Investigating Life-Stories: Personal Narratives in Pastoral Psychology

1993 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 277-287 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Ruard Ganzevoort

The subject of this article is the meaning of the personal narrative in pastoral practice and research. A hermeneutical, narrative approach is used to explore the nature and function of the personal narrative, and gives insight into the dynamics of pastoral counseling. Narrative approaches are also both possible and valuable for research and counseling. This reflects the new interest in hermeneutics found in Dutch pastoral psychological literature. Implications for research in pastoral psychology are discussed and possibilities for practice are described. The article concludes with a discussion of the hermeneutical approach.

2021 ◽  
pp. 159-192
Author(s):  
Jack Bauer

Theme in a personal narrative conveys the narrator’s value orientations (what the person values, is motivated by, needs, or believes is important in an event) but not whether the event turns out well (tone does that). Three great themes in both literature and life stories are agency, communion, and growth. Themes of eudaimonic growth are central to the transformative self. Growth themes come in various, overlapping forms, notably agentic, communal, reflective, and experiential forms. Growth themes and growthy tones work together to convey not only the value orientation of growth but also the value fulfillment or attainment of eudaimonic growth, experienced as a sense of meaningfulness. Growth themes link actions to motives and to mechanisms of development, which may be why growth themes are powerful predictors of separate measures of happiness, love, wisdom, and growth, regardless of the type of event.


2016 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 414-429 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa Vogel ◽  
Kristin Buhrow ◽  
Caroline Cornish

In the Andean region, spindle whorls have been the subject of archaeological analysis less often than other artifact classes, such as pottery. Nevertheless, spindle whorls may have much more to contribute to archaeological interpretations of production, status, and exchange patterns than previously acknowledged. The case study presented here examines the spindle whorl collection from the site of El Purgatorio, Peru, the capital city of the Casma polity (ca. A.D. 700–1400). Spindle whorls were not only expertly crafted utilitarian tools for spinning yarn, but also items of personal adornment, symbols of wealth or status, and possible indicators of intra-polity exchange patterns. The analysis of spindle whorls in regard to form and function provides insight into Casma social and economic organization. The spindle whorls discovered at El Purgatorio also reflect varying degrees of standardization and technical knowledge, suggesting that at least some may have been manufactured by specialists in metallurgical and ceramic workshops.


Quaerendo ◽  
1982 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-167
Author(s):  
Ina Kok

AbstractA century ago, in 1882, the art historian William Conway published the chief results of his research into the woodcuts in the incunabula of the Low Countries, in a series of articles in The Bibliographer. Two years later his book The woodcutters of the Netherlands in the fifteenth century appeared. Conway's approach is that of an art historian: he classifies the woodcuts according to their artists and then groups these together in schools. Two general surveys of this area have appeared since Conway, Delen (1924) and Schretlen (1925), both likewise written from the angle of art history. Unlike Conway, however, they make no attempt at completeness, so that even today for an overall view one has to turn to Conway. Despite the progress that has been made in the field of bibliography in our own century and the new discoveries of Netherlandic illustrated incunabula, there has so far been no new study of the subject in bibliographical terms. Work is now in progress on such an investigation at the Department of Book and Library Science at the University of Amsterdam. Besides a census of all woodcuts and the books in which they appear, the project is intended, through a study of the sorts of edition that were illustrated and the association between illustration and text, to gain an insight into the nature and function of the illustrations. Study of the technical aspects of the woodcuts is designed to provide greater insight into the practice of printing with woodcuts in the fifteenth century and the wanderings of the wood blocks from printer to printer. An extensive collection of photographic reproductions of pages with woodcuts has now been brought together, and work has started on preliminary ordering and analysis.


2012 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Cousins ◽  
Dounia Bissar

The article adopts a narrative inquiry approach to foreground informal learning and exposes a collection of stories from tutors about how they adapted comfortably to the digital age.We were concerned that despite substantial evidence that bringing about changes in pedagogic practices can be difficult, there is a gap in convincing approaches to help in this respect. In this context, this project takes a ‘‘bottom-up’’ approach and synthesises several life-stories into a single persuasive narrative to support the process of adapting to digital change. The project foregrounds the small, every-day motivating moments, cultural features and environmental factors in people’s diverse lives which may have contributed to their positive dispositions towards change in relation to technology enhanced learning. We expect that such narrative approaches could serve to support colleagues in other institutions to warm up to ever-changing technological advances.Keywords: narrative inquiry; resonance; story; engagement(Published: 17 December 2012)Citation: Research in Learning Technology 2012, 20: 18976 - http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/rlt.v20i0.18976


