Meaning-making

File:Greuze- Young Girl Weeping for her Dead Bird-1759.jpg

Young Girl Weeping for her Dead Bird by Jean-Baptiste Greuze

In psychology, meaning-making is the process of how persons construe, understand, or make sense of life events, relationships, and the self. The term is widely used in constructivist approaches to counseling psychology and psychotherapy, especially during bereavement in which persons attribute some sort of meaning to an experienced death or loss. The term is also used in educational psychology. Through meaning-making, persons are "retaining, reaffirming, revising, or replacing elements of their orienting system to develop more nuanced, complex and useful systems".

History

Viktor Frankl, author of Man's Search for Meaning

Psychiatrist and holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl, founder of logotherapy in the 1940s, posited in his 1946 book Man's Search for Meaning that the primary motivation of a person is to discover meaning in life. Frankl insisted that meaning can be discovered under all circumstances, even in the most miserable experiences of loss and tragedy. He said that people could discover meaning through doing a deed, experiencing a value, and experiencing suffering. Although Frankl did not use the term "meaning-making", his emphasis on the making of meaning influenced later psychologists.

Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner, both of whom were educational critics and promoters of inquiry education, published a chapter called "Meaning Making" in their 1969 book Teaching as a Subversive Activity. The chapter proposed a constructivist philosophy of education (but without using the term "constructivist"), and described why the authors preferred the term "meaning making" to any other metaphor for teaching and learning.

In the light of all this, perhaps you will understand why we prefer the metaphor "meaning making" to most of the metaphors of the mind that are operative in the schools. It is, to begin with, much less static than the others. It stresses a process view of minding, including the fact that "minding" is undergoing constant change. "Meaning making" also forces us to focus on the individuality and the uniqueness of the meaning maker (the minder). In most of the other metaphors there is an assumption of "sameness" in all learners. The "garden" to be cultivated, the darkness to be lighted, the foundation to be built upon, the clay to be molded—there is always the implication that all learning will occur in the same way. The flowers will be the same color, the light will reveal the same room, the clay will take the same shape, and so on. Moreover, such metaphors imply boundaries, a limit to learning. How many flowers can a garden hold? How much water can a bucket take? What happens to the learner after his mind has been molded? How large can a building be, even if constructed on a solid foundation? The "meaning maker" has no such limitation. There is no end to his educative process. He continues to create new meanings...

— Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner, "Meaning Making"

By the end of the 1970s, the term "meaning-making" was used with increasing frequency. Developmental psychologist Robert Kegan used the term "meaning-making" as a key concept in several widely cited texts on counseling and human development published in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Kegan wrote: "Human being is meaning making. For the human, what evolving amounts to is the evolving of systems of meaning; the business of organisms is to organize, as Perry (1970) says." The term "meaning-making" has also been used by psychologists influenced by George Kelly's personal construct theory.

In a review of the meaning-making literature published in 2010, psychologist Crystal L. Park noted that there was a rich body of theory on meaning-making, but empirical research had not kept pace with theory development. In 2014, the first Congress on the Construction of Personal Meaning was held as part of the eighth Biennial International Meaning Conference convened by the International Network on Personal Meaning.

Bereavement

With the experience of a death, persons often have to create new meaning of their loss. Interventions that promote meaning-making may be beneficial to grievers, as some interventions have been found to improve both mental health and physical health. However, according to some researchers, "for certain individuals from challenging backgrounds, efforts after meaning might not be psychologically healthy" when those efforts are "more similar to rumination than to resolution" of problems.

Some researchers report that meaning-making can help people feel less distressed, and allows people to become more resilient in the face of loss. On the converse, failing to attribute meaning to death leads to more long-term distress for some people.

There are various strategies people can utilize for meaning-making; many of them are summarized in the book Techniques of Grief Therapy. One study developed a "Meaning of Loss Codebook" which clusters common meaning-making strategies into 30 categories. Amongst these meaning-making strategies, the most frequently used categories include: personal growth, family bonds, spirituality, valuing life, negative affect, impermanence, lifestyle changes, compassion, and release from suffering.

Family bonds

Individuals using existing family bonds for meaning-making have a "change in outlook and/or behavior towards family members". With this meaning-making strategy, individuals create meaning of loss through their interactions with family members, and make more efforts to spend more time with them. When individuals use family to give meaning to loss, more meaning-making strategies emerge within the family system. A couple of strategies that family members use to help each other cope are discussing the legacy of the deceased, and talking to non-family members about the loss.

When family members are able to openly express their attitudes and beliefs, it can lead to a better well-being and less disagreement in the family. Meaning-making with one's family also increases marital satisfaction by reducing family tension, especially if the deceased was another family member.

Spirituality and religiosity

Meaning-making through spirituality and religiosity is significant because it helps individuals cope with their loss, as well as develop their own spiritual or religious beliefs. Spirituality and religiosity helps grievers think about a transcendental reality, share their worldview, and feel a sense of belonging to communities with shared beliefs.

When individuals with a divinity worldview make meaning through spirituality and religiosity, those "individuals perceive the divine to be involved in a major stressful life event" and use the divine to develop a meaning for the loss. There are three main ways in which a theistic individual may create meaning through religion: benevolent religious reappraisals, punishing God reappraisals, and reappraisals of God's power. Benevolent religious reappraisals cast God in a positive light and grievers may see the death as a part of God's plan. Punishing God reappraisals cast God in a dark light and grievers may blame God for the loss or feel punished by God. Reappraisals of God's power questions God's ability to intervene on the situation. All of these appraisals contribute to how the griever may create meaning of their loss.

Another meaning-making strategy people use is to create meaning by valuing their own life. People who create meaning in this way may try to cherish the life they have, try to find their purpose, or change their lifestyles.

Philanthropy

Grievers can make meaning of death through philanthropic services such as charities, foundations, and organizations. Meaning-making through philanthropy can create financial support, social support, emotional support, and helps create positive results from the negative experience of the death. For example, one couple that lost a child described how they developed "Nora's Project" after their daughter with a disability died, in order to help provide wheelchairs for children with disabilities around the world. The mother said: "With Nora's Project, I am also healing. I am able to turn something that was horrific, the way she died, into something that will do good in the world". Like this mother, it is common for individuals to want to create or do something positive for others. Philanthropy helps people make meaning by continuously and altruistically honoring a life while simultaneously helping others going through a similar experience.

See also

• Ikigai
• Posttraumatic growth
• Reflective equilibrium
• Semiotics
• Sensemaking