From Sense-Making to Meaning-Making: Understanding and Supporting Survivors of Suicide

2013 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. A. Castelli Dransart
Keyword(s):  
Meaning Making ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Survivors Of Suicide

scholarly journals Psychology, Meaning Making, and the Study of Worldviews

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Taves ◽  
Egil Asprem ◽  
Elliott Daniel Ihm
Keyword(s):  
Meaning Making ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Evolutionary Perspective ◽  
Cognitive Level ◽  
Multidisciplinary Study ◽  
Human Ability ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Object Of Study ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
Ways Of Life

To get beyond the solely negative identities signaled by atheism and agnosticism, we have to conceptualize an object of study that includes religions and non-religions. We advocate a shift from “religions” to “worldviews” and define worldviews in terms of the human ability to ask and reflect on “big questions” ([BQs], e.g., what exists? how should we live?). From a worldviews perspective, atheism, agnosticism, and theism are competing claims about one feature of reality and can be combined with various answers to the BQs to generate a wide range of worldviews. To lay a foundation for the multidisciplinary study of worldviews that includes psychology and other sciences, we ground them in humans’ evolved world-making capacities. Conceptualizing worldviews in this way allows us to identify, refine, and connect concepts that are appropriate to different levels of analysis. We argue that the language of enacted and articulated worldviews (for humans) and world-making and ways of life (for humans and other animals) is appropriate at the level of persons or organisms and the language of sense making, schemas, and meaning frameworks is appropriate at the cognitive level (for humans and other animals). Viewing the meaning making processes that enable humans to generate worldviews from an evolutionary perspective allows us to raise news questions for psychology with particular relevance for the study of nonreligious worldviews.

An Examination of Stage Theory of Grief among Individuals Bereaved by Natural and Violent Causes: A Meaning-Oriented Contribution

2010 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason M. Holland ◽  
Robert A. Neimeyer
Keyword(s):  
Young Adults ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Ethnically Diverse ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Stage Theory ◽  
Limited Support

Despite its popularity, few attempts have been made to empirically test the stage theory of grief. The most prominent of these attempts was conducted by Maciejewski, Zhang, Block, and Prigerson (2007), who found that different states of grieving may peak in a sequence that is consistent with stage theory. The present study aimed to provide a conceptual replication and extension of these findings by examining the association between time since loss and five grief Indicators (focusing on disbelief, anger, yearning, depression, and acceptance), among an ethnically diverse sample of young adults who had been bereaved by natural ( n = 441) and violent ( n = 173) causes. We also examined the potential salience of meaning-making and assessed the extent to which participants had made sense of their losses. In general, limited support was found for stage theory, alongside some evidence of an “anniversary reaction” marked by heightened distress and reduced acceptance for participants approaching the second anniversary of the death. Overall, sense-making emerged as a much stronger predictor of grief Indicators than time since loss, highlighting the relevance of a meaning-oriented perspective.

Edith Stein’s Challenge to Sense-Making

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Calcagno
Keyword(s):  
Meaning Making ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Edith Stein ◽  
Logical Investigations ◽  
Spiritual Unity

Edith Stein viewed her work with Husserl as a project of collaboration aimed at developing and promoting phenomenology, but rather than conceiving of constitution or sense-bestowal as belonging to the elements of logic and language, as it does in Husserl’s Logical Investigations and his transcendental structures of noesis and noema or in Reinach’s early work in phenomenology (1951), Stein argued that meaning-making must be grounded in both material nature and spiritual realities. Her early work in phenomenology was not only a critique of the perceived shortcomings of her teachers but also a constructive attempt to expand the account of how phenomenology can seize the objectivity of things themselves by showing how consciousness itself is embodied in a psycho-spiritual unity, which Stein called a person.

scholarly journals Moving From Fragmented to Seamless Sense-Making in Blended Learning

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 251-275
Author(s):  
Bi Xiaofang
Keyword(s):  
Adult Learners ◽  
Blended Learning ◽  
Curriculum Design ◽  
Vocational Training ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Pedagogical Practices ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Authentic Problems

