Narrative Study of Lives

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Reflections on Te Narrative Study of Lives

Ruthellen Josselson and Amia LieblichTe Fielding Institute Santa Barbara Hebrew University o Jerusalem

Te Narrative Study o Lives (NSL) was a series o eleven edited volumes which

appeared (more or less annually) or the first time in 1993 and the last time in

2007 We co-edited all these volumes the last five in conjunction with Dan McAd-

ams as a third co-editor Te mission o the volumes was to provide a prominent

space or the publication o narrative scholarship and research pertaining to the

study o lives

In the months since we decided to terminate the publication o NSL we elt

a growing need to reflect on this long-range project and to attempt to ormulate

some o our academic and personal conclusions about the meaning and impact o

this venture What have we achieved or ailed to achieve in this Series Why did wedecide to terminate its publication Tese questions were ormed not only in our

own minds but also directed at us by colleagues readers and authors o the Series

Our quest to answer these questions or reflect upon them relate to the place o nar-

rative psychology in the general field o psychology andor in the academic world

and to some broader aspects o the academic culture in general As Journal or Series

editors scholars like us get acquainted with the academic culture rom unique his-

torical and sociological perspectives which we would like to share in this essay

A history of the series

Beore we met both o us had gradually moved rom more traditional research in

developmental or personality psychology into what became eventually known as

qualitative inquiry In the late eighties the psychological literature about this field

was relatively scarce and very new (see eg Bruner 1986 1990 1991 Polking-

horne 1988 Sarbin 1986) and academic institutions had just started to ace the

meaning and impact o ldquothe narrative turnrdquo on the academic culture Psychology



983089983096983092 Ruthellen Josselson and Amia Lieblich

remained mdash and still remains mdash least hospitable to the narrative turn holding

ast to its roots in scientistic positivism eaching o qualitative research methods

in psychology departments was almost nonexistent and we each taught ourselvesto do qualitative work on our own by adapting the clinical training we had had to

interviewing and analysis o personal data Te approach to the study o lives in

progress we each independently reasoned should be similar to the study o the

lives o patients we might evaluate clinically When we met our encounter re-

sembled the chance meeting o two erring lonely souls in the desert We ound to

our amazement and joy that we shared many critiques concerns and preerences

and grappled with similar hardships Among them at that time both o us elt that

publication o qualitative or narrative research in the existing venues was difficult

i not completely impossible

Both o us were interested in eminism and holocaust studies two research

fields that necessitated narrative inquiry to give voice to the issues they wanted to

investigate Moreover we both elt that the work we did in our narrative inquiry as

psychologists was similar in its approach and method to work done by some an-

thropologists sociologists or scholars whose domain was education social work

nursing criminology and other ldquohuman sciencesrdquo Tese scholars were develop-

ing methods suitable to their purposes and these represented arguments and ap-

proaches that privileged experience In 1990 we met with Jerome Bruner duringhis lecture series in Jerusalem and he encouraged us in our fledgling ideas about

making a space or narrative research particularly within psychology but in con-

junction with other disciplines We set out thereore to create an interdisciplinary

and international publication to build a warm home or narrative scholars o all

fields Sage publications accepted our proposal or an annual ldquojournal seriesrdquo to be

titled Te Narrative Study of Lives in 1991 and the first volume appeared in 1993

(Josselson amp Lieblich 1993)

Te mission or the Series was ormulated on the cover o the first volume as

ollows ldquoTe purpose o the Annual is to publish studies o actual lives in progress

studies which use qualitative methods o investigation within a theoretical context

drawn rom psychology or other disciplines Te aim is to promote the study o

lives and lie history as a means o examining illuminating and spurring theoreti-

cal understanding Te Narrative Study of Lives will encourage longitudinal and

retrospective in-depth studies o individual lie narratives as well as theoretical

consideration o innovative methodological approaches to this workrdquo

In the ldquoGuidelines or Authorsrdquo we urther elaborated ldquo[hellip] As a publication

o an interdisciplinary nature we welcome authors rom all disciplines concernedwith narratives psychobiography and lie-historyrdquo Regarding the orm o papers



Reflections on Te Narrative Study of Lives 983089983096983093

traditional academic writing or the sake o more reflexive exposure We allowed

or a longer ormat (or an academic paper) since we recognized that narrative

data cannot be summarized in graphs or tables and needed more space or its pre-sentation and we did not demand compliance to any traditional rules o writing

in academia On the contrary we said that ldquowe encourage any creative ormat that

best presents the work Long quotations in the protagonistsrsquo voice are desirable as

well as discussion o the authorrsquos place in the studyrdquo Our aim was to invite people

to tell the real stories o their work to consider their own role as co-participants

in designing the questions choosing participants shaping the context and struc-

turing the results choosing the language that seemed to them suitable or sharing

what they learned and in general reflecting on the complexities o the process o

knowing (see Josselson amp Lieblich 1996)

