![]()
Part 1
RECENT AND
CONTEMPORARY
RESEARCH
![]()
Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION
Faith Gibson
This book has many worthy forbears. Over a number of years, numerous books and journal papers have reported and reviewed literature concerned with reminiscence, life review and life story work research and practice; they identified current issues and concerns and suggested various areas for further research and exploration. Risking ignoring or neglecting some of these pivotal international milestone publications, by placing this book within its wider historical intellectual lineage may assist contemporary readers, and especially those new to reminiscence and other narrative methods, to appreciate the rich foundations on which this book builds and the intellectual, practice and clinical debts we present authors owe to our predecessors. In the main, the works cited in this introductory chapter refer to major milestone publications that have personally influenced me during my 40 years or so of preoccupation with studying memory and seeking to understand how memories and their recall influence thinking and behaviour in the present. This introduction does not pretend to be a comprehensive history of the burgeoning growth of interest in reminiscence and reminiscence work, that sometimes â not always helpfully, in my view â is referred to as reminiscence therapy (Gibson 1994, 2004; Haight and Burnside 1993). Rather, it refers to writing and other developments that have intrigued and excited me, informed my own research, teaching and practice, and helped me to make fruitful connections between personal experience and academic pursuits.
Heeding Pearâs view (1922) that the mind never photographs but rather paints pictures, and conscious of many classical and literary references to the interplay of memory and imagination so eloquently explored by writers like Proust (1981) and Warnock (1987) among others, I note that it is customary to attribute the beginnings of the modern reminiscence movement, almost exclusively focused at first on older people, and situated within a life cycle developmental perspective (Erikson 1959, 1978), to Butlerâs (1963a, 1963b) seminal paper. A psychiatrist by profession, he recognised the positive significance reminiscence plays in the lives of people as they age, contrary to earlier views about its negative impact on mental health, a theme further explored by Lewis (1971) and Butler and Lewis (1977). Almost all the contributors to this book have cited Butlerâs work as well, and a substantial number also refer to the influence of Eriksonâs ideas on their own research and practice.
Franklâs book, Manâs Search for Meaning (1984), also cited by several chapter authors, helped me to understand the influence of past experience on the present and to appreciate that in varying degrees, and in different ways, to live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering; and itâs important to live in hope rather than despair. Or put another way by an anonymous writer: âMan is made for good and ill/ If this you know/Safely through the world you go.â McMahon and Rhudick (1964) focused attention on the value of veterans reviewing and recounting their wartime experiences and Pincus (1970) wrote about the social work treatment implications and applications of undertaking reminiscence with aged people.
Johnson (1976), a British gerontologist, began to alert clinicians and service providers to the value of reminiscence as a way into understanding an older personâs past. He regarded such understanding of the past as an essential gateway to recognising, assessing and responding to a personâs present health and social care needs. In 1978, Burnside, a nurse educator, first published her widely influential book Working with Older Adults: Group Processes and Techniques, and her subsequent revisions written with Schmidt, a social worker, (1986, 1994) all contained important chapters on reminiscence and guided autobiographical writing. The fourth memorial edition honoring her extensive work that was edited by Haight and Gibson (2005) again included germane chapters on these topics.
An architect in the United Kingdomâs Department of Health, Kemp (1978) led a reminiscence aids project aimed at stimulating frail elderly people and enlivening their boredom-inducing residential care homes by using photographs of familiar places, people and events to encourage conversation and social interaction. This project was subsequently developed by an international voluntary organisation, Help the Aged, which in 1981 prompted a near avalanche of interest in practical reminiscence and life story work with the publication of three tape/slide audio-visual programmes known as Recall that featured largely London-based images and sounds. Recall spawned many similar more localised publications of trigger materials and training packages (Gibson 1989, 2000; Price 1992).
