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Use of Biography in the Development of Applicable Knowledge

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2018

Donald E. Polkinghorne
Donald E. Polkinghorne*
Affiliation:
Division of Counseling Psychology, University of Southern California, WPH 500, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0031, U.S.A.
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Abstract

A narrative understanding of clients is needed to supplement traditionally developed research for making clinical judgments about which approaches should be used in working with older adults. Narrative biographical knowledge of clients integrates the historical events and happenings of their lives with the social and cultural contexts through which they attribute meaning to their distresses and symptoms. Applications based on narrative knowledge differ from those based on the conventional model. The conventional model draws on general knowledge of what interventions are likely to be effective in treating particular diagnoses. Narrative understanding is concerned in knowing the configuration of past events and present tasks that compose individual lives. Expert practitioners make use of a narrative understanding of their clients in judging their intervention activities. Development of a narrative understanding of present clients can be assisted by consulting narratives of clients with whom a practitioner has previously worked. Narratives are remembered as stories, retaining the patterns and details of the individual clients’ lives. Through experience, practitioners develop a collection of remembered narratives of the clients they have assisted. A practitioner's experiential collection of narratively known clients can be supplemented with narrative biographies and case studies of clients treated by other practitioners. When working with a new client, practitioners can draw on these narratively retained past understandings by comparing the similarities and differences of their present client to a remembered past client. The process of comparison with past narratively understood clients helps the practitioner compose a new narrative that expressly captures the individual life of the present client. This narrative understanding of the client provides an integrated view of the influence of general social and biological contexts with the unique values, aims, and history of the client.

Keywords

Narrativebiographyclinical judgmentexpert practitioner
Type
Research Article
Information
Ageing & Society , Volume 16 , Issue 6: Special Issue: Ageing, Biography and Practice , November 1996 , pp. 721 - 745
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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