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This paper explains how and why I plan to consider the identity of physiotherapy. My intention is to harness self-and group-reflection and the use of reason in a society of mixed values and opinions. I hope to generate mutual understandings of how individual physiotherapy professional identities are constructed, explicate some of the taken-for-granted notions within practice, and through this to enlighten and empower; that is, to generate the possibility of individual change through action based on an increased recognition of the existing relationships and praxis that individuals, and the profession, work within. The methodology will be collective memory work, based on a philosophical position of Habermasian communicative rationality

Recounting stories is a powerful medium through which humans frame and reframe their experience. Within health care patients are encouraged to tell their own stories and these have growing relevance in diagnosis and management. This paper uses one autobiographical account, written for the authors, to explore some of the issues this raises. It is argued that whilst stories have an important role to play, they may also be counterproductive to full understanding and management of health and illness.

Hanover\ud Cape Colony\ud Feb 13/01\ud Dear Mat,\ud I was ever so glad to get your letter & the photo. I haven‘t got a photo I can send you here but I‘ll send you one ―when the War is over‖ & I can go any where & post anything… I have hired an empty room in a house here, & put in a stretcher & a table, & do my cooking on a spirit lamp, & I & my little dog Neta live together… One just waits week after week… Drop me a line soon. I hope Mr Censor will letter [sic] this letter through.\ud Good bye,\ud Olive Schreiner\ud (OS to Alf Mattison, Cory MS16 098 / 3)\ud Introduction\ud The above letter was written in February 1901, in a small village under martial law in an up-country area of the Northern Cape area of South Africa, by Olive Schreiner

This paper replicates a previous study of how people give accounts of their experience after encountering an unusual and unpredictable event in their ordinary lives. Such accounts usually take the form of proto-narratives, which because of their link to an actual event are called contingent narratives. My previous study is extended in this paper by trying to theorize the processes involved. The key feature of these narratives is the ease with which people seem to use a narrative circumspection to making sense of their experience. People draw upon their own tacit knowing to construct narratives to explain their experiences. Such tacit knowledge is available without conscious effort, it easily adapts to new contexts, and is particularly good at handling the unexpected. There is a widely held belief that tacit knowledge is difficult to capture and make explicit, but as is demonstrated in this study there is good evidence that humans have evolved a particularly efficient way of sharing the tacit through narrative thinking. My point is that tacit knowing and narrative thinking offer the key to understanding our experience of ordinary life.

This study is based on the writing of a short, potentially projective narrative, and sharing it in small peer groups. There is a close relationship between narratives and projection; readers‘ enjoyment may in fact depend on their ability and readiness to project their own agendas unto the protagonists (see, for example, Sullivan‘s 1994 analysis of Onetti‘s 1990 novella). Yet the more obvious connection between narratives and projection lies in the act of producing the former while achieving the latter: The act of narrating is, almost by definition, a potential projective test. Projection itself is based on the hypothesis ‗that individuals will project their own perceptions, attitudes, feelings, and needs in assigning meaning to relatively ambiguous stimuli‘ (Esquivel et al., 2007, p.358; see also Esquivel and Flanagan, 2007, and Wiggins, 2003). Projection is not without its dangers: When they use it as a psychological defence mechanism, projecting individuals fail to acknowledge their own motives and emotions, and thus are hindered from effectively coping with them. At the same time they fail to correctly perceive others, since they attribute to them their own, projected characteristics. In an analysis, which again connects narratives and projection, Parker (1995, p.159) argues that ‗to avoid misrecognition of others I need to attend both to their otherness and to elements of human continuity between us‘. (This issue is further discussed and analyzed in Serpell, 2008.)

Alice, in her mid 80s, is small and slight. Despite some physical difficulties which make walking slow and painful she gives the impression of still being full of vitality and strength. She has a remarkable memory for people and places. Despite the obvious constraints on her lifestyle and the reality of getting older and frailer, Alice is cheerful, humorous and sharp witted.\ud My mother has always said she had a cousin who had been ‗something in nursing‘, but evacuation from the Blitz during the Second World War meant they had lost touch so I did not meet her until she was in her 80s, nearly 25 years after my own nurse training. This chance encounter with Alice became the springboard for doctoral research investigating the discourses that shape and control ‗good‘ nursing. Through her life story, further interviews with nine retired nurses from the same generation and documentary analysis of two popular nursing journals I hoped to understand better how nursing had evolved into the often frustrating and ambiguous profession that had shaped my adult life.

