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Child, parent, and parent–child emotion narratives: Implications for developmental psychopathology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 August 2006

DAVID OPPENHEIM
DAVID OPPENHEIM
Affiliation:
University of Haifa, Israel
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Abstract

Studies using narratives with children and parents offer ways to study affective meaning-making processes that are central in many theories of developmental psychopathology. This paper reviews theory regarding affective meaning making, and argues that narratives are particularly suited to examine such processes. The review of narrative studies and methods is organized into three sections according to the focus on child, parent, and parent–child narratives. Within each focus three levels of analysis are considered: (a) narrative organization and coherence, (b) narrative content, and (c) the behavior/interactions of the narrator(s). The implications of this research for developmental psychopathology and clinical work are discussed with an emphasis on parent–child jointly constructed narratives as the meeting point of individual child and parent narratives.

Type
Research Article
Information
Development and Psychopathology , Volume 18 , Issue 3 , September 2006 , pp. 771 - 790
Copyright
© 2006 Cambridge University Press

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