In recent years, gold-standard experimental evidence on the benefits of reading fiction has exploded. Why do we love stories from books, TV and movies, and videogames? What do fictional stories have to do with stories from real life? How do stories impact our own and our children's brain development, reading skills, social understanding, and well-being? In How Stories Change Us, Elaine Reese integrates the latest scientific research on stories from fiction (books, TV shows and movies, videogames) with stories from real life (our personal experiences, including on social media) across the lifespan. The book offers an authoritative yet accessible overview of the new interdisciplinary science of stories, told by a developmental psychologist and autobiographical memory expert with over thirty years of experience conducting research on stories. Throughout, Reese adopts a developmental perspective by tracing the impact of stories from pre-birth to old age. Drawing upon illustrative examples from her 20-year longitudinal study Origins of Memory as well as from her own life, Reese synthesizes cutting-edge research on the benefits and pitfalls of stories and offers practical tips for parents, teachers, librarians, and policymakers. Reese concludes that people have a preferred fictional story delivery system, whether it's reading, watching, or gaming, and she advocates for a more integrated science of stories to allow us to better choose the stories we consume and tell.

"The seeds of the book were sown by a number of events, beginning over a decade ago, which foregrounded questions around the relationship between narrative and social change. The Centre for Narrative Research (CNR) at the University of East London hosted two international conferences on 'Narrative and social change' and 'Narrative and social justice', in 2007 and 2009; these topics were selected for sponsorship by the British Psychological Society's Qualitative Methods section. The 2012 Narrative Innovations summer school in Prato, Italy, organized by CNR alongside narrative researchers from Monash University, Australia, and Linkoping University, Sweden, which brought together graduate students from many countries, pointed up young narrative researchers' growing interests in social change. CNR and other narrative researchers' life story work with refugees, starting in 2015 in the so-called 'Jungle' refugee camp, in Calais, northern France (Africa et al., 2017), was an attempt to act on our social change interests in a more applied way. This work strengthened some of our ideas about the value of even minimal possibilities around personal narrative, as Bhabha's (2010) formulation of the 'right to narrate' suggests. A series of UK National Centre for Research Methods-funded events, in 2016, involving CNR, the Thomas Coram Research Unit at University College London, Edinburgh University's Centre for Narrative and Auto/biographical Studies, and visiting colleagues from South Africa and the US, also contributed to the book's making, by exploring participatory narrative research, addressing the involvement of research participants alongside researchers in all steps of the research, from defining research problems and doing the research, through to analysis, writing up and research dissemination"--

Change Your Story, Change Your Life is a practical self-help guide to personal transformation using traditional shamanic techniques combined with journaling and Carl Greer’s method for dialoguing that draws upon Jungian active imagination. The exercises inspire readers to work with insights and energies derived during the use of modalities that tap into the unconscious so that they may consciously choose the changes they would like to make in their lives and begin implementing them.

We humans live by stories, says David Korten, and the stories that now govern our society set us on a path to certain self-destruction. In this profound new book, Korten shares the results of his search for a story that reflects the fullness of human knowledge and understanding and provides a guide to action adequate to the needs of our time. Korten calls our current story Sacred Money and Markets. Money, it tells us, is the measure of all worth and the source of all happiness. Earth is simply a source of raw materials. Inequality and environmental destruction are unfortunate but unavoidable. Although many recognize that this story promotes bad ethics, bad science, and bad economics, it will remain our guiding story until replaced by one that aligns with our deepest understanding of the universe and our relationship to it. To guide our path to a viable human future, Korten offers a Sacred Life and Living Earth story grounded in a cosmology that affirms we are living beings born of a living Earth itself born of a living universe. Our health and well-being depend on an economy that works in partnership with the processes by which Earth's community of life maintains the conditions of its own existence—and ours. Offering a hopeful vision, Korten lays out the transformative impact adopting this story will have on every aspect of human life and society.

