Emotional intelligence (EI) plays a significant role in human emotional well-being, personal growth and life satisfaction. Self-awareness is said to be a key to the development of this form of intelligence. It has also been claimed by art therapists and educators that the expressive arts can assist people in self-expression and emotional awareness. In accordance with this belief, the motion picture (a movie) as a form of expressive product has been used to help people become aware of their own hidden feelings and thoughts (i.e. viewing or making an autobiographical movie can promote emotional awareness). However, there has been little research that specifically addresses how the process of making (one particular form of expressive art) may help a person to engage with their emotions. Therefore the central aim of the research was to show firstly how the development of autobiographical animations may engender therapeutic opportunities for greater reflection thereby facilitating personal development of, and emotional awareness in the artist and secondly, to demonstrate that the viewing of such animations may prompt viewers to gain the understanding of the feelings of the animator and be stimulated to reflect on their own experience, followed by the subsidiary goal of demonstrating that making animation could provide additional opportunities to the growth of greater emotional awareness in therapeutic and school education settings. To achieve these aims, a practice-led research approach was adopted. The thesis presents the reflective journey undertaken in creating the final installation ‘A residual cleft in my beautiful life: childhood’ based on childhood memories, showing how reflection-on-practice and in-practice formed key components in shaping the research and accompanying artistic endeavours. The development of the installation confirmed that the processes undertaken in producing an animation provided opportunities for self-knowledge and personal growth (in the artist), and that the audience were stimulated to consider their own childhoods as well as the childhood presented to them. The evidences of the animation installation production and the audience’s responses to the artefact further support the positive feedback on the values of animation to assist in increasing self-awareness from interviews with art therapists, and an online survey with school teachers. Observation of s three month animation teaching placement is also reported to invite further study to explore animation practice and school education. In conclusion, this research contributes to knowledge firstly, by providing a practice based account of the researcher’s exploration of, and development of emotional insight through her therapeutic art; secondly by evidencing the potential of a new form of expressive art - animation – to be used as an expressive arts technique to engage the emotional intelligence of individuals and audiences.

This study compares German memory of life in the German Democratic Republic with Russian memory of life in the Soviet Union, as represented and created within fictional and autobiographical narratives of childhood, published since the collapse of each regime. The chosen texts are, to varying degrees, fictionalized and/or autobiographical. A comparison between German and Russian narratives is particularly interesting because the socialist past is remembered very differently in each country’s public discourse and culture. An examination of narratives about childhood allows for a complex relationship between the post-socialist present and the socialist past to emerge. I study the texts and their reception, in conjunction with an analysis of the dominant ways of remembering the socialist past circulating within German and Russian society and culture. This allows the analysis to go beyond a straightforward comparison between the representations of the socialist past in the two groups of texts, to also explore how those representations are interpreted and received. It also demonstrates how the surrounding memory cultures appear to be producing quite different approaches to representing memories of broadly similar socialist childhood experiences. Chapter 1 explores the role of literary texts in revealing and shaping both individual and collective memory with a review of relevant research in the field of memory studies. Chapter 2 draws on existing scholarship on post-socialist memory in German and Russian society and culture in order to identify dominant trends in the way the socialist past has been remembered and represented in the two countries since 1990/1. The analysis in Chapters 3 and 4 reveals a more detailed picture of the complexities and ambiguities inherent in looking back at childhood under socialist rule through the example of the chosen texts, and in the ways they are received by critics and by readers (in reviews posted online). I demonstrate that, in line with the surrounding memory cultures, questions of how the socialist past should be remembered are a more central concern in the German texts and their reception than in the Russian texts and reception. I show, however, that the nature of the Soviet past is often portrayed indirectly in the Russian texts and I explore how critics and readers respond to these portrayals.

Forskning om det mänskliga minnet är omfattande och likaså forskning kring evolutionsteorin, men studier som undersöker hur människors barndomsminnen har påverkat deras beteenden och synsätt i vuxen ålder utifrån evolutionsteorin är mer sällsynta. Avsikten med den föreliggande studien var att bidra till att denna kunskapslucka fylls igen. Semistrukturerade intervjuer med tre pedagoger, en socialpedagog, två psykologistudenter, två sociologistudenter samt en sjuksköterskestudent genomfördes med fokus på vilka barndomsminnen de haft, negativa eller positiva, samt hur de upplevt att det påverkat deras beteenden och synsätt i vuxna livet. Informanternas ålder var mellan 25 – 66 år och det var fem män och fyra kvinnor. Utifrån informanternas svar undersöktes om dessa kunde kopplas till evolutionsteorin och om barndomsminnena hade överlevnadsvärden. I resultatet av den tematiska analysen framträdde sju teman: 1. Rädsla, 2. Utanförskap, 3. Hjälpsamhet, 4. Föräldra-/vuxenroll, 5. Tillhörighet, 6. Svek/brist på tillit och 7. Negativa erfarenheter. Studiens resultat ger förståelse för hur barndomsminnen kan påverka människors beteenden samt hur evolutionsteorin kan ta sig uttryck hos människor idag. Resultatet visar människors strävan att ständigt förbättra sina egenskaper genom att lära sig av sina eller andras misstag. Studien ger därmed ett psykologiskt bidrag till den kvalitativa forskningen om hur människors minnen kan anpassas genom generationer utifrån evolutionsteorin. / Research in human memory is extensive and so is research on the theory of evolution, but studies that investigate how people's childhood memories have influenced their behaviors and approaches in adulthood based on the theory of evolution are rare. The purpose of the present study was to contribute to the completion of this knowledge gap. Semi-structured interviews with three educators, a social educator, two psychology students, two sociology students and a nursing student were conducted focusing on which childhood memories they have had, negative or positive, and how they have experienced how it has affected their behavior and approach in adult life. The informants were between 25 and 66 and there were five men and four women. Based on the informants' answers, we examined whether these could be linked to the theory of evolution and if childhood memories has survival values whether these could be linked to the theory of evolution and if childhood memories has survival values. In the result of the thematic analysis, seven themes emerged: 1. Fear, 2. Alienation, 3. Helpfulness, 4. Parental / Adult Role, 5. Belonging, 6. Betrayal / Lack of Trust and 7. Negative experiences. The study's results give an understanding of how childhood memories can affect people's behavior and how evolution  theory can be applied in people today. The result shows people's efforts to constantly improve their characteristics by learning from their or other’s mistakes. The study thus makes a psychological contribution to the qualitative research on how people's memories can be adapted through generations based on the theory of evolution.

Notes on the productivity of nostalgia is a treatise on otherness and memory, framed as entries into the notebook of a no-longer-young man who decides to visit places that have a nostalgic connection to him - places where he grew up, and places where he fell in love -and who is trying to overhaul the notion that you can't look back and move forward at the same time. / [I examensarbetet ingår utställningen "Little father, glorious stump":] The exam work consisted of a three-room installation of sculptural objects, activated by a live sound performance, as well as a 3D animation projected unto one wall of the gallery. / <p>Examensarbetet består av en skriftlig del och en gestaltande del. Alternativ titel anger namnet förden gestaltande delen. </p><p>The master work includes a written essay and a forming part. The alternative title is the name of the forming part.</p>