Te stellar group o women and men whom we invited to join our ldquoEditorial

Boardrdquo represented the international scholarship and authority o what we reerred

to as ldquothe narrative turnrdquo and included psychologists psychoanalysts anthropolo-

gists as well as members o the aculties o sociology literature and philosophy

Six volumes appeared at about a year interval in the same ormat edited by

Josselson and Lieblich (except one which was edited by Josselson alone) published

by Sage publications USA While we hoped to publish them all as consecutive

numbered volumes o Te Narrative Study of Lives Sage requested afer the first volume apparently or sales promotion that we supply a title or each volume

representing its ocus (Tereore or volume 2 3 and 6 afer we chose the papers

we then created all-inclusive names that would represent the papers and also sat-

isy our publisher) Te six Sage volumes are

1 Josselson R and Lieblich A (Eds) (1993) Te narrative study of lives

2 Lieblich A and Josselson R (Eds) (1994) Exploring identity and gender

3 Josselson R and Lieblich A (Eds) (1995) Interpreting experience

4 Josselson R (Ed) (1996) Ethics and process in the narrative study of lives5 Lieblich A and Josselson R (Eds) (1997) Te narrative study of lives

6 Josselson R and Lieblich A (Eds) (1999) Making meaning of narratives

Tis request to ldquonamerdquo each volume made us aware that we were operating within

two contextual systems the academic in which we were trying to hold a space or

innovative work outside the mainstream and the system o publishingmarketing

that was concerned about who would buy these volumes Te two are o course

related since that which is academically privileged also sells books to academics

We always conceived o our project as a journal to come out annually Wewanted to publish only the most excellent work and didnrsquot think wersquod have enough




more than once a year I we published just annually we were a ldquobookrdquo rather than

a journal and this invoked or them other considerations We tried to settle or

being a ldquobook seriesrdquo still peer reviewed and operating like a journal within theirramework Tese rather technical details o publishing though reveal hidden

messages underneath For example although all these volumes shared ormat and

logo the title o the series (Te Narrative Study of Lives) was somewhat concealed

due to marketing considerations and except or Volumes 1 and 5 it appeared ei-

ther as a subtitle or not at all Libraries and private readers could naturally buy

single volumes and did not have to subscribe to the entire series Whether to treat

each volume as a separate single edited book or to see the series as an ongoing

academic venue or narrative scholars as we conceived it rom the onset was a

continuous conflict between us and the publishers

In addition there were perplexing issues o indexing and abstracts We couldnrsquot

see how to meaningully ldquoindexrdquo narrative research where the primary findings

represent complex ideas o interpretation rather than ldquotopicsrdquo Still we allowed

proessional indexers to have a go at the volumes and the result was primarily lists

o names o people reerenced with a ew general or highly specific categories

Similarly we ound it hard to ask our authors to write abstracts o these mul-

tilayered presentations so we published without abstracts Tese decisions were

probably not good ones because it placed the articles outside the usual rameworko keywords that would make the work searchable And by being something in

between a journal and a book we placed the series in an uncertain position when

it came time or our authors to respond to questions about the ldquojournalrsquosrdquo rank

or purposes o peer review and tenure Our idealism then in many ways led us

outside all o the usual definitions o scholarly research In addition this existence

in the netherworld between being a journal and a book led to the series not being

indexed in such places as the Social Science Citation Index and meant less acces-

sibility to online searches and ewer citations

Still the series was well-received and the earliest volume sold extremely well

It sold particularly well in Europe especially Scandinavia and Britain as well as

in fields o education and nursing Except within a small interested community it

seemed that our series had little impact in psychology although both our editorial

board and our contributors included many psychologists

Te year o 1999 was an important transition or the series We terminated

our contract with Sage partly because we continued to resist doing volumes with

particular names and partly because sales had allen off In talking to other pub-

lishers we were persuaded that there was no alternative to doing ldquothemedrdquo vol-umes i we wanted to publish annually Meanwhile the journals Narrative Inquiry




would duplicate their efforts In hopes o having more presence within psychol-

ogy we signed a new contract with APA Books who agreed to publish a book

series with the title Te Narrative Study of Lives with each volume oriented to apre-arranged theme We thought we could choose titles that reflected the kinds o

issues that narrative researchers tend to study (identity transition relationships)

and then group work into these rubrics At this stage we added a third editor

Dan McAdams both to reduce our editorial workload and to add a different per-

spective to the series Following the high prestige and visibility o APA Books on

the one hand and McAdamsrsquo productivity and well known position in academic

psychology on the other hand we were hoping that the new arrangement would

guarantee the continuation o the series in its new home Because other disciplines

