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What’s the Story?: Life Style Narratives Study Group … a book club with a twist … uses critical thinking methods, usually reserved for the analysis of literature, to analyze or better understand and assess a person’s personality or life narrative as based on that person’s reported memories.

By looking back through (one’s perceived important memories, or Early Recollections [ERs])

we are able to uncover the prototype – the core of the style of life (that is, one’s basic

personality)…. (These important memories or ERs) are signs of what happened and how

development took place.  They indicate the movement toward a goal and what obstacles had

to be overcome.

                                                          — Alfred Adler (1929, The Science of Living)

In other words, these memories can be likened to stories.

What’s the Story was inspired by the work of pioneering personality theorist Alfred Adler and the exercises that writers’ workshops conduct to “get the creative juices flowing”:  

Alfred Adler (1870 – 1937) believed that a person’s personality, which he called Life Style,

could be assessed via the “stories” – the memories or early recollections – that a person easily,

and often, recalls. (Adler’s ideas influenced social psychology, cognitive-behavioral

psychology, choice theory, existentialism, and holism.  He called his psychology “Individual

Psychology,” believing that each of us must be respected as an individual.  Individual Psychology

has been referred to as “the original positive psychology.”)   

Writers workshops, particularly creative writing workshops, emphasize “writing about what

you know.” Popular writing exercises involve jotting down memories or specific incidents. 

Chicago’s “Clothesline School of Fiction,” for example, emphasized “stringing together”

memories because the incidents, themes reflected, and people remembered in them often

were similar and, thus, could form the foundation of a larger literary piece. 

Each “reading” that we approach and interpret – as a book club-style group – is comprised of that person’s (the “author’s”) Family Constellation and Early Recollections:

The Family Constellation provides a kind of “Cast of Characters.”  It is really just brief

descriptions of self (the author, or “I” of the story/ies or memories – the main

character/”hero”) and family members.  These descriptions show not only the influences on

the main character, but give us – the readers! – an idea of how that person responds to

others.  (A simple way to understand the Family Constellation is to consider birth order –

or  one’s position with regard to others: that is, does a character resemble a “bossy oldest” or

a “dethroned oldest” or a “spoiled youngest” or an “ignored middle,” “the favorite son,” “the

competitive second,” “the rebel,” the drop out,” etc.). 

The Early Recollections (ERs) are the author’s/main character’s important or “guiding”

memories.  (These recollections are called “guiding” because, being the most easily recalled,

they generally reflect what the author thinks of self, world, and others; they can reflect, for

example, “lessons learned” or how the person has been “moving” through life.)  The handful

of memories that are asked for are strung together, composing a kind of short story that

involves challenges and characters’ attempts to overcome or solve them …

We interpret the material or reading as a group, raising opened-ended questions (often referred to as Socratic-type questions) to get us started.  A question may even be as simple as “what don’t you understand?”, and then inviting participants to find clues or patterns within the text to help in the inquiry or answering. 

Questions based on psychological concepts that Adlerians use to help assess personality are particularly helpful, such as: movement (inquiry into a character’s actions or behavior within an individual recollection/memory and/or across the whole of them); the main character’s purposes and goals and social influences; and how the characters use their “talents” to resolve or attempt to resolve challenges. 

Interpretations, opinions, impressions, ideas, and responses – and we have a lot of ’em! – must be supported by evidence in the text. 

Whatever your perceptions or interpretations of the reading were at the start of a meeting will shift and expand by the end! 

Join us! 

As Alfred Adler wrote (1938, Social Interest: A Challenge to Mankind):

my own experience has taught me that the most trustworthy approaches to the

exploration of the personality are to be found in a comprehensive understanding of the

earliest childhood memories ([Early Recollections] and) of the place of the child in the

family sequence (Family Constellation, perceived birth order)….

The child's position in the family sequence … shows with compelling clarity how a

child utilizes his situation and the impressions derived from it as material for creatively

constructing his style of life -his law of movement