Introduction

This introduction presents Tillich’s notion of the justification of the doubter as a modern attempt to answer the Lutheran Christian problem of assurance. It explains the rationale of the book: to understand where Tillich landed, theologically, after the First World War, and how he got there. After locating the book within Tillich scholarship, the unique approach is indicated: attending to Tillich’s theological roots, interrogating his autobiographical narrative, making the early sermons central, and uncovering untranslated early German material for an English-language audience. Furthermore, the problematic ambiguities of Tillich’s personal life are considered. The introduction concludes with an overview of the book’s chapters.

Badania biograficzne rodzin więźniów. Refleksja metodologiczna Angelika Cieślikowska-Ryczko 1

The article deals with the life situation of the families of prisoners, in particular, parental relationships connected with the experience of incarceration in a correctional institution. During the realisation of the research I noticed many difficulties in finding contact with potential interlocutors, therefore I considered the families of prisoners as an environment “invisible in the research field”. In addition, I defined families of prisoners as marginalised and stigmatised environments. The main aim of the article is to show selected methodological dilemmas that can be encountered through the design and analysis of biographical research of family members of prisoners. The theoretical introduction of the paper as an extended definition of the penitentiary crisis allowed to characterise the dominant trends and directions of research on prisoners’ families. Further, it focused on selected problems of realisation of qualitative research (especially biographical research). I analyse the literature and present my own methodological approach based on the direction of interpretative sociology. Using the potential of the autobiographical narrative interview technique (of the German sociological school of Fritz Schütze), I collected 31 interviews with adult children of prisoners and 30 interviews with parents of prisoners. Finally, I refer to my own research experience and discuss the “usefulness and ineffectiveness” of an autobiographical narrative interview. Moreover, I characterise key reflections on the role of the researcher in obtaining autobiographical narrations. The article is an invitation to discuss the improvement of research procedures, especially in the area of research on family members of persons in prisons.

FEMALE CHARACTER AS AUTHOR'S ALTER EGO IN IRENA KARPA'S NOVEL "GOOD NEWS FROM THE ARAL SEA"

The study investigates the problem of representation of the female image in the autobiographical paradigm of Irena Karpa's novel “Good News from the Aral Sea” because the tendencies of subjectivism describe the writer's work as a manifestation of generational and gender identities. Thus, the modern cultural process is marked by the active presence of writers not only through their texts, but also through various public activities and social networks, which allows the reader to have an idea of the author's private history and accordingly correlate it with artistic narrative. Therewith, the form of the autobiographical narrative is considered as a way for the writer to articulate her experience as gender-marked and is a form of constructing the identity of the character – the author's alter ego. Irena Karpa's book simulates four types of modern heroines, united by common topos of birth and residence, but it is Rita's plot line that is considered as the embodiment of an autobiographical narrative. The figure of this heroine is shown at the junction of two cultures: Ukrainian and European. However, the drama of her life story is provoked by the self-identification of the mistress, who is always in a relationship with two men at the same time, which determines her identity. In the novel, it is love stories that unfold the dynamism of the heroine' s character: she mimics each subsequent man, changing role models from victim to muse. Other life roles: mother, wife, daughter are secondary, and are outside the priority zone. The correlation of the artistic world of the novel with the actual biography of the writer gives grounds to interpret the novel as an autofiction.

“Quilt”, aesthetic experience and autobiographical narrative: future teachers and the art of listening

The purpose of this paper is to analyze “Quilt”, a formative and investigative device, methodology, and epistemology developed by Berkenbrock-Rosito and used since 2001. In this study, we present Quilt, a device intended to contribute to teacher education through the production of written, pictorial, and oral (auto)biographical narratives, in the Pedagogy Course of a university private area on the east side of the city of São Paulo. The methodology included a contextual questionnaire featuring questions on what “Quilt” participants liked and did not like about the experience. Data shows that “Quilt” can be considered a valuable methodology to listen to subjects, which postulates the existence of an aesthetic dimension in the constitution of one’s teaching identity.

The Joyful Life: An Existential-Humanistic Approach to Positive Psychology in the Time of a Pandemic

In the midst of a global pandemic, psychology has a duty to identify dispositional or character traits that can be cultivated in citizens in order to create resiliency in the face of profound losses, suffering and distress. Dispositional joy holds some promise as such a trait that could be especially important for well-being during the current pandemic and its consequences. The concept of the Joyful Life may operate as bridge between positive psychology and humanistic, existential, and spiritual views of the good life, by integrating hedonic, prudential, eudaimonic and chaironic visions of the good life. Previous phenomenological research on state joy suggests that momentary states of joy may have features that overlap with happiness but go beyond mere hedonic interests, and point to the experience of a life oriented toward virtue and a sense of the transcendent or the sacred. However, qualitative research on the Joyful Life, or dispositional joy, is sorely lacking. This study utilized a dialogical phenomenological analysis to conduct a group-based analysis of 17 volunteer students, who produced 51 autobiographical narrative descriptions of the joyful life. The dialogical analyses were assisted by integration of the Imagery in Movement Method, which incorporated expressive drawing and psychodrama as an aid to explicate implicit themes in the experiences of the participants. The analyses yielded ten invariant themes found across the autobiographical narrative descriptions: Being broken, being grounded, being centered, breaking open, being uplifted, being supertemporal, being open to the mystery, being grateful, opening up and out, and being together. The descriptions of a Joyful Life were consistent with a meaning orientation to happiness, due to their emphasis on the cultivation of virtue in the service of a higher calling, the realization of which was felt to be a gift or blessing. The discussion examines implications for future research, including the current relevance of a joyful disposition during a global pandemic. Due to the joyful disposition’s tendency to transform suffering and tragedy into meaning, and its theme of an orientation to prosocial motivations, the Joyful Life may occupy a central place in the study of resiliency and personal growth in response to personal and collective trauma such as COVID-19.

Breaking the Silence: A Testimonial of Resistance to Jewish Invisibility in Simone Veil’s Une jeunesse au temps de la Shoah

Simone Veil had a remarkable career as a public figure in France, but her personal life was shrouded in profound trauma as a victim of the Holocaust. Veil’s autobiographical narrative reveals a unique form of testimonial writing in which she uses her agency, as a survivor, to demonstrate resistance to Jewish absence and ‘otherness’. As will be shown, a close study of the writer’s autobiography reveals a multilayered text in which the author acts as a spokeswoman for the victims to impart global awareness of the Shoah, especially to young people. This essay will focus on the pedagogical objective of Veil’s memoir, the impossibility of conveying unimaginable suffering, and the power of feminine solidarity as a survival strategy. The latter part of the analysis will broaden the perspective, with emphasis on how writing a testimonial narrative serves as a way in which the autobiographer can recover the shattered self.