Citation

Neimeyer RA, Herrero O, Botella L. J. Constr. Psychol. 2006; 19(2): 127-145.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2006, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/10720530500508738

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Traumatic life events have the power to disrupt those self-narratives with which people order their life experience, by challenging their organization, promoting the development of problem-dominated identities, and fostering dissociation of aspects of the experience in a way that precludes its integration. We briefly consider these processes at levels ranging from the biogenetic, through the personal-agentic, to the dyadic-relational, and ultimately to cultural-linguistic levels of narrative structure, and then present the results of a grounded theory analysis of psychotherapy to reveal the pragmatic and rhetorical strategies by which it counters such disruption.

RESULTS suggest the means by which a client and therapist collaborate to help the former reconstruct the meaning of her mother's suicide, ultimately moving toward greater coherence and hopefulness in the narration of her life. © 2006 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Language: en