Working With EEs/EHEs Record Type: Review   ID: 355
Self-Narration: The Construction of Meaning in Psychotherapy Hermans, Hubert J.M., & Hermans-Jansen, Els
"This book [is] ... a common project of two authors who entered it from quite different perspectives, one as a researcher and personality theorist interested in the psychology of motivation [Hermans] and the other as a practitioner interested in the questions of how to motivate people to explore their life in greater depth and bend it in a more fruitful direction" [Hermans-Jansen] (p. x). The assumption on which their work is based is that "the person is a motivated storyteller" who presents his/her own "valuations" of his or her life’s events. The story can change as one goes through life or it can change when it is the prime subject, as in psychotherapy. Another possible venue for change would be writing one’s EHE autobiography. The self is discussed as "an organized process of meaning construction (chapter 2). The self-confrontation method is presented in chapter 3 where "constructing and reconstructing one’s self-narrative" is discussed. Chapter 4 is about valuation: its structure and process. Other, more specific slants on valuation and self-narratives are brought out in chapters on dreams and myths, dissociations and dysfunctions, and motivations associated with various stages of the life cycles. A summary and perspective is presented in chapter 8 and a valuation manual is presented in chapter 9. Questions, a list of positive and negative affect terms, and further information on the method are the subjects of three appendices. Many life narratives are reconstructed following an EHE. Some of the questions and valuations presented in this book could serve as tools in interviewing EHEers, particularly if it could be done over an extensive time period, so that self-reconstructions could be noted.
Publisher Information:	New York: Guilford, 1995. 306p. Bibl: 281-295; Ind: 297-306

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