Journal of Narrative and Life History - Volume 2, Issue 2, 1992

AbstractIt has often been suggested that memory for life experiences is primarily orga-nized around the self. To test this hypothesis, students who had participated in a semester-long seminar were asked to recall various events (e.g., discussions in which they had participated, reports that they or others had presented, class demonstrations, interruptions, etc.). It was not the case that these cued recalls were primarily organized around the self. The self played only a small part in the recall of some types of events, and the students remembered others' contribu-tions to class discussions just as well as their own. The self was remembered differently from others in one major respect: Although subjects often recalled their own thoughts and feelings, they rarely made such "cognitive attributions" to others. Differences in the availability of various kinds of information may be chiefly responsible for whatever special status the self has in memory. (Psychol-ogy)

AbstractPrevious studies have shown that many children of former Nazi perpetrators either identify with their parents by denying their atrocities, by distancing them-selves emotionally from their parents, or by acknowledging their participation in the extermination process. Through a hermeneutical case study of the narrated life story of a Euthanasia physician's daughter, a type of strategy, which we defined as pseudo-identification with the victim, is reconstructed. The results of the analysis suggest that this is a repair strategy. Putting oneself in the role of one's parents' victim provides refuge from acknowledging possible identification with Nazism and its idols, as well as identifying oneself with the real victims of one's parents. In this case, the psychological consequences of this strategy are described: The woman still suffers from extermination anxieties which block further working through of the past. (Behavioral Sciences)

AbstractWe propose that the definition of well-formedness in narrative production should be expanded to include different types of narrative genres. Furthermore, varia-tions in narrative genre may be related to the emotional tone of the narrative. Research on preschool children's personal narratives is reported, which indicates that young children employ different narrative structures when narrating experi-ences related to different emotional moods. In relating a happy experience, children often focused on recreating the mood of a particular moment in time; these stories contained relatively less dynamic action and were more often categorized as moment-in-time stories which achieved coherence through their richness of description and use of emotional evaluation. Stories about anger and fear more closely resembled traditional plotted stories in which dynamic actions rise to a climax or high point that is followed by falling action and resolution. However, when telling stories about a fearful experience children focused more on rising action and less on falling action than when they related stories about anger. Thus, the fear stories focused more on recreating a mood of suspense and impending danger whereas the anger stories focused more on conditions leading to anger, the expression of anger, and its consequences. Examples from adult writers are also discussed in terms of these narrative structures for talking about emotion. (Psychology)

AbstractResponse to literature involves a transaction between reader and author where meaning is constructed by the reader, using the blueprints, or signs, provided by the author. According to Fish (1980a), readers and authors implicitly know the conventions of response by virtue of being members of the same interpretive community. This socially acquired knowledge enables readers and authors to conjointly create, identify, and respond to literature. Currently, increased re-search into the teaching and learning of literature has led to a renewed examina-tion of classroom techniques directed toward "teaching" response. This article presents data which suggests that many young children begin formal schooling with a predisposition, or readiness, for literary response. Evidence for this comes from a study of preliterate kindergarten children who were asked to "pretend to read" to a pretend child (doll) from a wordless picture book (Purcell-Gates, 1988). Cast in the authorial role, these children used language which proved to enhance and constrain imaging for reader response. This communicative compe-tence is interpreted through Fish's notion of an interpretive community within which literary conventions are implicitly learned. Knowledge of both the product and process of acquisition of this knowledge held by entering school children should inform discussions of instructional methodology regarding reader re-sponse. (Literacy Education)

AbstractThis article analyzes the representation of Palestinian actions in Western bestsell-ing thrillers. Most of these actions can be understood through the application of scripts—cognitive structures of stereotypical action sequences. It is argued that the scriptal representations activate causal schemas of Palestinians and Arabs at both a psychological and a social level. The concept of script is set against that of project, characterized by a narrative understanding. It is shown how the need to make a story interesting and thus not completely stereotypical is met by, among others, the amplification of aspects of threatening scripts, and by a tension producing ambivalence toward Palestinian nationalism. In almost all cases a scriptal understanding remains privileged. (Qualitative Psychology, Cultural Studies)