William Randall

St. Thomas University · Department of Gerontology

For many people, aging is perceived and experienced in implicitly tragic terms: as a narrative of decline, as little more than a downward trajectory toward decrepitude and death. Such a way of storying later life can set us up for (among other things) narrative foreclosure, which can fuel the mild-to-moderate depression to which older adults are su...

In this 2019 John McKendy Memorial Lecture,1 Dr. William Randall discussed how few topics intrigue us more than death. Yet few topics are more taboo—not unlike aging, with which, in many people’s minds, it can seem synonymous. But just as a narrative perspective on aging enables us to envision its more positive potentials in terms of meaning, wisdo...

Prevailing paradigms in gerontology tend to eclipse the creative side of aging, implicitly perceiving it in terms of a narrative of decline. Building on insights from the field of narrative gerontology, this paper proposes an explicitly literary metaphor for understanding the subjective experience of aging, one in which our lives themselves are con...

Aims and objectives: In this article, we introduce care itself as a narrative practice. We emphasise that all interactions between care providers and older adults in long-term care settings are narrative in nature and foreground experience. Background: Every person consists of innumerable stories based on experiences over time. Some experiences...

For more information on Narrative Gerontology and Narrative Care, please visit www.WilliamLRandall.com

For more information on Narrative Gerontology and Narrative Care, please visit www.WilliamLRandall.com

For more information on Narrative Gerontology and Narrative Care, please visit www.WilliamLRandall.com

For more information on Narrative Gerontology and Narrative Care, please visit www.WilliamLRandall.com

For more information on Narrative Gerontology and Narrative Care, please visit www.WilliamLRandall.com

For more information on Narrative Gerontology and Narrative Care, please visit www.WilliamLRandall.com

For more information on Narrative Gerontology and Narrative Care, please visit www.WilliamLRandall.com

For more information on Narrative Gerontology and Narrative Care, please visit www.WilliamLRandall.com

For more information on Narrative Gerontology and Narrative Care, please visit www.WilliamLRandall.com

For more information on Narrative Gerontology and Narrative Care, please visit www.WilliamLRandall.com

For more information on Narrative Gerontology and Narrative Care, please visit www.WilliamLRandall.com

For more information on Narrative Gerontology and Narrative Care, please visit www.WilliamLRandall.com

For more information on Narrative Gerontology and Narrative Care, please visit www.WilliamLRandall.com

Of increasing interest to gerontologists is resilience: the capacity for coping with the challenges of later life with openness and positivity. An overlooked factor in resilience, however, is the narrative complexity of older persons’ self-accounts. The research on which this article is based is part of a larger project aimed at assessing the role...

For more information on Narrative Gerontology and Narrative Care, please visit www.WilliamLRandall.com

For more information on Narrative Gerontology and Narrative Care, please visit www.WilliamLRandall.com

For more information on Narrative Gerontology and Narrative Care, please visit www.WilliamLRandall.com

This article introduces the concepts of narrative environment and narrative care to discussions of human caring. ?1 Human beings are storied beings, it proposes, and our identity is tied to the narratives through which we interpret our experience. Appreciating the narrative complexity of the people with whom we interact is thus the heart of narrati...

Every year, thousands of new practitioners in professions such as social work, education, medicine, and the church leave the large urban centres where they received their training and go to work in small towns, remote hamlets, and other rural settings. Often they find themselves unprepared for professional life in these communities. Drawing on in-d...

Every day of life, we are enmeshed in countless storylines at once: those we spin around the experiences we remember, the people we relate to, and the world we inhabit, plus what others spin around us. And this says nothing of the stories that we read in newspapers and novels, or watch on TV, or exchange with friends in conversation (vestiges of al...

Of increasing interest to gerontologists is resilience: the capacity for coping with the challenges of later life with openness and positivity. An overlooked factor in resilience, however, is the narrative complexity of older persons' self-accounts. The research on which this article is based is part of a larger project aimed at assessing the role...

From time to time we all tend to wonder what sort of “story” our life might comprise: what it means, where it is going, and whether it hangs together as a whole. In The Stories We Are, William Lowell Randall explores the links between literature and life and speculates on the range of storytelling styles through which people compose their lives. In...

This paper introduces the idea that aging inclines us naturally toward an ironic stance on life. The conscious cultivation of that stance through some form of narrative reflection is linked to the development of wisdom, where wisdom is understood in terms of deepened knowledge of the “stories” of our lives. Such reflection heightens our awareness o...