(sociology anthropology education nursing) had more outlets we gave up some

o the interdisciplinary approach and tried to move the volume more deliberately

into psychology Tis was probably a mistake as we were trying now to root our-

selves in the least hospitable disciplinary soil

Five volumes appeared rom APA books thus the total Narrative Study of Lives

series comprises 11 volumes While the ormat was essentially the same the new

publishers negated even more the idea or external appearance o a continuous

series and regarded each o the volumes as a new book to be marketed separately

Tus the idea o a series and with it the idea o a field in psychology with somestatus and permanence became marginalized Some o the APA titles still kept the

words ldquoNarrative Study o Livesrdquo mdash but the majority did not Te APA volumes

were

7 McAdams D Josselson R and Lieblich A (Eds) (2001) urns in the road

Te narrative study of lives in transition

8 Josselson R Lieblich A and McAdams D (Eds) (2002) Up close and per-

sonal eaching and learning of narrative research

9 Lieblich A McAdams D and Josselson R (Eds) (2004) Healing plots TeNarrative basis of psychotherapy

10 McAdams D Josselson R and Lieblich A (Eds) (2006) Identity and story

Creating self in narrative

11 Josselson R Lieblich A and McAdams D (Eds) (2007) Te meaning of

others Narrative studies of relationships

Following the publication o the 11th volume the three editors decided not to

extend our contract with APA and to terminate the publication o the series Amia

put her continuing efforts to promote narrative research into ounding a Societyor Narrative Research in Israel Ruthellen (with Ken Gergen) tried to create a new




Over the course o these 11 volumes we have published about 120 papers and

received or submission roughly twice that number Writers came rom the US

Israel Germany Finland Norway the United Kingdom Holland Australia Ja-pan aiwan and Swaziland Tey represented academic degrees in anthropology

psychology education nursing sociology and social work An examination o the

contents o the entire series indicated a wide variety o subjects which could be

sorted into our groups

Empirical papers (the majority) reported either single case or multi-case studies

Most used interviews but some worked with published biographies or diaries

Many o these papers concerned issues o racial national political occupa-

tional sexual and other aspects o identity examined in depth Others lookedat aspects o relationships including care-giving and bereavement

Philosophical papers were more theoretical and discussed various issues having to

do with the nature o narratives and their meanings or scholarship

Methodological articles ocused on the method o research and demonstrated spe-

cial interview or analysis methods as well as specific ethical issues involved in

narrative inquiry

Pedagogical papers dealt with teaching the stance and practice o perorming nar-

rative research mdash and these were primarily located in a special volume o the

APA series devoted to these matters

It is impossible to summarize this work not only because o its scope but because

by its very nature narrative work does not easily lends itsel to summaries More-

over we have ound out that it is very difficult to orm a ldquodata baserdquo o narrative

scholarship and ldquosum uprdquo and ldquoaccumulaterdquo its ldquoresultsrdquo (see Josselson 2006) Per-

haps all these terms which stem rom the positivistic research paradigm make a

Procrustean bed or qualitative research

Te papers that have been most widely cited are those that pertain to meth-

odology or the philosophical bases o narrative research Tose that received the

most citations are papers by Gabriel Rosenthal (Volume 1) on ldquoPrinciples o se-

lection in generating stories or narrative biographical interviewsrdquo Susan Chasersquos

paper (Volume 3) on ldquoaking narrative seriously Consequences or method and

theory in interview studiesrdquo and Guy Widdeshovenrsquos lead paper in Volume 1 on

ldquoHermeneutic perspectives on the relationship between narrative and lie historyrdquo

All have been cited over 100 times Te other papers dealing with process o nar-

rative research have also been cited more than the content papers We suspect that

other scholars have been reerencing these papers to justiy their own modes oinquiry




they had influence but they seem to have ldquodisappearedrdquo rom the literature Few o

the ideas in the empirical papers have made their way into the broader literature

despite the insightul intensive work on such topics as womenrsquos experience child-hood abuse and adolescence We suspect that scholarly engagement with these

papers would require extensive consideration o the work Most o the papers we

published donrsquot fit well into simple reerencing just as they are not easily indexed

or abstracted Reading narrative research involves immersion in the approach and

analytic stance o the researcher At the same time we realize that citation rates are

not the only measure o influence

It was also noteworthy that there were continual disagreements among us edi-

tors about what was to be valued in the papers that were submitted Criteria o

quality in narrative research despite the good lists and articles available on the sub-

