Life Scripts, Counter Scripts and Online Videos: The Struggle of Religious-Nationalist Community Epistemic Authorities against Military Service for Women

Life Scripts and Counter Scripts are used to illustrate the struggle by Israel’s Nationalist-Ultra-Orthodox Rabbinical authorities within the Zionist-religious community against military service for women. Following years in which the army had been out of bounds for the normative life scripts of the community’s women, the enlistment of women was relatively legitimized and normalized (although still far from becoming mainstream). These women identified an epistemic community that enabled them to establish life scripts offering community logics by which military service is perceived as empowering and offering positive capital and meaning. Conversely, leaders of conservative organizations within the Zionist-religious community, identifying the enlistment of women as a threat to the essentially religious-chauvinistic community order, embarked upon an internal campaign aimed at preventing it. This campaign can be seen as an attempt to establish a ‘counter script’ to the women’s enlistment script. It does not attempt to convince based on religious logics but by refuting beliefs formed as part of the script the women imagined would become their reality after they enlist. The paper analyzes a specific discourse arena taking part in the campaign—that of online videos distributed on YouTube and social media, aiming to influence attitudes. We conclude that, despite attempts to establish counter-scripts, by definition, these initiatives consist of an admission of weakness by the religious-rabbinical authority, as its very need to distribute these videos points to a double-bind and an ‘own-goal’ of sorts for the conservative authorities within religious-nationalist society.

Ethnic-Racial Life Scripts: Relations With Ethnic-Racial Identity and Psychological Health

Life scripts dictate the culturally appropriate order, content, and timing of autobiographical events. In the current study, we examined the ethnic-racial life scripts of American emerging adults from three ethnic-racial backgrounds. One hundred ninety-five Asian, 165 Latinx, and 45 White undergraduates produced and rated seven life events they believed to be prototypical of their ethnic-racial group and self-reported desired and perceived script normality, ethnic-racial identity (ERI), and psychological health. The resulting life scripts differed in meaningful ways between the three ethnic-racial groups. Relations between script normality, ERI, and psychological health were similarly varied between groups. These findings provide a descriptive basis for understanding the normative expectations associated with certain ethnic-racial enclaves and how life scripts may vary across these and other such groups. Moreover, the manner in which these scripts are perceived may carry divergent implications for adjustment, across ethnic-racial groups.

THE NARRATIVE COMPONENT OF THE LIFE SCRIPTS ANALYSYS

The article is devoted to the analysis of awareness in life scripts based on verbalization of life experience by the subject in the process of narrative interview. A narrative approach aims to make visible phenomena which has already shaped our identity. The purpose of the article is research of narrative psychology opportunities for understanding by the individual the existing life scenario and possibilities of its freeing and expanding, building an autonomous life path, full of responsibility and creativity. It has been pointed out that according to the representatives of the transactional analysis theory the life scenario influences the life path of the personality. The comedy, the victory of life over death, romance, idealization of the past and traditions; tragedy, that shows the defeat of the hero and his expulsion from the society; irony which is to question all previous narrative structures were distinguished as the narrative structures of personality. It has been discussed that the study of the life scenario has its difficulties and limitations. The use of narrative interviewing creates wide opportunities for a deep understanding of the specifics of the individual’s life scenario. The use of this method allows to determine the scriptural beliefs of the person, the further analysis of which is a prerequisite for understanding and correcting the scripted life path.

Relations Between Cultural Life Scripts, Individual Life Stories, and Psychological Distress

Cultural life scripts are shared knowledge about personal events expected to be experienced by individuals within a society and used as a framework for life story narration. Differences in cultural life scripts for individuals with depression and trauma, and their relations to anxiety, stress, and well-being, have not been investigated. Malaysian participants ( N = 120) described and rated seven significant events most likely to be experienced by a prototypical infant from their culture, and seven significant events they had experienced or expected to experience in their own life. Participants then answered questionnaires about depression and trauma symptoms and about anxiety, stress, and well-being. The subclinical depression group listed less typical cultural life scripts events, whereas the subclinical post-traumatic stress disorder group listed less positive individual life story events. The findings indicate that, although individuals with depression and trauma possess knowledge of the cultural life scripts, there may be small differences in the cognitive processing of cultural life scripts and individual life story events.