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 The gap is the space between where you are and where you want to be. Companies that close the gaps in business best, win. #2 We all have gaps in life, between where we are and where we want to be. These gaps are human nature. Without them, we would have no hopes, dreams, or aspirations. But while there’s nothing more human than dreaming of leaping a gap, there are few things more disheartening than staring at a gap and never doing anything about it. #3 To change your life, you must first understand why you tell the stories you do. To do that, you must go back much further than Mike did, to where the trouble really began. #4 The campfire legacy lives on today. Even if you’ve never taken a single step past the city limits, you’ve experienced what lighting a few candles can do for the mood. Good storytellers are more attractive to potential mates and even have healthier offspring.

Reflective Reading and the Power of Narrative: Producing the Reader is an interdisciplinary exploration into the profound power of narratives to create—and recreate—how we imagine ourselves. It posits that the process of producing a text also produces the reader. Written from the perspective of a psychoanalytic feminist, Sproles considers a wide array of examples from literature, popular culture, and her own experiences to illustrate what she calls "reflective reading"—a metacognitive reading practice that recognizes the workings of the unconscious to push the reader toward a potentially transformational engagement with narrative. This may manifest as epiphany, recovery from loss or resolution of repressed trauma. Each chapter draws on examples of characters and authors who model a reflective reading process from Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf to Johnny Cash and Alison Bechdel. By reclaiming the role of the unconscious, Karyn Sproles reinvigorates the theoretical work begun by reader-response criticism and develops a deep understanding of identification and transference as an integral part of the reading process. For students and researchers of cultural studies, psychoanalysis, gender studies and feminist literature and theory, Reflective Reading and the Power of Narrative offers innovative and accessible ideas on the relationship between reader and text. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.

“Who am I?” If you are unsure of your personal identity, you are not alone. Our postmodern culture multiplies identity-crisis. Identity comes from story—the better our story, the healthier our identity and our behavior. Searching for the Self helps you discover your own story, and discern how cultural narratives shape your behavior. Channeling the ancient wisdom of classic stories—including Christian Scripture viewed as true story—this book offers hope to anyone searching for a better story to live by. Searching for the Self provides a groundbreaking synthesis of narrative psychology, cultural analysis, biblical studies, and English Literature 101—all written in an engaging style and interwoven with revealing personal anecdotes.

Advances in Autoethnography and Narrative Inquiry pays homage to two prominent scholars, Arthur Bochner and Carolyn Ellis, for their formative and formidable contributions to autoethnography, personal narrative, and alternative forms of scholarship. Their autoethnographic—and life—project gives us tools for understanding shared humanity and precious diversity; for striving to become ever-more empathic, loving, and ethical; and for living our best creative, relational, and public lives. The collection is organized into two sections: "Foundations" and "Futures." Contributors to "Foundations" explore Carolyn and Art’s scholarship and legacy and/or their singular presence in the author’s life. Contributors to "Futures" offer novel and innovative applications of autoethnographic and narrative inquiry. Throughout, contributors demonstrate how Bochner’s and Ellis’ work has created and shifted the terrain of autoethnographic and narrative research. This collection will be of interest to researchers familiar with Bochner’s and Ellis’ research. It also serves as a resource for graduate students, scholars, and professionals who have an interest in autoethnographic and narrative research. This collection can be used in upper-division undergraduate courses and graduate courses solely about autoethnography and narrative, and as a secondary text for courses about ethnography and qualitative research.

"This text examines the psychological effects of martyrdom and martyrs across the world. The authors discuss martyrdom and martyrs through the lens of current events, iconic historical figures, and popular culture"--

Research approaches in the field of transpersonal psychology can be transformative for researchers, participants, and the audience of a project. This book offers these transformative approaches to those conducting research across the human sciences and the humanities. Rosemarie Anderson and William Braud first described such methods in Transpersonal Research Methods for the Social Sciences (1998). Since that time, in hundreds of empirical studies, these methods have been tested and integrated with qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-method research designs. Anderson and Braud, writing with a contribution from Jennifer Clements, invite scholars to bring multiple ways of knowing and personal resources to their scholarship. While emphasizing established research conventions for rigor, Anderson and Braud encourage researchers to plumb the depths of intuition, imagination, play, mindfulness, compassion, creativity, and embodied writing as research skills. Experiential exercises to help readers develop these skills are provided.