ject are not easily applied Whereas reviews o quantitative research tend to ocus

on the methodology mdash whether the correct statistical analysis was perormed and

perormed appropriately mdash reviews o qualitative research are heavily influenced

by such subjective criteria as Is the work interesting Does it teach us something

about human experience Does it offer insight into the human condition Does

it adequately reflect cultural context Tere were submissions that methodologi-

cally investigated a phenomenon but produced trivialities eg i one interviews

bereaved spouses one discovers that they are sad people in minorities eel op-pressed But what seemed commonplace to one o us may have seemed insightul

to another mdash hence the disagreements We were in agreement that authors had to

make some conceptual contribution not just offer description however cleverly

coded o their participantsrsquo experience

What have we achieved

Different versions mdash success and disappointment

In our (Josselson and Lieblich) conversations and reflections about the termina-

tion o the Series we ound that we created multiple narratives many layers and

acets about our experience with the Narrative Study of Lives series We noticed

ourselves moving and shifing between a positive and a negative narrative about

the history o the project Perhaps a dialogue between these two narratives would

be most suitable to account or this history the complex experience and the mul-

tiaceted reality o this academic endeavor Following are two versions o thesepossible narratives each with their own truth




Te success narrative

According to the ldquosuccessrdquo narrative the joint project started as a publication

channel or a new growing and developing paradigm sought by older and young-er scholars in different fields At this time we had the impression that qualitative

research with narrative inquiry as one o its major orms would soon find its

place among the vast array o stances and approaches utilized in the social sci-

ences Our editorial work has indeed justified these expectations as we published

good and interesting articles by researchers in many countries and a variety o

academic disciplines Our impression is that the teaching o qualitative research

methods in psychology departments grew somewhat in prevalence at least in cer-

tain departments and that some proessors were assigning some articles that wehad published

As a result o our visibility as editors we were asked to do workshops in a va-

riety o places and we elt that students were highly responsive to our instruction

and did extremely good work Most o them went into psychology hoping to study

peoplersquos experience and were chagrined when they were discouraged rom doing

qualitative interview-based research by their graduate program proessors Tus

we were providing alternative models more in line with what many students had

hoped to be doing When meeting scholars in a variety o settings we elt that our

work was well-received and appreciated even admired Te existence o the series

served as an outlet or new energy in narrative work in psychology We perhaps

vainly hoped that the ending o the series marked the acceptance o narrative or

qualitative work into the mainstream o social sciences thus making redundant a

separate publication dedicated essentially to this mode o inquiry or to its philo-

sophical underpinnings In other words i people could publish their qualitative

work on human development social behavior or gender issues or example in

journals ocusing on these content areas notwithstanding their research methods

mdash we have achieved our aim and can quit the separate publication o narrativework Ultimately we would hope or narrative work not to be ldquoghetto-izedrdquo but to

be published in tandem with other orms o investigation o particular topics

Another positive consequence o the Narrative Study of Lives series was that

we were able to create and participate in a 6-month Advanced Study Institute on

narrative research at the Hebrew University o Jerusalem in 2001 and a ollow-up

three-day meeting our years later Tis created intense collaboration between us

and scholars rom other countries and other disciplines We saw these not just as

opportunities to urther our thinking and study about this work but to make thework more visible in the scholarly community

Te existence o Te Narrative Study of Lives also led to an exciting panel at




and learning o narrative researchrdquo (which in turn became the subject o one o

the volumes) What was most telling about this symposium was the energy o the

standing-room-only crowd and the enthusiasm o the attendees about this ormo inquiry Te meeting ended with discussion among the panel (Amia Ruthellen

Mary Gergen Dan McAdams Annie Rogers and George Rosenwald) and with

the audience about the difficulties o finding a place or narrative research in the

current academic climate o psychology and began to have the tone o complaint

whereupon Bert Cohler who was in the audience said loudly and rousingly ldquoJust

do itrdquo mdash and with that rallying cry we ended Indeed with Te Narrative Study of

