significance of narratives, narrative researchers differ in their theoretical assumptions and methods of analysis.
Who is Murray, and what does he suggest about the development of narrative psychology?
Murray is a scholar who suggests that while literary and folklore critics have long been interested in narratives, the shift to narratives in psychology occurred more recently as part of a movement away from quantitative positivist psychology toward a focus on language and subjective experience.
How does Riessman (1993) define the concept of narrative in narrative psychology?
Riessman (1993) states that the exact definition of a narrative is open to debate among researchers.
According to Murray (2003), what is a narrative?
Murray (2003) defines a narrative as an organised interpretation of a sequence of events, attributing agency to characters and inferring causal links between events.
What does a narrative provide, according to Murray (2003)?
A narrative provides an opportunity to define ourselves, clarify the continuity in our lives, and convey this to others.
What are the six features of most narratives as described by McAdams?
McAdams identifies six features of most narratives: settings, characters, initiating events, attempts, consequences, and reactions.
What concern do Emerson and Frosh raise about defining narratives?
Emerson and Frosh question whether defining a narrative as something with a beginning, middle, and end focuses on a defensive structure that denies the disorganisation of everyday life.
What are Frank’s three types of illness narratives?
Frank identifies three types of illness narratives: restitution narratives, chaos narratives, and quest narratives.
What is a restitution narrative, according to Frank?
A restitution narrative follows the plot: “Yesterday I was healthy, today I’m sick, but tomorrow I’ll be healthy again,” with the end point being the expectation of recovery.
How does a chaos narrative differ from a restitution narrative?
A chaos narrative imagines life never getting better and lacks narrative order, offering no hope of improvement.
What is a quest narrative, as described by Frank?
A quest narrative sees illness as part of a journey where the experience is accepted, and there is a hope of personal growth or transformation.
What danger does Frank highlight in quest narratives?
Frank warns that quest narratives can sometimes romanticise illness, potentially overlooking the difficulties and distress involved.
What is Rickor’s (1984) argument regarding the function of narratives?
Rickor (1984) argues that humans need narratives to bring order to a constantly changing world and uses the term “emplotment” to describe how narrators organise sequences into meaningful plots.
According to Brunner, when do people seek organisation and coherence through narratives?
Brunner argues that people seek organisation and coherence through narratives particularly when life seems disorganised and incoherent, often during difficult times such as illness, bereavement, and divorce.
How do narratives help people cope with difficult experiences?
Narratives help make sense of difficult events, create order, and keep chaos at bay, offering a sense of control over disorganised or challenging life circumstances.
What role do narratives play in constructing and maintaining self-identity, according to Hiles and Cernak (2008)?
Hiles and Cernak (2008) argue that narrators play an active role in constructing their identities by choosing which stories to tell and which to withhold, shaping their self-identity in the process.
How can altering the stories we tell change our identities, according to Murray (2003)?
Murray (2003) suggests that by altering the narratives we tell, we can change our self-identities, as narratives provide localised coherence and stability in different social relationships.
What therapeutic function can illness narratives provide, according to Frank?
Frank argues that illness narratives offer a chance for those who are ill to find new destinations and maps in life, helping to reassert their voice after illness wounds both body and voice.
How do illness narratives describe life before illness, according to Murray?
Murray notes that illness narratives often describe life before illness in idyllic terms, which may help the narrator remove guilt and reinforce a sense of blamelessness.
How can narratives promote social change, according to the Centre for Narrative Research?
The Centre for Narrative Research claims that narratives can be important components of social change, contributing to resolving medical, social, and educational problems, building communities, and aiding reconciliation in conflict situations.
What example does Patricia Kauffert (1998) provide of narratives contributing to a resistance movement?
Kauffert (1998) describes how narratives from women with breast cancer helped form a resistance movement, including the Breast Cancer Coalition, which focused national attention on breast cancer and advocated for more funding and research.
What is the goal of narrative therapy?
Narrative therapy helps individuals reconstruct more fulfilling and freeing stories about their lives by addressing the constraining and restrictive stories they currently tell.
What does Riessman (1993) suggest narrative analysis focuses on?
Riessman (1993) suggests that narrative analysis examines how participants impose order on their experiences to make sense of events and actions in their lives.
What must be systematic and clear in a narrative analysis?
The analysis must be systematic and clear, generating insights into the structure of the narrative, its functions, and its social and/or psychological implications.
What sources can be used to gather narrative accounts?
Narrative accounts can be gathered from existing documents (e.g., Frost’s interviews with Nixon), narrative interviews, autobiographies, and creative methods like poems, lifelines, masks, and identity boxes.
What are the seven questions in Crossley’s semi-structured interview protocol for narrative interviews?
The seven questions cover: life chapters, key events, significant people, future plans, stresses and problems, personal ideologies, and life themes.
How does Crossley (2000) structure the ‘life chapters’ question in narrative interviews?
The ‘life chapters’ question asks participants to think of their life as if it were a book and divide it into distinct chapters.
How should researchers approach narrative interviews according to Etherington (2021)?
Etherington suggests a more collaborative approach to gathering data, describing them as “narrative conversations” rather than structured interviews.
Why might narrative interviews take place over several sessions?
Narrative interviews often occur over several sessions because it may take time for a participant to fully tell their story.
What does Riessman argue about the relationship between transcription and analysis?
Riessman argues that analysis cannot be easily separated from transcription; both are intertwined in the process of narrative analysis.
How does transcription in narrative analysis differ from discourse analysis?
In narrative analysis, a transcript of the content (questions and answers) is sufficient, while discourse analysis requires more detailed transcription, including pauses and annotations.
What determines the level of transcription required for narrative analysis?
The level of transcription required depends on the aims of the project and the type of analysis being conducted.
What do Langridge, Hiles, and Cermak suggest for narrative analysis?
They recommend applying a range of interpretive perspectives by repeatedly working through the text and asking different sets of questions about content, tone, themes, and social/psychological functions.
What questions should be asked about the content of a narrative during analysis?
Questions about content include: What type of story is being told? Who are the protagonists? Is the story progressive or regressive? Does it have a clear direction or does it fizzle out?
What questions should be asked about the content of a narrative during analysis?
Questions about content include: What type of story is being told? Who are the protagonists? Is the story progressive or regressive? Does it have a clear direction or does it fizzle out?