How do people remember bereavement? How do they find and refine the language to express it? And why do they agree to talk publicly about it, for a book and a drama-documentary?\ud I am an oral historian, a journalist and broadcaster. I am not a therapist or a sociologist. So this paper will not explore the psychological complexities of bereavement. Nor will it set out to offer a textual analysis of people‘s expressed feelings about the death of a close friend or family member. Instead, it will concentrate on the experience of interviewing people about death and bereavement, the language and imagery they use to express their grief, and how writers may use those experiences as the basis for both fiction and non-fiction.\ud Over the years, I have interviewed many bereaved people, for oral history projects, newspaper articles and radio programmes. Five years ago, together with my Radio 4 colleague, Judy Merry, I edited a collection of personal testimonies on the subject (Relative Grief, published by Jessica Kingsley, 2005).\ud Our interest stemmed from personal experience. Not unnaturally, both Judy and I have experienced bereavement. My father died 16 years ago of heart failure. Along with other family members, I was there at his bedside when he breathed his last. Three months later, I was with my husband in the hospital watching my mother-in-law die.

This paper will explore the use and abuse of powerful stories of loss and fortitude of parents whose children have been affected by gun and gang-related behaviour. Successive government initiatives have sought to empower communities, enhance community safety and involve families in solutions to complex social problems. However, the author‘s recent experience of working with such families within these communities suggests that the rhetoric is not matched by the reality of lived experience. These realities are often expressed as lone voices and rich stories of life-changing personal development. This paper will have at its heart the story of such a parent, generated by the author‘s recent research activity, and the ways in which her narrative illustrates the potential of such stories to encourage participation and engagement (Ely et al., 1997). Moreover, the story identifies the construction of a sense of self and how such narratives can prove to be instrumental in stimulating and nurturing personal development (Schratz and Walker, 1995). However, the paper will also counter such optimism with the reality of the abuse of such stories by agencies attempting to initiate policy at a local level. As a consequence, such powerful narratives get lost amongst a cacophony of competing ‗voices‘ which exert powerful influence over what is supported and funded. In effect, this reductive notion of ‗collating stories‘ marginalises the story-teller, nullifies the celebration of the Other, and the potential for involvement within and across communities, is lost (Bauman, 2007).\ud Joanne‘s narrative is at the core of this paper. This is deliberate, as the author is keen not to summarise and become another voice which appropriates her story. It has much to say about the attempts to help families such as Joanne‘s, in both a positive and negative sense, as well as highlighting her fortitude and activism.

This paper reports a component of a larger study about how adolescents adapt to chronic illness. The condition in question was Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), a medical term for two conditions, ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease. Ulcerations appear on the bowel and digestive organs, which result in urgency to defecate, rectal bleeding, abdominal pain and loss of energy.

In this chapter I examine how emotions can stimulate story-telling, and how these stories can become scripts, for our careers and lives. To develop this theme I examine a pivotal event in my own career, my decision to drop out of university, which captures many of the key themes in play. I show how I “narratively sleepwalked” onto and off a degree course, how my underlying career narrative led me to pursue a particular path despite abundant evidence that it was not for me, and how the roots of this ongoing error can be traced back to a much earlier period of my life. The chapter identifies a number of issues around narrative and memory, showing how a career narrative can influence perceptions of current and future events, but also recollection of past events.

Sociological exploration specifically targeting bisexual Christians is in its infancy. Explanation regarding this is two-fold. Firstly, it is possible to argue that bisexual Christians are marginalised due to their identification as, and assimilation of, two identities which many see as contradictory. Extradition from the bisexual community, often seen as staunchly atheist,1 could occur due to individual’s identification as Christian, conversely Christian congregations are seemingly less likely to be welcoming of bisexuals. Secondly, identification as bisexual is problematic in the perception of others. The conceptualisation of bisexuality as a legitimate sexual identity may be progressing in academic discourse (see Fox, 1996), however throughout both the heterosexual and homosexual community bisexuals are ostracised due to a lack of understanding and a perpetuation of stereotyping (Eadie, 1997; Hemmings, 2002).

