The Meaning of Others: Narrative Studies of Relationships

by Ruthellen Josselson (Editor)

Over the past several years psychology has begun to revise its vision of the self-contained individual, while devoting more attention to relational, ecological models of self. Evolving alongside this broader conceptualization of the self have been qualitative methods of studying the self-in-relationship. Building on their previous volumes in the Narrative Study of Lives series, editors Josselson, Lieblich, and McAdams illustrate the potential for narrative analysis to present new insights on human relationships. Here they present creative exemplars of studies on how relationships with parents, friends, peers, therapists, and even members of Internet communities affect such challenging human processes as acculturation, racial identity development, secure attachment, career choice, care giving, and grief. This volume will be of interest to those who seek a more complex understanding of the experience of relationship in human development. Therapists, researchers and students of developmental, personality and clinical psychology will find much in this book that will conceptually illuminate human relationship in context and in its many narratively-structured possibilities for meaning.

Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Ruthellen Josselson, PhD, is Professor of Clinical Psychology at Fielding Graduate University. She was formerly Professor at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Visiting Professor at Harvard University School of Education, and Visiting Fellow at Cambridge University. Dr. Josselson is a cofounder of the Society for Qualitative Inquiry in Psychology; coeditor of 11 volumes of The Narrative Study of Lives, a series dedicated to publishing qualitative research; coauthor of Five Ways of Doing Qualitative Analysis; and author of many journal articles and book chapters that explore the theory and practice of qualitative inquiry. She has conducted workshops on interviewing skills for qualitative inquiry in the United States, France, Norway, Finland, Israel, and the United Kingdom. Based on interviews she has conducted over 35 years, she has written two books exploring women’s identity longitudinally (Finding Herself and Revising Herself) and three other books (The Space Between Us, Best Friends, and Playing Pygmalion). Dr. Josselson is a recipient of the American Psychological Association’s Henry A. Murray Award and Theodore R. Sarbin Award as well as a Fulbright Fellowship.