Lives we were doing it

Another APA panel at the annual meeting in 2005 called ldquoNarrative mdash the

State o the Artrdquo chaired by Ken Gergen included ed Sarbinrsquos last public appear-

ance just weeks beore he died Te attendance was over 300 people Ruthellen and

Dan were on this panel and we again elt that we had made a mark in the larger

field o psychology carrying Sarbinrsquos groundbreaking work orward

Overall then our narrative o success is that we supported the existence o

something called ldquonarrative researchrdquo created a venue or the publication o such

work and increased the respectability and visibility o this approach to the study o

lives in psychology and related fields

Te disappointment narrative

On the other side the narrative could be ormulated as a different story a story o

disappointment o our hopes We started the series because our work as well as our

studentsrsquo and colleaguesrsquo work had been rejected by traditional venues In the ol-

lowing years as papers were submitted to the series we discovered that academic

narrative work was not always o the best quality Indeed many submissions were

ones that in our view shouldnrsquot be published anywhere Tis was perhaps not a

surprise because narrative methods were so little being taught in universities but

we were still taken aback We had submissions that were journalistic in their scope

mdash simple summaries o what participants had to say about particular experiences

interesting stories perhaps but unanalyzed in any meaningul way Many papers

lacked the pithy kind o analysis that leads readers to come away eeling that they

now understand something better Ofen it was unclear why a narrative was be-

ing examined so closely other than the authorsrsquo enchantment with the story being

told We were reminded again and again o how difficult it is to do good narrative

research that is scholarly We wrestled with the boundaries between narrative re-search in the social sciences and journalism and literature Only some o the time




Contrary to our initial expectations we ound out that manuscripts were not

flowing spontaneously in our direction and what was being submitted was ofen

o low quality As a result we had to put constant effort into recruiting rom ournetwork good work to publish in the series Tis orced us to ace the larger system

issues in academia particularly psychology as it affected availability o material

Now that we had a home or narrative research why wasnrsquot it coming in With

the growing enchantment o the social sciences with the brain and with complex

statistical modeling (especially psychology) the inhospitality toward narrative in-

quiry in psychology departments did not abate and narrative work was more and

more marginalized in the discipline Furthermore narrative research is time and

labor intensive and relatively inexpensive to conduct while the current climate

privileges people who procure large research grants and have long lists o pub-

lications Tus the academic incentives are to do large sample or experimental

(expensive) programmatic studies that result in multiple publications We were

indeed swimming against the tide

We had many submissions rom graduate students but what we saw is that the

unocused teaching o qualitative research in psychology departments led to sub-

missions that were mediocre or poor Tese papers tended to present just thematic

analyses sometimes reading like outputs o qualitative sofware programs mdash lists

o themes decontextualized reflexivity absent Because some o the best work wereceived was rom very senior scholars we wondered i perhaps experience does

predispose to the kind o breadth and depth that narrative research requires (O

course we also published some superb work rom graduate students and young

scholars) I this were true we were indeed working outside the usual academic

ldquogamerdquo and its system o rewards In other words we were largely publishing work

rom people who didnrsquot ldquohaverdquo to publish but instead chose to write about ideas

and phenomena that were o intrinsic interest to them

We also reflected on the impact the series and our approach was having as a

result o meeting our scholar-colleagues in a variety o settings We ofen had the

sense that our work was admired maybe even very much admired but not ol-

lowed Tis is to say that people ound that the work we published was interesting

sometimes even cutting edge but they had no resources to do this kind o work

themselves Tere was no one to teach them to do it (and we were limited as to how

many SOS calls rom graduate students around the world we could respond to)

and no one to orm collaboration groups with And to do something so new that

they were uncertain about was too exposing or more senior scholars

We were mdash and remain mdash mindul o the act that the most paradigm-chang-ing and inspiring ideas in psychology have come rom narratives Beginning with




what Bruner defines as the narrative orm o knowing ideas may not be concretiz-

able but only expressed conceptually Indeed efforts to pin down and ldquooperation-

alizerdquo such concepts as ldquodifferent voicerdquo or ldquoidentityrdquo in quantifiable terms haveailed to illuminate these concepts It was our hope to enlarge this tradition to

make it possible or new ideas (rather than the testing o hypotheses) to evolve

rom narrative investigation We believe that our volumes contain many such in-

sights but we are not sanguine that these have had much impact

Measures o success o course differ depending on whose aims are being re-

alized Our publishers would narrate our venture as ailures i sales figures are

the measure But APA unlike Sage chose to produce only hardback versions o

our series and price them out o reach o many o those (graduate students) who

would have been interested in reading the volumes (Most o these volumes are

now available as e-books to those services that subscribe to APA online publica-

tions Tis we regard as good news) From the point o view o academic scholars

a major criterion o success is reflected in the citation index o the publication

mdash and as we said beore this has or various reasons not been high For many

students and young scholars who published in the series however it was an im-

portant source or learning about the field and a home where they could eel they

belonged Tese are the people who most intensely expressed their chagrin at our

decision to terminate Te Narrative Study of Lives series For us as editors o theseries we were impacted by all these viewpoints and positions simultaneously

