No description available.

This narrative articulates the advantages of long-term autoethnographic logotherapy. I explore how the practice of long-term autoethnographic logotherapy led me to the point where I was prepared for my father’s death, and how that allowed me to let him go before he actually died. I propose that long-term personal narrative and autoethnographic writing are not merely a form of therapy and healing. Rather, it is a practice aligned with existential psychologist Victor Frankl’s conception of logotherapy, literally “healing through meaning.” Using vignettes, I interrogate canonical narratives about father–son relationships, especially focusing on troubled relationships, and examine standard notions of bereavement.

Book Summary: Who are we with-and without-families? How do we relate as children to our parents, as parents to our children? How are parent-child relationships-and familial relationships in general-made and (not) maintained? Informed by narrative, performance studies, poststructuralism, critical theory, and queer theory, contributors to this collection use autoethnography-a method that uses the personal to examine the cultural-to interrogate these questions. The essays write about/around issues of interpersonal distance and closeness, gratitude and disdain, courage and fear, doubt and certainty, openness and secrecy, remembering and forgetting, accountability and forgiveness, life and death. Throughout, family relationships are framed as relationships that inspire and inform, bind and scar-relationships replete with presence and absence, love and loss. An essential text for anyone interested in autoethnography, personal narrative, identity, relationships, and family communication.

No description available.

No description available.

This dissertation explores the lives of baby boomers turning sixty as they use narrative to review their past by focusing on turning points. They reflect upon their present, and anticipate their future. The story begins at the St. Pius X High School Class of 1965's fortieth reunion, and proceeds to a class sixtieth birthday celebration and focus group. In addition, five members of the class record their life stories retrospectively. This research explores issues of identity, both personal and generational; the social construction of aging; grief, loss and death; and resilience, meaning, and spirituality. Methods used are autoethnography, narrative, participant observation, and writing as inquiry.

This research examines the increase of personal narratives in the past several decades, particularly the autoethnographic approach. The project begins with a historical contextualization of personal writing and autoethnography in relation to the crisis of representation and other diverse socio-political shifts. One outcome of these cultural transitions was a proliferation of illness narratives, narrative therapy, therapeutic writing, and narrative health communication. Also included in this research are data from interviews with emerging autoethnographers and participant observation that occurred at the Third International Qualitative Inquiry Congress. The conference served as prism through which to view qualitative scholarship as a whole, as well as current issues in autoethnography and its possible futures. Issues that are explored include what motivates scholars to write autoethnographically, how they define and evaluate autoethnography, their views on its use as therapeutic practice, and their vision for the future of the autoethnographic approach. Qualitative research methods are flourishing globally, and autoethnography is uniquely positioned to expand in the years ahead, particularly in the area of health communication, cross-disciplinary academic studies, and mainstream publishing venues.

This dissertation is an auto/ethnographic account of close friendships between the researcher and other men. The various narratives contain intimate dialogues about being a man, having friends, and the process of resisting and succumbing to orthodox masculinity. The purpose of the research was to investigate and artfully depict the communication and development of close friendships between the researcher and other men, in hope of gaining more knowledge of the difficulty forming and maintaining male friendships given the strictures of orthodox masculinity. The research combines methods of autoethnography and dialogic conversations with four male friends. In the first chapter I set the stage with a review of the scholarly literature on male friendship and masculinity. In chapters two through six and nine through eleven I present two sets of dialogic conversations I had with four men. Chapter seven provides a theoretical tour of the method. Chapter eight consists of monologues about friendship given by three participants. Chapter twelve concludes the dissertation with personal reflection and analysis. The analysis draws links between the author's experiences of friendship with each participant, grounding research on masculinity, as well as research on male-male friendship. In male-male friendships, the performance of masculinity, especially proving one's manhood, reverses the order of expected dialogical tensions in interpersonal relationships. For example, to be a man requires demonstrating invulnerability before allowing vulnerability. Forming close personal bonds, however, requires demonstrating vulnerability from the onset, something that runs counter to prescripts of orthodox masculinity. This observation demonstrates the double bind many men face when first forming friendships. To counter this bind, I argue for the need of a reflexive turn at level of self to provide the necessary gap in self-knowledge that allows for dialogue and redefinition of orthodox masculinity between men.

This study employs qualitative methods to: (1) compare and contrast public conversations about a complex social phenomenon with my experience of that phenomenon, and (2) explore the nature of those public conversations and their impact on planetary transformation. This study is divided into two parts. Part One of this dissertation compares my personal experience with Landmark Education Corporation, a private personal development company, with how it is characterized in public conversations. The public conversations chosen for analysis include: (1) an episode of the television show, Law and Order: Criminal Intent (Balcer, et al., 2003), (2) a Time Magazine article about Landmark Education Corporation (Faltermayer, 1998 March 16), and (3) psychological research on large group awareness trainings, of which Landmark Education courses are one example. Each of these public conversations contrasts significantly with my personal experience and therefore fails to account for what I see as the potential for work like Landmark's to transform the conversations that constitute our society, and ultimately, life on our planet. To help account for the value I see in Landmark's courses, Part Two of the dissertation examines the communication of Landmark participants to ascertain whether their communication in fact poses the possibility of global transformation through open, compassionate, reciprocal communication practices learned in Landmark courses. It draws from qualitative interviews, a focus group, and a focus group observation interview. Based on the results of this research, I argue that the communication of Landmark participants has the power to transform society, and that the public conversations about Landmark Education examined here are a drag on global transformation. Most broadly, I respond to the following question: When we examine particular public discourses about unusual social phenomena, what can we learn about the relationship between these discourses and the social phenomena aimed at transforming them?

This dissertation documents the joys and terrors of caring for my father throughout my twenties and early thirties. The story is autoethnographic and demonstrates the value of narrative research in fostering understandings of self, other, and the world around us. I call this reflexive practice of writing narrative education because as I engaged in it, I learned what it means to care, and how mental health and illness factor into the ways in which care is expressed and provided in my own relationships and beyond. In addition, throughout the story I was a member of the academic community, which makes caring more than an act or behavior, but a concept to unpack, an ideograph. This dissertation begins with the goal to write my story and learn from it so others might learn from it as well. While the narrative portion of my dissertation focuses on story and the craft of creative nonfiction, the final chapters present a discussion of narrative ethics and the writing process. I also delve into concepts of care, family, and community to shed light on the narrative and create a space for reflection.