According to Andrews (2007), “if we wish to access the frameworks of meaning for others, we must be willing and able to imagine a world other than the one we know” (p.489). This may be enabled, she suggests, through narrative imagination.\ud Our narrative imagination is our most valuable tool in our exploration of others’ worlds, for it assists us in seeing beyond the immediately visible. It is our ability to imagine other “possible lives” (Brockmeier, 2005) – our own and others – that creates our bond with “diverse social and historical worlds” (Brockmeier, 2005). Without this imagination, we are forever restricted to the world as we know it, which is a very limited place to be. (p.510)\ud Furthermore, for Bondi (2003) and Finley (2006), through imaginatively entering into the experiential world of participant’s lives researchers may increase their ability to better know them, experience empathy, reduce emotional harm, and thereby help them obtain significant knowledge of the human situation in ethically admirable, or at least ethically defensible, ways. Likewise, Mackenzie and Scully (2007) point out that it is often assumed that we can overcome epistemic gaps through the exercise of moral imagination: “By imaginatively ‘putting ourselves in the place of others’, it is argued, we can come to understand the experiences and points of view of others whose lives are quite different from our own” (p.337).\ud In what follows, drawing on various scholars, including Levinas (2001), I seek to problematise this sense of imaginative projection by highlighting a number of constraints to our ability to imagine a world other than the one we know. Before this, however, it must first be recognised that I am not suggesting that we should abandon trying to imagine others lives. On the contrary, this process can be a “valuable tool in our exploration of others’ worlds” (Andrews, 2007, p.510). Nevertheless, there are constraints to the imagining the worlds of other people that need highlighting. Here, without wishing to devalue what imagination offers, I wish to draw attention to two constraints: the body and otherness. My modest aspiration is to offer a caution against overstating the power of imagination within narrative research.

In the midst of the Scottish government’s implementation of a new National Curriculum in public education, my research project has attempted to create a flexible and interactive space in which primary school children explored and shared their life knowledge and construction(s) of self through reflective narratives and various art mediums in a classroom environment. Utilizing an educational model derived from the work of John Dewey, my research focuses on working with these children as co-researchers as we explore the results of processing, expressing and sharing life stories through art mediums in the creative spaces brought about by a time of structural transition, and in what ways narrative and art expression serve as communicative forms which can enable children to re/create and assign meaning to the concept of self and personal identities.

This chapter forms part of a broader research project exploring narratives of the ageing, sporting body (Phoenix and Sparkes, 2006, 2007; Phoenix, Smith and Sparkes, 2007; Phoenix and Sparkes, 2008). Here, I examine the accomplishment of a positive ageing identity through the stories told by a 71 year old male. In order to examine how identity is narratively accomplished, I have found recent debates within narrative research between a “big story” and “small story” approach especially useful (Bamberg, 2006; Freeman, 2006).

In April 2007 I began my dissertation towards an MA in Educational Research at the University of Sheffield. Entitled ‘An evaluation of the experience of doing life history research: A case study’ its purpose was to confirm (or otherwise) my ‘hunch’ that life history would allow fidelity to my professed research philosophy. I will elaborate on this later but the thinking that underlies all my research endeavours is to do feminist research with an ethical aim, a moral purpose and a reflexive impetus. I had been introduced to the notion of ‘narrative research’ in the taught components of the above MA and felt that that this was for me. By ‘narrative’ I mean a particular type of discourse, that is ‘the story’, ‘the type of discourse that draws together diverse events, happenings and actions of human lives’ (Polkinghorne, 1996:5). On this understanding it dawned on me that I had already unconsciously undertaken such research years earlier for an MA in Women’s Studies (Novakovic, 1993) but had failed to grasp this fact because I was working with letters rather than with oral accounts.\ud So I will first spend some time setting out why I was powerfully drawn to doing narrative research. Then I will mark the points where this brought me into potential conflict with concerns over research ethics, including a more fundamental consideration of the compatibility of narrative research with ethical practice. Finally I will sketch out how a life history methodology provided a way to address, but not definitively resolve, these issues.