Whatever the angle chosen or our narratorrsquos position as usual one simple narra-

tive cannot represent the complexity o reality or experience

A more general view

Being the editors o the series privileged us with a position rom which we gained a

wider perspective rom which to view and evaluate the present situation o narra-

tive scholarship Tus we end with brie reflections on the current state o the nar-

rative research field Besides our own venture we are aware o the enormous suc-

cess o Denzin and Lincolnrsquos three editions o Te handbook of qualitative research

other journals that ocus on qualitative research and the many conerences taking

place (including Narrative Matters and the annual Qualitative Research meeting)

Tere seems to be a growing interest in alternatives to the positivistic objective

stance in research about human beings as individuals or groups Qualitative re-

search provides such an alternative Tis great interest is more apparent outside othe academic departments o psychology Narrative research is popular in depart-




stronger links with the humanities and with the holistic point o view and have

not been as burdened with the obligation to be ldquoscientificrdquo Within psychology

qualitative or narrative work remains marginalized Experiments remain privi-leged over case studies and generalization more prized than depth understanding

Departments o psychology around the world have become more and more rag-

mented into ldquopsychologiesrdquo with less and less common language to enable mean-

ingul communication among the actions Cognitive research using the computer

as its model and the brain as its ocus o interest has gradually dominated the field

while work in personality social psychology and clinical psychology has lost much

o its ormer power or position within the discipline In clinical psychology short-

term and symptom-ocused therapies are taking the place o the more humanistic

and dynamic traditions Tese trends are likely cyclical and we remain hopeul

that the pendulum will again swing towards the depth understanding o human

experience that is accessible only through narrative modes o inquiry

As we have said beore the lack o good teaching about qualitative research

leads to poor research which leads others to dismiss such methods as meaningul

orms o inquiry Te lack o training in psychology now extends to basic modes

o relating to human experience Where we could both rely on our own intensive

clinical training to have a solid basis in interviewing skills todayrsquos clinical psychol-

ogy training rooted in cognitive behaviorism is ocused on symptoms rather thansuch things as lie history the investigation o significant memories or relational

patterns Tere remain ew outposts in psychology where a student may become

amiliar with subjectivity or comortable with its multiple modes o expression

Te domination o unding as the motor or academic research has also made

narrative research less attractive Since narrative research is normally based on

a relatively small number o interviews (or available textual material) which are

requently transcribed and analyzed by the ldquochie investigatorrdquo hersel or himsel

such projects cannot ask granting agencies or large sums o money in their re-

search proposals As a result very ew qualitative scholars can win the huge grants

that in their overhead ormulae provide the academic institutions with their high-

ly needed unds or the general budget or maintenance o the campuses etc Te

positive side o this is that narrative research is an avenue open to those at small

colleges in independent clinical or consulting practices or others who would not

in any case have access to such grants

As educators o the next generations o psychologists our major worries con-

cern the opportunities o younger scholars that we and other narrative psycholo-

gists train We ofen ask ourselves whether training our graduate students to dohigh quality narrative research might be helpul or them or instead lower their




in quantitative research as well or turn to a ldquomixed methodsrdquo design in their

dissertations in order to better balance their resumes Scholars using qualitative

research in various fields (eg education) report difficulties to obtain unds andresearch grants mostly since they cannot meet the normative demand or ldquoevi-

dence based outcomesrdquo in their work Te subjective emotional evocative report

however well-conceptualized is not widely accepted by administrators who allo-

cate resources within academia We have also heard reports by others that Institu-

tional Review Boards or other ethics committees demand measures that are either

antithetical to or simply donrsquot apply to qualitative research projects thus urther

rustrating researchers

In the course o editing this series and occupying ourselves with the issues o

narrative research over the past 18 years we have become less naiumlve It is not the

truth value o knowledge but its political situatedness that determines how it is

regarded in an academic field We have come to see the necessity o some more

integration with the ldquotraditionalrdquo orms o research in psychology in order or nar-

rative research to be taken more seriously At the same time we are aware that the

search or alternative orms o expression is igniting a lot o creativity across the

social sciences Many qualitative researchers have moved to postmodern artistic

or individualistic orms o perormance and report Evoking emotion and identi-

fication with participants become goals to be sought as aspects o communicatingunderstandings rom the research Tis trend makes it more difficult to apply tra-

ditional criteria o quality evaluation to the products o qualitative research

When we started the series we hoped to dissolve the division between disci-

plines and create an interdisciplinary field o broad interest in human experience

in context studied through the texts they produce It became clear to us however

that although the intellectual leaders o this movement were mainly psychologists

(eg Sarbin Bruner Polkinghorne Freeman or Gergen mdash to name just a ew)

