Ruthellen Josselson

A study of the human connections that make us whole and of the many ways in which people relate to each other.

Exploring the Dimensions of Human Relationships

The Space Between Us

In taking up the topic of ethics and narrative inquiry, The Narrative Study of Lives rightfully establishes itself as the site where the most critical theoretical, methodological, and interpretive work on narrative in the human disciplines is now occurring. The editor and the contributors to this volume are to be thanked for their deeply probing, forward-looking analyses of the ethical problems that arise when researchers produce narratives about persons with whom close personal relationships have been formed. --Norman K. Denzin, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign "All of us who work with life-history narratives are grateful to Dr. Josselson and her colleagues for moving us step-by-step toward a discipline with definable ethics and methodology, and at the same time holding up for us the incredible diversity of the field and the range of insights it offers." --Mary Catherine Bateson, author of Peripheral Visions The most significant truths about human beings are to be found in the stories of their lives. But what happens to those stories and to the people whose lives are told when a researcher seeks to make those stories known? Ruthellen Josselson has assembled an international cast of scholars to reflect on the process of life-narrative study and the ethical dilemmas that face researchers whose very mode of narrative inquiry may inevitably involve a violation of another and unwittingly lead to a sense of betrayal, shame, or guilt. In these disarmingly candid and engaging essays, narrative researchers of many different stripes talk about the morally delicate and epistemologically precarious enterprise of telling another′s story. The authors raise fascinating questions about who ultimately controls the tellings, what happens to stories once they are told, and why stories influence not only the people whose lives are told but also the tellers themselves, whose own professional and personal lives may even be captured by or appropriated into the stories they are aiming to tell. This exceptional volume, the latest in The Narrative Study of Lives series, is essential for researchers, professionals, and students in research methods, including qualitative methods, developmental psychology, education, relationships, and language and discourse analysis.

Ethics and Process in the Narrative Study of Lives

This volume is essential for researchers, professionals, and students in research methods, developmental psychology, education, relationships, and language and discourse analysis.

Michele Harway

In our increasingly complex, globalized world, people often carry conflicting psychosocial identities. This volume considers individuals who are navigating across racial minority or majority status, various cultural expectations and values, gender identities, and roles. The authors explore how people bridge loyalties and identifications.

Race, Gender, Culture, Nationality, and Roles

Navigating Multiple Identities

How do women create fulfilling lives? How does the identity they choose (or not choose) by the end of their college career affect how their lives unfold? For 35 years, Ruthellen Josselson has followed 25 randomly selected women who graduated from college in the early 1970s. Because these women came of age at this particular time in history, they were the trailblazers in creating new possibilities for women's lives and were among the first of the Women's Liberation Movement to take on meaningful roles in the work world. These "real" women, in contrast to the pervasive media stereotypes of the time, took on the challenge in very different ways and championed very different lives for themselves. In Paths to Fulfillment: Women's Search for Meaning and Identity, Josselson traces the stages of these women's lives and the ways in which identity, intimacy, and care for others over time leads to fulfillment, or in some cases, a lack of fulfillment. She examines the complexity of the relationship between a woman's roots, her efforts to create a unique life for herself, and how others become part of the self altogether. Josselson examines individual lives in depth for clues to understanding the strengths that help a woman to find fulfillment, and how a focus on raising the younger generation plays a role in creating this identity. With remarkable clarity and insight, Josselson challenges the common stereotypes of women, and shows how work, love, and care are all intertwined in a woman's feeling of identity.

Women's Search for Meaning and Identity

Paths to Fulfillment

Amia Lieblich

How do we derive concepts from stories and then use these concepts to understand people? What would have to be added to transform story material from the journalistic or literary to the academic and theoretically enriching? Addressing these and other issues such as the interface between life as lived and the social times, distinguished contributors explore this emerging new field in this unique volume. Beginning with the philosophical framework that underlies the study of narrative, the book covers such questions as: what makes people want to preserve the stories of their past? What methods can be used to deconstruct a narrative text? Can what we learn from people's narratives of their past be used to account for their curr

The Narrative Study of Lives

Irvin Yalom is one of the best known, most widely read, and most influential psychiatrists in the contemporary world. This volume traces the genesis and evolution of his thinking and presents some of the seminal ideas of his writings.

On Psychotherapy and the Human Condition

Irvin D. Yalom

We create the characters that people our lives. Although others appear to us to be who they just 'are', there are complicated unconscious psychological processes that lead us to experience people in ways that we ourselves construct. This book analyzes how four pairs of people, central in each other's lives, 'create' one another. It demonstrates how each of us is like a theater director, casting others into roles on our stage, even as others are casting us into their dramas.

How People Create One Another

Playing Pygmalion

Terri Apter

Best Friends provides the missing link to understanding and recognizing the impact of some of the most important relationships in girls' and women's lives. Every woman remembers the sting of betrayal of a girlfriend, and every parent of a daughter has seen her come home from school in tears because a girl she thought was her best friend suddenly and inexplicably became her enemy. While boys hash out differences with fists and kicks, girls' societies are marked by secrets and whispers and shifting affection. The lessons learned as an adolescent girl are often carried into adulthood, making women fear confrontation--especially with other women. But the intensity of the struggles reflects the support and healing to be found within these friendships. Girls find themselves in the mirror of other girls, hence the power each has to influence the other. Ruthellen Josselson and Terri Apter's many years of working with hundreds of girls and women have given them insight into the emotionally important relationships that are integral to a girl's self-image. Best Friends explores the bonds of friendship between girls and between women and the sorrows and joys they experience together, from early adolescence and throughout their lives.

The Pleasures and Perils of Girls' and Women's Friendships

Best Friends

"In this volume, chapter authors successfully challenge readers to think about narrative research in its own context while also maintaining original, personal voices that underscore the value this field places on an individual's communication of his or her experience. By revealing their struggles with qualitative research's emerging and evolving processes and their experiences working with students at various educational levels, these authors subtly, but effectively, arm teachers with tools that anticipate common pitfalls and frustrations. At the same time, the authors relate professional triumphs that illustrate effective teaching - and doing - of narrative research."--BOOK JACKET.

The Teaching and Learning of Narrative Research

Up Close and Personal

Engagingly written, this book builds the reader's skills for conducting in-depth interviews designed to address a particular research question. With an emphasis on the dynamics of the research relationship, Ruthellen Josselson artfully demonstrates the steps of a successful interview. Each step is illustrated with excerpts from interviews on diverse topics. The book describes how to structure interviews effectively, develop questions that elicit meaningful narratives, cultivate skills for empathic listening and responding, avoid common pitfalls, and deal with problems that develop in an interview. Pedagogical Features *Practice exercises adapted from Josselson's popular workshops. *Annotated examples of "good" and "bad" interviews. *A chapter on interviewing dos and don'ts. *Appendices with interview aids, sample follow-up questions, and a sample consent form.

A Relational Approach

Interviewing for Qualitative Inquiry

Integrating psychological theories with empirical evidence, the author of this volume draws fundamental conclusions about the nature and types of relationships, and develops eight dimensions of relatedness ranging from the very casual to the deeply intimate. Each chapter examines a particular dimension and includes a brief life history of a person interviewed by the author. Particular attention is paid to how the type of relationship discussed shaped that person, with diagrams charting these relationships over time. The book also discusses how the sexes differ in the way they relate to others and the various forms that love can take.

The sixth volume in this series provides: guides for doing qualitative research; analysis of several autobiographies; hints on how to interpret what is not said in narrative interviews; discussion on how cultural meanings and values are transmitted across generations; and illustrations of the transformational power of stories.

Ruthellen Josselson

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