Raised in rural Australia and familiar with School of the Air, the Royal Flying Doctor Service and images of vast space and isolation where âthe nearest womanâs face may be a hundred miles awayâ (Evans 1906), I thought I knew about distance. Relocating after marriage to Northern Ireland where a âstrangerâ meant someone from the next village, or sometimes even from the next street, let alone from another Christian denomination, I was quick to develop a new perspective on âdistanceâ and learn anew about the significance of âplaceâ. It was from these personal influences from childhood and young adulthood as well as practising social work in psychiatric settings, where to know a personâs history was pivotal in establishing relationships in the present, that I came to realise the impact of memories and began to understand the therapeutic potential of reminiscing. Although reminiscences may often be related to universal experiences, I was also learning that memories are intensely personal, embedded in particular times and contexts and related to an individualâs lived experiences of people, places and events.
Merriam (1980, 1993) and Merriam and Cross (1982) reviewed the early literature, raised issues about the occurrence of reminiscence at different stages of the lifespan and the different functions it fulfils. Dobrof (1984), referring back to Butlerâs work, wrote of reminiscence being a liberation that freed old people to remember, to regret, and to look reflectively at the past as they sought to understand their lives. Importantly, Dobrof wrote that the health and care staff who worked with such frail elderly people were likewise liberated because now they were permitted to listen and respect both the rememberers and their reminiscences without thinking that talking about the past was a sign of mental ill-health.
Kaminsky (1984a, 1984b) reflected on the uses of reminiscence while describing storytelling as a sort of spadework that was likely to turn up precious metals. Molinari and Reichlin (1985) published an extensive review of the literature concerned with life review with elderly people. Disch (1988) wrote about the close relationship between reminiscence and oral history. He also perceived the therapeutic potential inherent in bearing testimony through sharing personal history across the generations. Moody, writing in the same book, Twenty Five Years of the Life Review: Theoretical and Practical Considerations, was interested in two questions: âWhere did we come from?â and âWhere are we going?â Such questions concerning our search for meaning through life review are still contemporary and pervade many of the chapters in this book.
Coleman (1986a) in his seminal book, Ageing and Reminiscence Processes: Social and Clinical Implications, identified different types of reminiscers and stressed that reminiscence isnât necessarily a universal process nor is it universally helpful for all people as they age â a position reinforced in his chapter in this book (Chapter 4) and further confirmed by Cappeliez in Chapter 12 and Westerhof in Chapter 17.
Bornat, an oral historian who was involved in the publication of Recall (Help the Aged 1981) and who edited Reminiscence Reviewed: Perspectives, Evaluations and Achievements (1994), explored whether reminiscence and oral history are âparallel universes or shared endeavoursâ, a debate that continues to the present day as oral history seemingly grows more abstruse compared with the usually freer, less structured, more individualistically responsive and often therapeutically oriented approaches commonly found in reminiscence work (Bornat 2001; Thompson with Bornat 2017).
For me, McConkey (1996) and Warnock (1987) were writers with different but extremely relevant perspectives on our urge and need to establish a sense of personal identity and to seek self-assurance and stability over time. McConkey wrote of how both are vitally important and of his belief in how âmemory searches for connections among present and past experiences in its desire to know, to evaluate, to make sense of lifeâ (p.447). Warnock (1987), a philosopher, was also interested in exploring the importance of links between the past and present in establishing a sense of personal identity:
Who we presently perceive ourselves to be is indisputably connected to who we perceive ourselves to have been in the past and will be in the future. Although we realize there have been changes over time, we are still the person we always were in core ways and shall be hereafter, for change and continuity go hand in hand. (p.100)
Webster, a psychologist (1993, 1997), introduced a taxonomy of reminiscence and wrote about its therapeutic implications. His validated Reminiscence Functions Scale (RFS), consisting of 43 items grouped into eight factors or functions served by reminiscence, has been replicated and used in various countries throughout the world. The RFS focused sharper attention on the differential nature and complexity of reminiscence. (Websterâs eight reminiscence functions are listed by Cappeliez in Chapter 12.) Cappeliez and OâRourke (2006) and Cappeliez, Guindon and Robitaille (2008) regrouped these factors into three distinct types of reminiscence when considering therapies for older people with depression. Drawing on both cognitive therapy and reminiscence theories, they distinguished between integrative, instrumental and prosocial reminiscence, a discussion revisited and further developed by Cappeliez in Chapter 12.