psychologists were a minority among the researchers who defined themselves

as qualitative inquirers Furthermore many psychologists who continued to do

this kind o research eventually ound themselves in other (interdisciplinary) aca-

demic departments within the university such as Gender Studies Family Studies

Culture Studies or Human Development Yet or various historical reasons psy-

chology continues to have high prestige among social scientists and psychologists

who do narrative research are requently sought to keynote or present at coner-

ences that are primarily attended by scholars in other disciplines It seems that at

least in the minds o others psychology still holds the keys to the kingdom o the

human psyche




Future visions

In spite o the act that we have trained many students who continue to do narra-tive research in academic as well as applied environments in our various academic

encounters within the field we have ofen elt as i we are leaders without ollowers

isolated (sometimes even venerated) models with no community behind us We

have elt our work appreciated by quantitative scholars who tell us that we give

voice to what they try to show numerically (but they rarely cite our work) While

we have hoped to serve as models or others we have ound that scholars who

did not have a direct link or contact with a more mature scholar who did narra-

tive research out o preerence and conviction ound it extremely difficult to start

this kind o academic work or to maintain it afer beginning Narrative research

is difficult to do alone or in isolation and requires a community that supports the

intensity o the endeavor even in such practical ways as participation in collabora-

tive reading groups

Te message we seemed to get rom people who were not our supervisees or

students was mdash you are doing good psychological work but I would not know

how to do something similar or I wouldnrsquot dare to in the present academic cli-

mate Te essence o this message or us is twoold 1 that in order to sustain the

stance o narrative research this mode o inquiry should be seriously taught andexercised in more academic institutions and 2 that a community o narrative in-

quirers should become more visible For both o these aims the termination o our

series at this time appears to be quite unortunate

At the same time we also think that the time has come to mainstream nar-

rative research into the content areas where it can make its greatest contribution

Perhaps we are ready to move beyond ghettoization and have narrative research

enter ully in the conversation about the questions o concern to scholarship more

generally We need to do more to educate editors o mainstream journals about

narrative research and protest reviewers who simply do not have the skills to eval-

uate narrative studies We believe that we have provided a hospitable environment

to encourage nascent efforts to do narrative research and we have made available

exemplary articles that represent the best o this mode o inquiry We have suc-

ceeded in making narrative research more visible and demonstrating its value We

are encouraged by signs that mainstream journals in psychology are becoming

more open to publish narrative scholarship (see Marchel amp Owens 2007) Perhaps

we have to work even harder to demonstrate how this orm o inquiry can add to

the work o people working within quantitative paradigms Our work can am-pliy understandings o such issues as identity aging immigration relationships




All in all we realized that doing good narrative research is not easy both in-

ternally mdash because it requires much training talent and maturity on the side o the

researchers and externally mdash since the cultural-political climate or it in academiais ar rom ideal In our encounters with younger scholars we ofen eel that our

primary role is to teach psychologists to listen to the other doing it patiently and

respectully without judgment or immediate diagnosis aking into consideration

the complex picture outlined above when thinking about the uture as narrative

inquirers we see ourselves as continuing to be a minority within psychology de-

partments However we are confident that we have an important voice to add to

the chorus and our duty is to keep doing our kind o work ldquohumanizingrdquo the field

o academic psychology

References

Bruner J (1986) Actual minds possible worlds Cambridge MA Harvard University Press

Bruner J (1990) Acts of meaning Cambridge MA Harvard University Press

Bruner J (1991) Te narrative construction o reality Critical Inquiry 18 1ndash21

Denzin NK amp Lincoln Y S (Eds) (1994) Handbook of qualitative research Tousand Oaks

CA Sage Publications

Denzin NK amp Lincoln Y S (Eds) (2000) Handbook of qualitative research 2nd edition Tou-sand Oaks CA Sage Publications

Denzin NK amp Lincoln Y S (Eds) (2005) Handbook of qualitative research 3rd edition Tou-

sand Oaks CA Sage Publications

Josselson R (2006) Narrative research and the challenge o accumulating knowledge Narrative

Inquiry 16 1 3ndash10

Josselson R amp Lieblich A 1996 Fettering the mind in the name o science American Psycholo-

gist 51 651ndash2

Marchel C amp Owens S (2007) Qualitative research in psychology Could William James get a

job History of Psychology 10 301ndash324

Polkinghorne D (1988) Narrative knowing and the human sciences New York State Universityo New York Press

Sarbin R (Ed)(1986) Narrative psychology Te storied nature of human conduct New York

Praeger

Te Narrative Study of Lives series listed chronologically

Josselson R amp Lieblich A (Eds) (1993) Te Narrative Study of Lives Tousand Oaks CA

