Experienced Life and Narrated Life Story: Gestalt and Structure of Biographical Self-Presentations

Contents
Preface to the new edition
Preliminary note
1. Introduction
	1.1 Problem
	1.2 What is the “benefit” of applying Gestalt theory to life stories and life histories?
2. On the Gestalt nature of experience
	2.1 That which is presented to the observer
		2.1.1 The presentation of the world of things
		2.1.2 The presentation of processes
		2.1.3 The presentation of social processes
	2.2 The intention of the agent
	2.3 The formal organization of what is presented
		2.3.1 On the origin of organization
		2.3.2 Organizedness: theme, field, margin
		2.3.3 The questionable identity of the theme
		2.3.4 Theme and thematic field of a narrated story
		2.3.5 Thematic field analysis of a biographical narrative
3. On the Gestalt nature of memory and narrative
	3.1 Experience – Memory
	3.2 Memory – Narration
4. On the Gestalt of narrated life stories
	4.1 Biographical preconditions for shaping a life narrative as a Gestalt
		4.1.1 Learned patterns, cognitive competence, and biographical necessity
			Excursus: life stories narrated by children?
		4.1.2 Biographical freedom to act and changes in lifestyle
			Excursus: narrated life stories of nuns and monks?
		4.1.3 Possible congruence of experienced life history and biographical overall evaluation
			Excursus: narrated life story of a dominatrix?
			Excursus: the loss of the life narrative and its correspondence with modern reproductive medicine.
		4.1.4 A life story that has not been “destroyed”
			Excursus: survivors of the Shoah
	4.2 The simple grasping of orderedness
	4.3 Orderedness after biographical turning points
		4.3.1 Turning points that affect psychological development
		4.3.2 Socially typified status transitions
		4.3.3 Interpretation points
	4.4 Formal factors for Gestalt connection
		4.4.1 Thematic similarity of experiences is more dominant than their temporal and spatial proximity
		4.4.2 Thematic groupings and splitting into thematic fields: “Bourgeois Biography” and “Homosexual Biography”
		4.4.3 The belonging of an experience to a thematic field is more dominant than thematic similarity
		4.4.4 Interpretation points and splitting into thematic fields: “My life with my parents” and “My life without my parents in Israel”
		4.4.5 A consistent biographical overall view is more dominant than individual thematic fields.
5. The healing effect of biographical narration
	5.1 The ambiguous Gestalt of the experienced life history
	5.2 The healing effect of life narratives for survivors of the Shoah
6. Methodological implications
	6.1 Principles of interviewing to obtain a biographical narrative
	6.2 Principles of a reconstructive case analysis
7. Biographies – Discourses – Figurations: Social‐constructivist and figurational biographical research Artur Bogner & Gabriele Rosenthal
	7.1 Introduction
	7.2 Commonalities and differences between biographical research and figurational sociology
		Biographical research
		Figurational sociology
	7.3 Discourses as an intermediary element?
	7.4 Voices of established and outsiders in Palestine and Uganda
		West Bank
		West Nile
	7.5 Conclusion: methodological consequences
Appendix
	Transcription symbols
	Criteria to define the sequences
References