Savant syndrome is a relatively rare, but quite remarkable condition, in which a person with serious intellectual impairment has astonishing islands of ability or brilliance that stand out in stark contrast to their overall disability. This paper presents the case of a male savant who has profound sensory, communicative and physical disabilities, and who is unable to speak or read. Nevertheless, he has a recently discovered, and untutored, prodigious ability to draw. He draws from life, but most remarkably he can draw with detail from memory. His drawing is quick and instinctive, and his mastery of perspective is astonishing. While his own sense of identity is clearly reflected in what he chooses to draw, it is on his unusual perceptions of narrative structure that this paper will focus.

In this paper, we will discuss the findings from research which explores the biographical experience of adults who have been involved in activism1 across their lifetime. The age range of those involved extended from early twenties to late seventies. The material is drawn from nineteen in-depth interviews that illuminate how disparate experiences of activism over time acquire continuity and coherence within a reflective narrative which builds and communicates a mature self-identity. Sociological research on social movement activism has followed a trajectory which echoes the wider shifts in the discipline. Early research on social movements tended to focus on the evaluation of the ‘effectiveness’ of particular campaigns (for example, McCarthy and Zald, 1977). More recently, research has followed theoretical interests in the cultural struggle for meaning and the social relations and identities which have emerged from activism (see Melucci, 1989; 1996; Touraine, 1995). While this has instigated research that focuses on social innovation and social networks, research still tends to be based on specific campaigning moments and social constellations. Key aspects of theoretical models of contemporary activism – that activism is about critical reflection and social identity, and that the ‘effects’ of movements are not limited to specific campaigns but create radical actors and ideas that ripple out into society, what Melucci (1996) terms latency – are still relatively under-examined. The aim of this project is to contribute to such critical examination, and to throw light on the shifting subjective significance of being active over time, through periods of activism over the lifecourse and transitions between campaigning issues and styles.

This paper is based on my conversations and experiences at the 8th International Narrative Therapy and Community Work Conference that was held in Kristiansand, Norway in June, 2007. I was fortunate to be given the opportunity to present some ideas and thoughts I had on challenging mother blame, and also to take part in an outsider witness group with some Norwegian mothers.\ud According to Jackson and Mannix (2004) mother blaming is a serious and pervasive problem, and is a term that describes how mothers are blamed and are being held responsible for the actions, behaviour, health and well being of their (even adult) children. They take this point further by suggesting that it also describes situations where women are blamed for their own predicaments, such as being a single parent or living in poverty. I increasingly found myself in gatherings with mothers in which a significant part of the conversations were focused on the blame and guilt they felt in relation to the difficulties experienced by their children or their own difficulties and the problems this caused for the wider community.

The aim of the research is to gain understanding of the experience of the parents of physically disabled children. Special attention is given to the position of the parents in the border area between the two worlds: those of the disabled and the healthy. The theoretical and methodological tool enabling us to reach the goal is the hermeneutic and narrative approach (Čermák, 1999, 2002). Here we assume that story telling reflects the way in which our experience is structured and our understanding of the world and ourselves within it is constructed. If we as researchers want to learn something about the experience of being a parent of a physically disabled child, we may focus on the way such experience is structured through narration. The analysis of a life story allows for grasping the way in which disabled children's parents experience their fate, how they cope with it and what they make of it.

Recently, (see Hiles and Čermák, 2008), we have proposed a psychological approach to narrative research that we call Narrative Oriented Inquiry (NOI). The focus of this approach is upon research with personal narratives, especially data collected from narrative interviews. The model of NOI stresses what we have called a “methodological approach,” ie. planning from the outset by formulating an appropriate research question, clarifying paradigm assumptions, and developing a distinctive approach to data analysis. Crucial to our approach to narrative data analysis is the distinction that needs to be made between fabula and sjuzet. The fabula is the basic outline of the events as they occurred (or might have occurred), while the sjuzet is the “way” in which the story is being told. We argue that it is the subtleties of the sjuzet that are especially important in understanding the way in which the teller of their story actively engages in their own meaning-making and identity positioning.

