4: Changing Minds: Narrative Mechanisms of Adaptation

In Chapter 2, I considered Bruner's writings concerning meaning-making in the paradigmatic and narrative modes of knowing and the three specific tensions in that meaning-making he identifies between an individual and their social environment. In Chapter 3, I proposed that three levels of stance towards challenge from social environment can be discerned in both modes and that change in openness towards new information in one mode may lead to a corresponding change in the other mode. I also argued that any change will usually occur in the narrative mode first, with the paradigmatic mode subsequently being adjusted to avoid cognitive dissonance. That is to say, when life experience demands that individuals makes adjustments to their narrative mode of knowing, this will in turn lead to a corresponding change in their paradigmatic propositions. In this chapter, I move on to examine Bruner's thinking about the psychological mechanisms of change operating in the narrative mode and before exploring how the processes involved in becoming more open to new information might be actively engaged.