NARRATIVE AND WELL BEING

NARRATIVE AND RELATIONSHIP BUILDING 

“Stories and narrative, whether personal or fictional, provide meaning and belonging in our lives.  They attach us to others and to our own histories by providing a tapestry rich with threads of time, place, character, and even advise on what we might do with our lives.  The story fabric offers us images, myths, and metaphors that are morally resonant and contribute both to our knowing and our being known.” -- Witherell and Noddings, 1991, The Stories Lives Tell. 

Witherell & Noddings use the term caring relation in the context of using story telling in teaching and indicate that it assumes a relational, or connective, notion of the self, one that holds that the self is formed and given meaning in the context of its relations with others.  The sharing of stories has been found to be one of the most useful tools in relationship building. 

CREATIVE WRITING AND IMAGINATION: Creative writing develops imagination.  "The fundamental job of the imagination in ordinary life...is to produce, out of the society we have to live in, a vision of the society we want to live in."  --Fry, N. The Educated Imagination. 

WRITING AS EXPRESSION OF CREATIVITY:  defined as a form of self-expression that recognizes the necessity of skills and knowledge of the domain, as well as a reflection on past experiences and inner imagination.  Creativity is a genuine process demonstrated through a skilled practice which results in a product that both experts and self can judge as worthy.  Through an engagement in creativity exists the potential to find wellness by gaining self-esteem and personal meaning.  --Rogers, On Becoming a Person.

CREATIVE WRITING AND CRITICAL THINKING

Thinking/Problem Solving:  Sorts through complex data; gathers other relevant viewpoints; identifies important issues, thinks through alternatives.  Integrates intuition and data from a variety of sources; makes well-reasoned conclusions and develops a solid plan of action, demonstrates creativity and innovation when finding solutions to complex problems.

Steinberg in his work on brain functioning discovered that the most valuable tool for raising one’s ability to think is to have a basic structure on which to “hang one’s hat of ideas”.  Writing process provides that framework for analyzing ideas.

Ricoeur (Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, 1981) says, “my present research on the narrative places me precisely at the heart of social and cultural creativity, since telling a story is the most permanent act of societies.   In telling their own stories, cultures create themselves.”