Narrative Approaches Flashcards
What is a narrative identity?
A person’s internalized and evolving life story
What is the function of narrative identity?
To integrate a person’s past, present and future and bring a sense of purpose and unity.
What do greater instances of redemption sequences in one’s narrative identity signifies?
Greater well being and greater generativity
What are the coding constructs for identity narratives?
Agency
Communion
Redemption
Contamination
Meaning making
Exploratory narrative processing
Coherent positive resolution
What are the two steps that people use to emerge strengthened from adversities?
The person explores the negative experiences in depth (personal growth) and the person articulates and commit the self to a positive resolution of the event (happiness)
What are the constructs used by those with high scores on psychological maturity?
Learning, growth and positive personal transformation
What is the key narrative theme for therapy patients who improved?
Agency
What do people gain to their narrative identities as they develop from child to teenager?
Causal coherence, thematic coherence and narrative identity.
What is parental elaboration associated with?
Greater levels of story elaboration, fundamental step for meaning making and identity formation.
What is an exception to meaning making being associated with greater well being?
Young teenage boys
What changes in adolescence that changes meaning making?
Cognitive development
Greater social network
Greater social pressure to define self
What are the important conversational factors to meaning making process?
The context
The listener
The relationship
What parts did James separate the self into?
The “I” self, self as a subject and actor
The “me” self, self as object, view of self
What other factors did James say the me contained besides personality?
Body, possessions, family members
What is a schema?
Cognitive structures containing beliefs and knowledge about a domain that guide and organize information processing
What is the self-concept made of?
Self-schemas, specific episodic memories and peripheral self-conceptions
What is the self-schema based on?
Cumulative impression of past experiences
What are McAdams three levels of self?
Actor: traits and roles, describing behaviour
Agent: goals and values, not just controlled by outside forces
Author: life narratives,
What are the stages of the development of narrative identity?
2-3 : Autobiographical memory, episodic memories become attached to self
3-4 : theory of mind, child understand others as having minds of their own
5-6 : Story grammar, understanding how a story should be structured
10-14 : Cultural life script, learn what a human life contains and how it should be structured, cultures diverge
12-15 : Autobiographical reasoning and advanced story telling skills, start to derive meaning from autobiographical events
What is the difference in what the schema is about depending on the culture?
Independent self is more likely to be about personal traits and goals
Interdependent self is more likely to be about roles and relationships
How does culture shape narratives?
Different cultures provide different scripts on how the story should unfold (self-discovery or inter generational continuity) and it influences what aspects of life are considered meaningful, shaping themes and tones
What are the coding constructs of narrative identity?
Meaning making
Exploratory narrative processing
Coherent positive resolution and
Overall coherence
How do narratives identities relate to personality?
Narrative themes reflect core aspects of personality
Personality can change through rewriting narratives
Life stories as the bridge between stability (themes remain consistent) and change
Narratives as source of meaning and purpose
What fields do the McAdam theory fit into?
Psychoanalytic and phenomenological
