Disturbed identity is one of the defining characteristics of Borderline Personality Disorder manifested in a broad spectrum of dysfunctions related to the self, including disturbances in meaning-generating self-narratives. Autobiographical memories are memories of personal events that provide crucial building-blocks in our construction of a life-story, self-concept, and a meaning-generating nar...

What makes unique and unrepeatable individuals is their ability to write their own story attributing meaning, sharing it through narration, giving coherence to the information related to the interpersonal motivational systems, and creating alternative hierarchies to those biologically provided by the genetic code. Through clinical narratives and narrative literature, we can observe the recurren...

Contemporary narratives of breast health must be understood within the context of the history of published writing about breast cancer. Written mentions of breast cancer appear as early as Egyptian papyrus. However, until the 1960s the majority of the published writing about breast cancer came primarily from the medical field. In the 1960s some women, mainly outside of the medical field, respon...

OBJECTIVE This article focuses on the lived experience of depression in 20 elderly African American women. METHODS Data on depression emerged from research that qualitatively explored experiences of depression, sadness, and suffering in 120 community-dwelling persons aged 80 and older, stratified by gender, ethnicity, and self-reported health. RESULT We placed women's narratives under three...

People are constrained by their culture and social life when telling stories. A second language learner then cannot be expected to tell stories in the target language without cross-cultural effects that influence the way of narration. The present study examined the role of the first language (L1) and second language (L2) in the organization of narratives by focusing on Persian speakers’ and EFL...

This paper expands the current concept of volition in the Model of Human Occupation. The present version views personal causation, values, and interests as traits that determine choices to engage in occupations. Through a detailed investigation of the life histories of two persons with psychiatric disorders, this paper illustrates how volition is embedded in a personal narrative. Two features o...

OBJECTIVE To examine the impact of an international service learning experience (ISL) using a quantitative and qualitative approach. DESIGN AND SAMPLE A descriptive study was used to explore the impact of an ISL experience on global awareness, professional and personal growth with 11 baccalaureate nursing students in the Dominican Republic. INTERVENTION Students participated in a three cred...

We examine (a) the normative course of eudaimonic well-being in emerging adulthood and (b) whether people's narratives of major life goals might prospectively predict eudaimonic growth 3 years later. We define eudaimonic growth as longitudinal increases in eudaimonic well-being, which we define as the combination of psychosocial maturity and subjective well-being (SWB). College freshmen and sen...

OBJECTIVE—: To understand high-performing frontline employees' values as reflected in their narratives of day-to-day interactions in a large health care organization. METHODS—: A total of 150 employees representing various roles within the organization were interviewed and asked to share work-life narratives (WLNs) about value-affirming situations (i.e. situations in which they believed their a...