Context: Sense-making, understood as meaning making or giving meaning to experience, is an integral part of everyday life, work and learning, and is a process critical in enabling people to recognise how and when to respond to situations appropriately so that they can resolve problems effectively (Weick et al., 2005). Earlier studies on sense-making in educational or organizational settings (e.g. Harverly et al., 2020; Weick et al., 2005) tended to focus on the sense-making process per se in particular setting such as classrooms or organizations, few of them have paid much attention to the sense-making process in blended learning (BL). BL in vocational training mainly aims to enable adult learners to apply what was learnt in classrooms to solve authentic problems in workplaces or simulated settings. High quality of sense-making is crucial to help the learners achieve the aim. This timely study is to offer a comparative look at how different dynamics of BL interplay together to mediate the quality of sense-making in achieving learning outcomes. The dynamics include industry and training connections, policy and institutional contexts, the inhabited pedagogical practices and curriculum design. Methods: This study adopted phenomenological (Moran, 2000) and semi-ethnographic approaches (Hammersley, 2010), including semi-structured interviews, observations, analysis of relevant documents (e.g. curriculum and learning materials) to capture the rich data in case studies to understand learners’ sense-making experience in BL. Researchers focused on seeking to understand how different environments, tools and artefacts mediate the quality of sense-making as the learners progressed through their learning journey. To triangulate the data, adult educators, curriculum designers and where possible, workplace supervisors, were also interviewed and observed for their perceptions and behaviours in learners’ sense-making in BL. Findings: The findings from two different BL courses (ICT and HR) surface that the degree to which learners’ sense-making is fragmented (low quality) or seamless (high quality) is mediated by the interplay of different contextual factors in BL in multiple ways, such as, the connections (or not) with industry, the use (or not) of authentic problems and tasks. Conclusion: The interplay between different dynamics in BL is of great importance to mediate the curriculum design and pedagogical approaches used in BL for high quality of sense-making of adult learners in vocational training.

scholarly journals Delighting and Detesting Engagement: Emotional Politics of Junk News

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 205630512097203
Author(s):  
Laura Savolainen ◽  
Damian Trilling ◽  
Dimitra Liotsiou
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Topic Modeling ◽  
Social Relationship ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Exploratory Research ◽  
High Performing ◽  
Platform Architecture ◽  
Emotional Politics

How do audiences make sense of and interact with political junk news on Facebook? How does the platform’s “emotional architecture” intervene in these sense-making, interactive processes? What kinds of mediated publics emerge on and through Facebook as a result? We study these questions through topic modeling 40,500 junk news articles, quantitatively analyzing their engagement metrics, and a qualitative comment analysis. This exploratory research design allows us to move between levels of public discourse, zooming in from cross-outlet talking points to microsociological processes of meaning-making, interaction, and emotional entrainment taking place within the comment boxes themselves. We propose the concepts of delighting and detesting engagement to illustrate how the interplay between audiences, platform architecture, and political junk news generates a bivalent emotional dynamic that routinely divides posts into highly “loved” and highly “angering.” We argue that high-performing (or in everyday parlance, viral) junk news bring otherwise disparate audience members together and orient their dramatic focus toward objects of collective joy, anger, or concern. In this context, the nature of political junk news is performative as they become resources for emotional signaling and the construction of group identity and shared feeling on social media. The emotions that animate junk news audiences typically refer back to a transpiring social relationship between two political sides. This affectively loaded “us” versus “them” dynamic is both enforced by Facebook’s emotional architecture and made use of by junk news publishers.

Cognitive Approach to Contemporary Complex Cinema

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miklós Kiss ◽  
Steven Willemsen
Keyword(s):  
Meaning Making ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Relative Complexity ◽  
Different Types

Chapter 2 focuses on a cognitive approach as a pertinent method to address complex narratives’ ‘difficult’ viewing experiences. As it argues, complexity does not only lie in a story’s formal composition itself, but is best understood in terms of how the narrative hinders viewers’ comprehension and meaning-making routines. Noticing that some films pose more conspicuous impediments to sense-making efforts than others, this chapter differentiates movies in regard to their relative complexity in cognitive terms – that is, their ability to cause various states of cognitive puzzlement and trigger diverse mental responses in their viewers. The cognitive approach will lead to reconsider the classificatory accuracy of existing concepts, such as the umbrella term of puzzle film. From there on, the chapter proposes more refined categories within the overarching division of narrative complexity, aiming to discern between different types of film that offer various degrees of complexity.