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-76
Author(s):  
Isabella Sarto-Jackson ◽  

The role of narratives in clinical practice has long been underappreciated. This disregard is largely due to an overemphasis on reductionist interpretations of disease causes based on the primacy of the medical model of disease. This way of thinking has led to decontextualizing symptoms of disorders from patients’ lives. More recently, however, healthcare professionals have turned towards a biopsychosocial model that reintroduces sociocultural and psychosocial aspects into clinical diagnosis and treatment. To this end, narrative approaches have been increasingly explored as alternative diagnostic and therapeutic tools. Central to the narrative approach is the avoidance of pathologizing language that usually focuses on deficiencies. Instead, patients’ narratives are co-constructed and co-created together with the clinician or therapist to transform them into empowering stories about healing. To make narratives accessible and transformable for the patient, psychoeducational methods can be used to translate scientific and medical knowledge about the disease into stories described in everyday language that resonate with the patient’s own life stories. Consequently, psychoeducational narratives enhance the patient’s competence in coping with a physical or mental illness and re-contextualizing symptoms, and prompt an increased compliance with therapies.


Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (11) ◽  
pp. 976
Author(s):  
Tamarin Norwood ◽  
John Boulton

The death of a baby, stillborn or living only briefly after birth, is a moral affront to the cycle of life, leaving parents without the life stories and material objects that traditionally offer comfort to the bereaved, nor—in an increasingly secularized society—a religious framework for making sense of their loss. For the grieving mother, it is also a physical affront, as her body continues to rehearse its part in its symbiotic relationship with a baby whose own body is disintegrating. Attempting to forge continuing bonds with her child after death makes special demands upon the notion of embodied spirituality, as she attempts to make sense of this tragedy in an embodied way. This paper, which reconciles the distinct perspectives of bereaved mothers and children’s doctors, proposes that the thoughtful re-presentation of medical insight into pregnancy and fetal development may assuage parents’ grief by adding precious detail to their baby’s life course, and by offering the mother a material basis to conceptualize her own body as part of the distributed personhood of her baby.


Author(s):  
Peter Sterling

The synaptic connections in cat retina that link photoreceptors to ganglion cells have been analyzed quantitatively. Our approach has been to prepare serial, ultrathin sections and photograph en montage at low magnification (˜2000X) in the electron microscope. Six series, 100-300 sections long, have been prepared over the last decade. They derive from different cats but always from the same region of retina, about one degree from the center of the visual axis. The material has been analyzed by reconstructing adjacent neurons in each array and then identifying systematically the synaptic connections between arrays. Most reconstructions were done manually by tracing the outlines of processes in successive sections onto acetate sheets aligned on a cartoonist's jig. The tracings were then digitized, stacked by computer, and printed with the hidden lines removed. The results have provided rather than the usual one-dimensional account of pathways, a three-dimensional account of circuits. From this has emerged insight into the functional architecture.


2009 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anastasia Christou

This article explores the theoretical and methodological implications of the study of second generation migration through the use of life stories, a narrative and biographical approach. It presents a theoretical contextualisation of life history research in addressing the direction it has taken in the study of migration and identity in order to problematise how the subject and subjectivities in narrative research have been framed by social categorisations such as gender, ethnicity, class as well as social experiences such as trauma, exile, memory and imagination. The paper develops the analytical contribution of researching the biographicity of everyday migrant lives. 


Author(s):  
Hannah Lee

This paper is the attempt to show how system theory could provide critical insight into the transdisciplinary field of library and information sciences (LIS). It begins with a discussion on the categorization of library and information sciences as an academic and professional field (or rather, the lack of evidence on the subject) and what is exactly meant by system theory, drawing upon the general system theory established by Ludwig von Bertalanffy. The main conversation of this paper focuses on the inadequacies of current meta-level discussions of LIS and the benefits of general system theory (particularly when considering the exponential rapidity in which information travels) with LIS.


Relay Journal ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 292-293

Welcome to the fourth reflective practice column. In this issue, we develop on the themes dealt with in the previous issues, in particular teacher reflection, mentoring and a personal narrative approach to exploring language advisor identity and practice. Over five papers, we see teachers and advisors reflecting on practice to develop their practice and, perhaps most importantly, sharing this reflection with others.


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