The narrative of transformative crisis appears in both autobiographical and fictional accounts of individual lives; it typically involves a difficult or traumatic episode and a period of self-questioning out of which a person emerges more able and more emotionally mature than before (Booker, 2005; Erikson, 1968; Tedeschi and Calhoun, 1995). The present study used interviews to elicit 22 narratives about crises experienced between the ages of 25 and 40, and about any developmental transformation and change that surrounded these crises. Analysis revealed a common four-phase process to the crisis episodes, common metaphors and recurrent descriptions of identity metamorphosis, ie. of ‘becoming a new person’. Comparison of these findings with theory on fictional plots shows a clear parallel between the four-phase process of crisis found in the current study and the ‘rebirth’ plot described by Booker (2005). The theoretical significance of these findings and interpretations is discussed.

This paper explores the relationship between madness and identity making, focussing on the impact of the loss of language. In this exploration, I shall argue that in times of distress or trauma, language eludes us, but this is not a loss of self as is often attributed to so-called psychotic states such as schizophrenia, rather it is a loss of articulation. This is an important distinction that leads to the paper’s central argument; that silence does not necessarily equate to narrative loss. Using the case of Mary Barnes, I shall illustrate how silence and actions both express and transform the self in ways that are narratively meaningful, suggesting that we need to move beyond conventional definitions and forms of narrative, looking instead for alternative means of narrative expression.

Should videogames be treated seriously? The time itself children and teenagers spend on them and the actual amount of money invested in such games by the media and entertainment industry ought to tell us something about the significance videogames have attained. Time spent by adults, as well as children, in this kind of entertainment is increasing, and the average British consumer (together with average consumers from other European countries and the US1) now spends more time playing videogames than going to the cinema or renting movies. Furthermore, the publication of numerous books, reports and complete issues of academic journals (as well as the establishment of institutions2 and conferences being held) which investigate the technological, psychological and sociological aspects of videogames underlines the fact that this kind of entertainment has become a part of our culture and that there is a growing interest in discussing this phenomenon from a broadening cultural perspective.

The film, Stand By Me, has been described as a small gem. First impression reveals little more than a linear plot, a story told, from Gordie’s point-of-view, of a journey made by four boys to find a dead body. But, on closer inspection, the film reveals itself as far more complex in narrative structure. The film uses ambiguity of character, flashbacks and two types of voice-over narration, to offer not only an exploration of the nature of fictional storytelling, but also a profound examination of the subtle boundaries between fiction and fact in the conventions of narrative cinema.

Now once upon a time, although not very long ago.\ud And Hidden in the forest where the tall dark pine trees grow,\ud There lived a boy called Toffle in a house that stood alone.\ud He always felt so lonely, and one night was heard to moan; “I feel so frightened of the dark,especially tonight…….”\ud Who Will Comfort Toffle - Tove Jansson (1960)\ud In this tale from the Moomin Valley Toffle finds himself driven from his home by the frightening noises of the forest. All alone, and too shy, at first to approach the many Moomin characters he passes along the way, he gains confidence by helping a scared and lonely Miffle who needs help more than he does. Toffle’s quest to save Miffle from the dreadful Groke inspires him to move beyond his own fears and anxieties, and at the same time create an audience to listen to his preferred future. What would happen if Toffle were alive today, living within a community with all his worries and anxieties, his fear of the dark and the noises of the forest? Maybe Toffle refuses to go to school or becomes aggressive when asked about his fears and worries? Maybe his parents are concerned about his social isolation or potential depression? In all probability Toffle would be referred to a child psychiatrist or a therapist. He would be evaluated, assessed, diagnosed with any number of conditions and disorders, or perhaps his parents would be mandated to attend parenting classes?