Young adult women’s narrative resilience in relation to mother-daughter communicated narrative sense-making and well-being

2018 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 1146-1167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haley Kranstuber Horstman
Keyword(s):  
Young Adult ◽  
Perspective Taking ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Narrative Construction ◽  
Turn Taking ◽  
Taking Action ◽  
Silver Lining ◽  
Over Time

Grounded in communicated narrative sense-making (CNSM) and resilience theorizing, the current study investigated the effects of mother-daughter communication on young adult women’s ( n = 60) narrative construction of resilience over time. Participants wrote stories of difficult experiences at Time 1, discussed the story with their mother in a research lab two days later, and wrote the story again at Time 2. Inductive analyses of daughters’ stories revealed four themes of resilience: acknowledging the struggle, taking action, seeking silver lining, and finding strength in others. Mother-daughter interactions were analyzed for CNSM behaviors—engagement, turn-taking, perspective-taking, and coherence. Mother-daughter coherence and engagement illuminated differences in daughters’ themes of resilience, and all CNSM behaviors positively related to daughters’ increased narrative resilience over time. Findings demonstrated the effect of mother-daughter interaction on young adult women’s resilience, suggesting that CNSM contributes to the meaning-making component of resilience. Implications for advancing CNSM and resilience theorizing are explored.

scholarly journals Experiences of Parental Suicide-Bereavement: A Longitudinal Qualitative Analysis Over Two Years

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 564
Author(s):  
Lorenza Entilli ◽  
Victoria Ross ◽  
Diego De Leo ◽  
Sabrina Cipolletta ◽  
Kairi Kõlves
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Analysis ◽  
Thematic Analysis ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Dual Process ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Depression Symptoms ◽  
Mothers And Fathers ◽  
Parental Suicide ◽  
Suicide Bereavement

Limited research exists on the experiences of parents bereaved by suicide. Our earlier qualitative analysis examined the experiences of parents’ suicide bereavement at 6 and 12 months after their loss. The current study aimed to extend the analysis over 24 months, outlining the key themes of parents’ suicide bereavement experience. In the frames of a longitudinal study of suicide bereavement in Queensland, Australia, parents were interviewed at 6, 12, and 24 months after their loss. Thematic analysis was used to further explore new themes and three key themes identified in earlier analyses: searching for answers and sense-making, coping strategies and support, and finding meaning and purpose. Results at 24 months revealed a clearer differentiation between strategies adopted by mothers and fathers. Anger and blame had changed towards feelings of depression. A polarization was observed between parents still oscillating in brooding rumination and those who have shifted towards sense-making. The former more frequently reported depression symptoms, and the latter reported a more positive attitude towards life and acceptance of their loss. Consistent with the dual-process model, parents managed to reach acceptance after oscillating between sense-making and meaning making. Findings provide insights how suicide loss affects parents, with implications for postvention.

scholarly journals Sameness and difference in narrative modes and narrative sense making: The case of Ramsey Campbell’s “The Scar”

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 130-146
Author(s):  
Mari Hatavara ◽  
Jarkko Toikkanen
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Narrative Form ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Linguistic Resources ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Narrative Studies ◽  
Modes Of Representation ◽  
The Everyday

AbstractThe article discusses basic questions of narrative studies and definitions of narrative from a historical and conceptual perspective in order to map the terrain between different narratologies. The focus is placed on the question of how fiction interacts with other realms of our lives or, more specifically, how reading fiction both involves and affects our everyday meaning making operations. British horror writer Ramsey Campbell’s (b. 1946) short story “The Scar” (1967) will be used as a test case to show how both narrative modes of representation and the reader’s narrative sense making operations may travel between art and the everyday, from fiction to life and back. We argue that the cognitively inspired narrative studies need to pair up with linguistically oriented narratology to gain the necessary semiotic sensitivity to the forms and modes of narrative sense making. Narratology, in turn, needs to explore in detail what it is in the narrative form that enables it to function as a tool for reaching out and making sense of the unfamiliar. In our view, reading fictional narratives such as “The Scar” can help in learning and adopting linguistic resources and story patterns from fiction to our everyday sense making efforts.

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