Integrative functions encourage a constructive reappraisal of past self-defining events and their associated emotions, and instrumental recollection of evidence of past effective coping provides understanding and reassurance for developing present coping. The third category of prosocial reminiscence involves sharing recall of the past to teach and inform others. To what extent cultural factors may influence the type and content of reminiscence has been explored by Shellman, Mokel and Hewitt (2009), who researched the effects of integrative reminiscence on depressive symptoms in older African Americans. They introduced ideas about the possible role of cultural influences on frequency, content and consequences of recall research questions, some of which were also explored by Nile and van Bergen (2015) and are considered in Chapter 10 by Webster.
Bluck (2003; Bluck and Alea 2011; Bluck and Levine 1998) and later publications have increased understanding about the range, purposes and processes of reminiscence. Bohlmeijer et al. (2007) from the Netherlands provided a persuasive meta-analysis concerned with the relevance of reminiscence engagement to ameliorating depression in later life. Having been trained and then practised as a psychiatric social worker with children and adults, I found this review and associated writing by Bohlmeijer et al. (2005) and OâRourke, Cappeliez and Claxton (2011) particularly helpful. MacKinlay, whose writing with Trevitt (2012) distinguished between simple and spiritual reminiscence, emphasised the importance of life review in assisting people with and without dementia to articulate their lifetime values and to make meaning in their lives. This is also a theme explored in several other chapters and especially by Christine Bryden in Chapter 11, who writes from the viewpoint of a person who has dementia.
Haight and Websterâs The Art and Science of Reminiscence (1995) and a second volume, Webster and Haight (2002) Critical Advances in Reminiscence Work: From Theory to Application were landmark volumes that made accessible the work of many international researchers, practitioners and clinicians. Each of these books contained extensive literature reviews by Haight and Hendrix (1995) and Hendrix and Haight (2002) and reports of a growing number of empirical studies and applied projects from North America, the UK and Japan, together with a smaller number from other parts of the world. These two publications were the first to make a determined effort to document within single comprehensive books the growing international interest in reminiscence, life review and life story work research and practice.
The second volume arranged under the headings of conceptual work, developmental work and sociocultural issues, special populations and clinical applications reflected the increasing diversity of types of narrative interventions and the people engaged in them. Along with this diversity has also come a growing interest in studying differential outcomes of reminiscence work undertaken with specific populations drawn from various age groups, cultural backgrounds and states of health. Sharing in research with Haight in a Northern Ireland study increased my knowledge of one particular systematised intervention â the structured life review using Haightâs life review form (Haight 1998a, 1998b; Haight, Michel and Hendrix 1998). This study highlighted the issue of the relative value of structured chronological life review versus opportunistic, spontaneous, simple reminiscence (Haight, Gibson and Michel 2006). Shellman in Chapter 16 reviews more recent studies concerned with using structured life review.
Fivush (2007) broadened my understanding of the importance of reminiscence with age groups other than older people and, with Booker, she writes further about this in Chapter 5. The long-term influence of parentâchild reminiscing on identity development, from infancy onwards through adolescence and into adult life has been a significant contribution. Except for intergenerational oral-history-type projects (for examples see Chapter 15 by Schweitzer), reminiscence seen as primarily the province of old people is being replaced by an appreciation of its relevance at other stages of the life cycle.
In the 16 years since Webster and Haight (2002, p.xvi) noted that âresearchers and practitioners have struggled over the past forty years to strike an empirically grounded balance between unbridled enthusiasm and mainstream neglect of reminiscenceâ, a number of systematic reviews and meta-analyses have been published. Some have been general reviews, others have focused on specific groups, especially people with dementia and people who are depressed. The earlier Cochrane Library Reviews of reminiscence with people with dementia have been periodically updated, and in Chapter 3 Woods writes about the most recently released review of research concerned with reminiscence and dementia (Woods et al. 2018). Webster, Bohlmeijer and Westerhofâs (2010) âMapping the future of reminiscence: A conceptual guide for research and practiceâ describes a comprehensive, multifaceted conceptual model that still has considerable relevance for...