The narrative turn has opened up a conceptual space in which scholars can exchange ideas concerning the storied complexity of human life. This article argues that a liberal arts environment is uniquely equipped to foster such exchanges, explore the nature of narrative itself, and prepare students in developing strong stories.

The same turn toward “narrative” that has been making its way across psychology, sociology, and related disciplines is influencing how gerontologists view the inner experience of aging—inside aging, as it were: subjective aging or biographical aging. In sympathy with Kenneth and Mary Gergen’s vision of “positive aging”, and in contrast to the biome...

This essay applies a narrative perspective to the topic of resilience. On various fronts (physical, social, biographical), aging itself, it argues, pushes us past a perception of aging as intrinsically tragic and toward a more ironic stance instead, one marked by increased acceptance of uncertainty and ambiguity. Moreover, intentional engagement in...

The objective of the paper is to explore narrative foreclosure as a sensitizing concept for studying the ways in which narrative identity development falters in later life. Two main characters in famous movies are contrasted to provide a better understanding of narrative foreclosure. The concept is further clarified by discussing similarities and d...

By honoring the narrative complexity of personal identity, adult educators can assist older persons in the process of autobiographical learning, that is, learning about themselves and from themselves by reflecting on the stories through which they have defined themselves across the years. For more information on Narrative Gerontology, visit websit...

In the course of normal aging, memory suffers losses in effectiveness, which, for many, spark anxiety about the onset of dementia. Against the background of Daniel Schacter’s (2001) overview of “the seven sins of memory,” this paper proposes that the line between “normal” and “dementing” is less definite than we may think. Indeed, when the narrativ...

This paper considers the narrative complexity of the telling–listening process that unfolds in qualitative interviews in sport and exercise sciences. Acknowledging the narrative complexity of memory itself, it critiques the perhaps implicit assumption in many researchers’ minds that interviewees’ responses to interviewers’ questions are to be taken...

This article draws on recent thinking in the field of narrative gerontology to lend support to Mahnaz Hashmi's "anthropological perspective" on dementia. From a narrative perspective, the relational component of human life--and thus of dementia--is underscored. Moreover, when the narrative dimensions of memory are considered, the line between "norm...

This book examines aspects of aging that are commonly overlooked by dominant conceptual models in gerontology, which focus on the observable, measurable, or "outside" dimensions of aging. Drawing on the emerging field of narrative gerontology, it provides conceptual-theoretical support to scholars of aging who are interested in bringing such topics...

This book examines aspects of aging that are commonly overlooked by dominant conceptual models in gerontology, which focus on the observable, measurable, or “outside” dimensions of aging. Drawing on the emerging field of narrative gerontology, it provides conceptual-theoretical support to scholars of aging who are interested in bringing such topics...

This book examines aspects of aging that are commonly overlooked by dominant conceptual models in gerontology, which focus on the observable, measurable, or “outside” dimensions of aging. Drawing on the emerging field of narrative gerontology, it provides conceptual-theoretical support to scholars of aging who are interested in bringing such topics...

This book examines aspects of aging that are commonly overlooked by dominant conceptual models in gerontology, which focus on the observable, measurable, or “outside” dimensions of aging. Drawing on the emerging field of narrative gerontology, it provides conceptual-theoretical support to scholars of aging who are interested in bringing such topics...

This book examines aspects of aging that are commonly overlooked by dominant conceptual models in gerontology, which focus on the observable, measurable, or “outside” dimensions of aging. Drawing on the emerging field of narrative gerontology, it provides conceptual-theoretical support to scholars of aging who are interested in bringing such topics...

This book examines aspects of aging that are commonly overlooked by dominant conceptual models in gerontology, which focus on the observable, measurable, or “outside” dimensions of aging. Drawing on the emerging field of narrative gerontology, it provides conceptual-theoretical support to scholars of aging who are interested in bringing such topics...

This book examines aspects of aging that are commonly overlooked by dominant conceptual models in gerontology, which focus on the observable, measurable, or “outside” dimensions of aging. Drawing on the emerging field of narrative gerontology, it provides conceptual-theoretical support to scholars of aging who are interested in bringing such topics...

This book examines aspects of aging that are commonly overlooked by dominant conceptual models in gerontology, which focus on the observable, measurable, or “outside” dimensions of aging. Drawing on the emerging field of narrative gerontology, it provides conceptual-theoretical support to scholars of aging who are interested in bringing such topics...

