The Use of the Life Story Work for older people with and without cognitive impairment LSB Work: Background and History of Development Claudia K Y Lai, RN, PhD Associate Professor, School of Nursing The Hong Kong Polytechnic University President, Pi Iota Chapter Honor Society of Nursing Sigma Theta Tau International

What is a life story (LS)?  A life story is the essence of what has happened to a person.  It can cover the time from birth to the present or before and beyond.  It includes the important events, experiences, and feelings of a lifetime.  A component of self-awareness that enables us to explain and justify who we are, where we come from, and how we developed.

Storytelling  In its most common everyday form, is giving a narrative account of an event, an experience, or any things that are happening (Atkinson, 1998).  The life story as a narrative form has evolved from the oral history, life history, and other ethnographic and field approaches.  A life story is a narrative.  The terms “narrative” and “story” are used frequently today in the popular press, in academic writings, and in the mental health literature (Dean, 1998).

The Classic Functions of Stories  Myths and folktales have traditionally served four classic functions: bringing us more into accord with (a) ourselves, (b) others, (c) the mystery of life, and (d) the universe around us (Campbell, 1970)  Life stories, too, can serve the same classic functions.

Telling of Life Stories that are Guided by Others: Guided Autobiography  A short, or mini, autobiography, with one person having guided another through the telling of his or her story in his or her own words (Birren & Cochran, 2001).  A generic and global term that is used here to incorporate reminiscence, Butler’s life review (1963), etc.  A guru in this area: James Birren of the U of Southern California

LSB Work: A Specific Reminiscence Approach General  Uses a variety of multi- sensory triggers to stimulate shared conversations on an agreed topic or theme relating loosely to the known background and interests of the participants. Specific  Refers to the carefully selected, highly focused use of triggers known to closely approximate the detailed life history of the participant  Consistent efforts to stimulate recall during conversations (Gibson, 1994)

Terms and Names  In folklore, the term “life story” is used much as “life history” is in anthropology.

Development of the Method (Atkinson, 1998)  The life history has long been a primary methodology of anthropological field work.  Moreover, the use of life stories as a research source has a long history within sociology during the early years of the twentieth century.  The development of the life history or case history method was informed by a commitment to uncover and interpret the meanings attached to interaction and so understand the ordinary lives of individuals and the variety of cultural groups of the city (Chicago)  As the Chicagoan approach to city life and its patterns of interaction lost favor during the late 1930s and 1940s so the life history method also came under attack, other methods came to prosper.

Cont. Development of the Method (Atkinson, 1998)  From 1960s the life history method began to revive, in the subsequent interest in life stories.  Influences from oral history, feminist theory and research, postmodernism and other sources began to take hold.  Since late 80s, there has been an increased awareness of the appropriateness of using autobiographical materials to study elderly adults and their lives (Byrd, 2001).  As the method developed and renewed, the life history not only referred to the use of the written story but also could draw upon diaries, letters or other such ‘personal’ or ‘human’ documents.

The Use of the LS Method in Theory Development (Atkinson, 1998)  Life history or lifestory, first systematically employed in Thomas and Znaniecki’s The Polish Peasant in Europe and America ( ), has long played a significant role in social science inquiry (Cohler & Cole, 1996).  G.S. Hall, one of the founders of child psychology early in the twentieth century, used diaries and autobiographies as sources in constructing his theories on adolescence (Roth & Kenyon, 1996, cited in Atkinson, 1998).  The use of life narratives for serious academic study is considered to have begun in psychology with Freud’s (1910/1957), 1911/1958) psychoanalytic interpretation of individual case studies, although these were based on secondary documents.

Cont. Development of Theories using the Method (Atkinson, 1998)  Gordon Allport (1942) used personal documents to study personality development in individuals, focusing on primary documents, including narratives, also considering the problems of reliability and validity of interpretation using such materials.  Henry Murray (1938, 1955) was one of the first to study individual lives using life narratives primarily to understand personality development.  Erikson (1975) also used the life history to explore how the historical moment influenced lives.  Sarbin (1986) uses narrative, identifying it as the “root metaphor” and placing it at the core of self-formation, for understanding human experience, whereas Bruner (1986) uses narrative as an important means for discovering how we “construct” our lives.

Post-modernism and the Narrative/Oral History Approaches  The modernist era in the sciences has been one committed to the study of empirics.  Post-modernism devoted its major attention to the process of representation, the emphasis is placed on narrative within the broader social process of generating meaning.  This involves an appreciation of the contextual relativity of meaning, an acceptance of indeterminacy, the generative exploration of multiplicity of meanings, and the understanding that there is no necessity for adhering to an invariant story or searching for a definitive identity. (Cohler & Cole, 1996; Gergen, 1996)

Life story and life history  Very little difference between a life story and a life history - usually different terms for the same thing.  Difference: emphasis and scope  An oral history: focuses on a specific aspect of a person’s life, such as work life or a special role in some part of the life of a community.

Oral History (Church & Johnson, 1995)  Defined as primary source material obtained by recording the spoken words generally by means of planned, tape recorded interviews of persons deemed to harbor hitherto unavailable information worth preserving.  Oral history in the UK and elsewhere draws on the disciplines of history and sociology for its origins in the 60s (Bornat, 2002).  The concept of life review has often been used interchangeably with the concept of oral history.

Differences between LS & Oral History (Atkinson, 1998) Life StoriesOral History Disciplinary Base (Bornat, 2002) Nursing, social care, gerontology, psychology, counseling, adult education, creative therapies History ApproachSimilar Emphasis & Scope BroadSpecific ExpertClient/ParticipantResearcher/Historian ProductHow the interviewee sees him/herself and define his/her life Final form can vary from being mostly the researcher’s description of what was said, done, or intimated to a completely first-person narrative Benefits/Value (Church & Johnson, 1995) Primarily to the participantPrimarily pertains to the information collected

References  Atkinson, R. (1998). The life story interview. Thousand Oaks, Ca.: Sage.  Birren, J. & Cochran, K. N. (2001). Telling the stories of life through guided autobiography groups. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.  Butler, R. (1963). The life review: An interpretation of reminiscence. Psychiatry, 4,  Dean, R. G. (1998). A narrative approach to groups. Clinical Social Work Journal, 26 (1),  Church, O. M., & Johnson, M. L. (1995). Worth remembering: The process and products of oral history. International History of Nursing Journal, 1 (1),  Cohler, B. J., & Cole, T. R. (1996). Studying older lives: Reciprocal acts of telling and listening. In J. E. Birren & G. M. Kenyon (Eds.), Aging and biography: Explorations in adult development (pp.61-76). New York: Springer.  Gergen, K. J. (1996). Beyond life narratives in the therapeutic encounter. In J. E. Birren & G. M. Kenyon (Eds.), Aging and biography: Explorations in adult development (pp ). New York: Springer.  Gibson, F. (1994). What can reminiscence contribute to people with dementia. In J. Bornat (Ed.). Reminiscence Reviewed: Evaluations, achievements, perspectives (pp ). Buckingham, England: Open University.