My thesis in this paper is that in ‘fiction’, or to be more precise, in metaphorical, poetic modes of signification, there may inhere great value, even therapeutic value, to the individual who is attempting to survive the depredations of intense distress. Moreover, my argument is that for the self to speak of its own experiences of madness and trauma there may be an imperative – an imperative necessary to survival as a self – to step outside the constraints of a purely informational mode of discourse. Such a modality of speech is very familiar to those of us who use mental health services. It is a discursive mode sanctioned by authority, a discursive mode which surrounds us, interpellates us, even before we begin to speak, a mode which translates the extraordinary, the bizarre and the profoundly disorientating into the medicalised language of diagnosis, prognosis, symptoms, and treatment. Within this discursive realm, experience which challenged rationality and conventional narrative framings of the world is remade, and through this remaking is changed beyond recognition. These medicalised, positivistic modes of speaking about experience may be, I want to argue, not only inadequate, but actually harmful to the individual employing them.

Čapek’s novel “Ordinary Life” is interpreted from the point of a narrative approach. The authors argue that Čapek’s novel, published in 1934, anticipates more recent narrative approaches in psychology, in which identity is conceived as a permanent reconstruction and reinterpretation of multiple versions of life stories. Čapek tells the story of an elderly man, who feels he must find some answers concerning the issue of his own identity. He starts to write an autobiography and during this process he finds plurality in himself, he uncovers the human being as a multitude of real and possible persons. The authors propose that Čapek’s novel corresponds to the contemporary narrative approaches in these following aspects: a) narrativity is considered as a tendency against trivialization (platitude, obviousness, straightforwardness, definiteness); b) identity is conceived as a polyphonic narrative construction; c) full narrative\ud human life.

Discussion here draws on our wider joint research about women’s testimonies of the concentration camps of the 1899-1902 South African War.1 Our research has focused, amongst other things, on a network of women cultural entrepreneurs whose activities in ‘working up’ Boer women’s testimonies as ‘the facts’ played an important part in the politics of Afrikaner proto-nationalism until the late 1930s. The research shows that these Boer women’s testimonial narratives, while presented as entirely factual, cannot be classed straightforwardly as either fact or fiction, but instead inhabit an ‘in-between’ area, with their factual claims – claims which may but sometimes may not be ‘true facts’ – often supported by what Eakin (1985) calls fictive devices.

The narrative is a powerful tool in understanding personal experiences, indeed Byatt explains narration is ‘as part of human nature as breath and the circulation of the blood’ (2000, p.21). At the heart of narrative psychology is the interpretation of an event/events in an attempt to bring meaning to difficult and disordered times. In this work we did not set out to use narrative specifically. On doing a pilot interview in an investigation into the psychosocial adaptation processes of families living with stroke survivors we realized the richness of the material in helping the interviewee to define her lived experience of managing change imposed by her husband’s stroke. There is little evidence that carers’ needs are fully understood and effectively considered in assisting them to cope with and adapt to their new lifestyle (Burton, 2000) and this is against the NICE guidelines which state that 'Stroke is a family illness’ (Royal College of Physicians, 2004).

Due to its longevity (almost 400 episodes and 18 years), and the sheer number of\ud supporting characters that appear on it, the writers and producers of The Simpsons\ud has created a model of society which can be exploited by the political theorist. This\ud paper aims to explore the social and political ramifications of this model of, especially\ud the accusation that the programme in inherently conservative in its portrayal of\ud gender and the nuclear family.\ud \ud \ud This paper will also look at the depiction of politicians in the programme (for example\ud fictional politicians such as Mayor ‘Diamond’ Joe Quimby and Sideshow Bob as well\ud as real politicians Bill Clinton and George Bush snr), and suggest that whereas The\ud Simpsons may appear to mock all politicians, this is not in fact the case, and that The\ud Simpsons does provide us with examples of the types of qualities that are admirable\ud in a politician. It will be argued that the writers of The Simpsons only mock two types\ud of politicians; actual living politicians (it is from this fact that it gets its reputation for\ud being impartial), and dishonest metropolitan-type politicians. Local, hard working\ud politicians (most notably Governor Mary Bailey and former Sanitation Commissioner\ud Ray Patterson) are exempt from their criticism, suggesting that they prefer local\ud substance over glitz and style.