Sage Publications

Lieblich A amp Josselson R (Eds) (1994) Exploring Identity and Gender Te Narrative Study of

Lives Volume 2 Tousand Oaks CA Sage Publications

Josselson R amp Lieblich A (Eds) (1995) Interpreting experience Te Narrative Study of LivesVolume 3 Tousand Oaks CA Sage Publications

Josselson R (Ed ) (1996) Ethics and process in the narrative study of lives Te Narrative Study




Lieblich A amp Josselson R (Eds) (1997) Te narrative study of lives Volume 5Tousand Oaks


Josselson R amp Lieblich A (Eds) (1999) Making meaning of narratives Te narrative study of

lives Volume 6 Tousand Oaks CA Sage PublicationsMcAdams D P Josselson R amp Lieblich A (Eds) (2001) urns in the Road Washington DC

American Psychological Association

Josselson R Lieblich A amp McAdams DP (Eds) (2003) Up close and personal eaching and

learning of narrative research Washington DC American Psychological Association

Lieblich A McAdams DP amp Josselson R (Eds) (2004) Healing plots Te narrative basis of

psychotherapy Washington DC American Psychological Association

McAdams DP Josselson R amp Lieblich A (Eds) (2006 ) Identity and story Creating self in

narrative Washington DC American Psychological Association

Josselson R Lieblich A amp McAdams DP (Eds) (2007) Te meaning of others Narrative

study of relationships Washington DC American Psychological Association






remained mdash and still remains mdash least hospitable to the narrative turn holding

ast to its roots in scientistic positivism eaching o qualitative research methods

in psychology departments was almost nonexistent and we each taught ourselvesto do qualitative work on our own by adapting the clinical training we had had to

interviewing and analysis o personal data Te approach to the study o lives in

progress we each independently reasoned should be similar to the study o the

lives o patients we might evaluate clinically When we met our encounter re-

sembled the chance meeting o two erring lonely souls in the desert We ound to

our amazement and joy that we shared many critiques concerns and preerences

and grappled with similar hardships Among them at that time both o us elt that

publication o qualitative or narrative research in the existing venues was difficult

i not completely impossible

Both o us were interested in eminism and holocaust studies two research

fields that necessitated narrative inquiry to give voice to the issues they wanted to

investigate Moreover we both elt that the work we did in our narrative inquiry as

psychologists was similar in its approach and method to work done by some an-

thropologists sociologists or scholars whose domain was education social work

nursing criminology and other ldquohuman sciencesrdquo Tese scholars were develop-

ing methods suitable to their purposes and these represented arguments and ap-

proaches that privileged experience In 1990 we met with Jerome Bruner duringhis lecture series in Jerusalem and he encouraged us in our fledgling ideas about

making a space or narrative research particularly within psychology but in con-

junction with other disciplines We set out thereore to create an interdisciplinary

and international publication to build a warm home or narrative scholars o all

fields Sage publications accepted our proposal or an annual ldquojournal seriesrdquo to be

titled Te Narrative Study of Lives in 1991 and the first volume appeared in 1993

(Josselson amp Lieblich 1993)

Te mission or the Series was ormulated on the cover o the first volume as

ollows ldquoTe purpose o the Annual is to publish studies o actual lives in progress

studies which use qualitative methods o investigation within a theoretical context

drawn rom psychology or other disciplines Te aim is to promote the study o

lives and lie history as a means o examining illuminating and spurring theoreti-

cal understanding Te Narrative Study of Lives will encourage longitudinal and

retrospective in-depth studies o individual lie narratives as well as theoretical

consideration o innovative methodological approaches to this workrdquo

In the ldquoGuidelines or Authorsrdquo we urther elaborated ldquo[hellip] As a publication

o an interdisciplinary nature we welcome authors rom all disciplines concernedwith narratives psychobiography and lie-historyrdquo Regarding the orm o papers


































































































were






























narrative inquiry






























































































































































































A more general view






















































































human psyche




Future visions












tive reading groups



































References












gist 51 651ndash2





Praeger



Sage Publications
























































































































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Future visions












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References












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Sage Publications








































narrative inquiry






























































































































































































A more general view






















































































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Future visions












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References












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Praeger



Sage Publications

































































































































































































A more general view






















































































human psyche




Future visions












tive reading groups



































References












gist 51 651ndash2





Praeger



Sage Publications


































































































human psyche




Future visions












tive reading groups



































References












gist 51 651ndash2





Praeger



Sage Publications


























Future visions












tive reading groups



































References












gist 51 651ndash2





Praeger



Sage Publications




































References












gist 51 651ndash2





Praeger



Sage Publications























Narrative Study of Lives

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Transcript of Narrative Study of Lives