This book examines aspects of aging that are commonly overlooked by dominant conceptual models in gerontology, which focus on the observable, measurable, or “outside” dimensions of aging. Drawing on the emerging field of narrative gerontology, it provides conceptual-theoretical support to scholars of aging who are interested in bringing such topics...

This book examines aspects of aging that are commonly overlooked by dominant conceptual models in gerontology, which focus on the observable, measurable, or “outside” dimensions of aging. Drawing on the emerging field of narrative gerontology, it provides conceptual-theoretical support to scholars of aging who are interested in bringing such topics...

This book examines aspects of aging that are commonly overlooked by dominant conceptual models in gerontology, which focus on the observable, measurable, or “outside” dimensions of aging. Drawing on the emerging field of narrative gerontology, it provides conceptual-theoretical support to scholars of aging who are interested in bringing such topics...

Drawing on his work in the area of narrative gerontology, the author reflects on the measure of congruence that exists between the theories he has been developing about the storied complexity of adult development and his lived experience as an aging individual himself. His reflections include a discussion of his former career as a parish minister a...

In this paper I propose that interest in narrative within the human sciences is comparable to interest in chaos within the natural sciences. In their respective ways, theories on narrative and theories on chaos are aimed at appreciating the dynamics of complex, multi-dimensional systems which otherwise resist our attempts to predict, measure, and c...

In the emerging field of narrative gerontology, psychological models of self are giving way to literary ones. Viewing the experience of aging through literary lenses presents a number of intriguing conceptual possibilities. In this paper, the authors identify points of intersection between narrative gerontology and literary theory that illuminate a...

This paper introduces the compost heap as a metaphor for autobiographical memory. As an alternative to the computer, such a metaphor, it is argued, comes closer to capturing the dynamics of memory across the lifespan and how it feels to us as we age, particularly memory's narrative dimensions. After citing concerns expressed by psychologists and ot...

In the spring of 2001, the two of us began discussing the possibility of hosting an interdisciplinary conference on Narrative. We had been feeling the need of such an event ever since our days as doctoral students a decade earlier at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE). Our sense was that researchers and practitioners who, like ou...

Al 25 jaar ben ik gefascineerd door verhalen. Tijdens mijn afwisselende loopbaan als predikant, docent in het volwassenenonderwijs, leraar Engels, en nu gerontoloog, ben ik onder de indruk geraakt van het verklarend vermogen van de narrative root metaphor (Sarbin, 1986), ofwel het narratief als fundamentele analogie om de wereld te begrijpen. Behal...

How older adults reminisce about their lives to others depends in part on who is listening, and on the relationship that they and their listeners establish. To support this hypothesis, findings are presented from a narrative analysis of 12 lifestory interviews done by 3 interviewers (4 interviews each: 2 with males; 2 with females) with people 80 a...

Inquiries concerning the nature of ‘biographical aging’ within the emerging field of ‘narrative gerontology’ have pointed to the need for a detailed consideration of the parallels between lived texts and literary ones. This article draws on a number of such parallels in order to outline what might be called a poetics of aging. The central proposal...

Narrative approaches in the field of aging are receiving increasing attention by theorists and practitioners alike. This article draws on recent thinking in narrative gerontology to look at three aspects of aging on which a narrative perspective can shed further light. In relation to the temporal aspects, the notion of storytime is examined. Concer...

Essential to making meaning across the lifespan, I argue, is narrative intelligence. After sketching the dynamics of such intelligence, I offer some speculations on how our experience and expression of it may change with advancing years.

Introduces this special issue on "Narrative gerontology." This term (e.g., G. M. Kenyon et al, 1999) is intended as a heuristic for the study of aging. Its purpose is to emphasize and coordinate a particular set of insights about both the aging process itself and how to investigate it. As the word "narrative" implies, its main agenda for gerontolog...

This is a new and important contribution to the explosion of contemporary interest in life as story and lifestories. Written in a lively and readable manner, the book explores theoretical, practical, ethical, and personal aspects of this fascinating topic area. It invites the reader, whether professional or general, to realize the potential to rest...

Abstract This paper draws on insights from narrative gerontology, narrative psychology, and narrative therapy,to discuss spirituality in relation to aging. Defining “spirituality” in terms of meaning-making, it considers the possibility of “narrative foreclosure” - i.e., one‟ s life continues on (beyond retirement, for instance) yet, in one‟ s mind...