Friendship Processes

by Beverley Fehr

In this marvelous book, Beverly Fehr presents a comprehensive and richly detailed examination of what scholars have learned about the formation, maintenance, and dissolution of friendships. . . . Overall, a model of careful scholarship, clear writing, and good sense. For anyone studying friendships, there is no better place to start. This is perhaps the best book of its kind. --Choice Friends are an integral part of our lives--they sometimes replace family relationships and often form the basis for romantic relationships. Friendship Processes, new in the Sage Series on Close Relationships, examines exactly how friends give meaning to our lives and why we rely so heavily on them. Broad in its coverage, the book is process oriented and research based with each phase of the friendship process documented by empirical research. The result is a conceptual framework that illuminates the fascinating components of how we make friends, how we become close, how we maintain friends, and how friendships deteriorate and dissolve. Author Beverley Fehr equips the reader with valuable knowledge about the formations and continuations of the intriguing personal relationship called friendship. Friendship Processes also illustrates well the fact that, as a field of study, close relationships is maturing rapidly. Promising to be the definitive study of the subject for many years to come, this book will be of particular interest to professionals, academics, and students of social psychology, sociology, communication, family studies, and social work as well as any interested reader who is anxious to deepen his or her understanding and appreciation of a very engaging topic.

256 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 1, 1995

Reviews

[Justine]

Fehr has done the Friendship literature a good favor by compiling a comprehensive framework of the topic. There are 7 chapters covering the meaning of friendship, theories, friendship formation, achieving closeness, gender issues, maintenance, and finally deterioration/dissolution.
Friendship is an important aspect of our lives and well-being, but it is a relatively neglected topic amongst the scientific field of interpersonal relationships. This book has helped me understand friendship from a psychological perspective to apply to my own life and for research in my classes. Unfortunately there hasn't been anything more recent (though Dr. Fehr has mentioned the possibility of writing an updated version)
I highly suggest this book for anyone interested in friendship and hopefully it can one day inspire more research about friendship.

(By the way, if anyone is interested specifically in Friendship Formation, Fehr has written an updated chapter in the 2008 Handbook of Relationship Initiation by Sprecher, Wenzel, and Harvey)

[Lee-Anne Looker]

A rigorous and illuminating map of friendships

Friendship Processes is a remarkably thorough examination of how friendships form, deepen, endure, deteriorate and sometimes end. Beverley Fehr brings together an enormous body of research without losing sight of the recognisably human experiences beneath it: reciprocal liking, shared enjoyment, trust, disclosure, support, conflict, distance and betrayal.

Its greatest strength is the life-cycle structure. The book shows that friendship is not something we simply have; it is created and maintained through mutual responsiveness, time, ordinary shared activity and the continuing negotiation of closeness and independence. The chapters on achieving closeness and friendship maintenance are particularly valuable.

This is an academic book rather than a light self-help read, and its 1990s evidence base means that some gender framing and the absence of digital friendship now feel dated.

Even so, the conceptual foundations remain exceptionally useful. For researchers, practitioners or anyone wanting to understand friendship as a serious close relationship, this is an intelligent, detailed and rewarding book.