Larry Cochran – författare

Seeking to restore a holistic approach to the study of the person, Professor Cochran explores and refines an innovative method of analysis based on the use of dramaturgical concepts. The author's approach reflects a dissatisfaction, shared by many in the field of personology, with the fragmented view of the person that typically emerges from quantitative, statistically based studies. His own method offers alternative ways of conducting research based upon two units. The first is story, a completed action or drama with a beginning, middle, and end. The other is position, a way of being or an emotional or existential condition. Showing these to be natural units of human experience, the author demonstrates, through a series of illustrative investigations, how they may be applied to research. Among the topics covered are the life plot, or the means by which a person comes into being, the meaning of significant action, how actions in a person's life form a theme with variations over time, and the integration of character and story. The author also discusses different life themes and their significance, and he tests the validity of dramatic principles as means of reality construction.

The Meaning of Grief seeks to capture the dramatic nature of grief by reconstructing the common story of people who have grieved. It provides a holistic approach to understanding the wisdom of experience in the context of human life. The book offers an original exploration of grief as a significant human emotion and introduces a unique method for the study of emotions in general. Through a detailed examination of individual accounts of grief, common themes are identified and woven into a dramatic composition, one that resembles the structure of a rite of passage. The volume carefully develops two basic units for description and investigation, considers emotions generally in light of what has been discovered concerning grief, and poses new questions about the nature of emotions.

For decades, scholars and professionals have been attracted to theories offering a deeper view of career, but have been frustrated by difficulties in translating theories of meaning making, development, and identity into viable practice. At the same time, there has been growing disenchantment with impersonal techniques of matching an individualÆs traits with skills required for a specific vocation. While personality traits and talents may help to predict a predisposition to a career type, this method of analysis neglects the influences of human purpose, passion, and life history. In Career Counseling, author Larry Cochran fills the void by introducing the theory of narrative construction, a method of counseling that injects personal identity into career development in a practical way. Cochran demonstrates how literary models and constructivist methods can be used in career development to provide the essential subjective dimension that has been lacking in practical counseling. In addition, he provides the innovative materials that are necessary for making this process both efficient and effective. Contributing a unique and important perspective and approach to career counseling, this volume will be widely used by scholars and professionals in the fields of career counseling, clinical/counseling psychology, social psychology, and management.

Larry Cochran examines the meaning of a sense of vocation as it is lived over the course of a life. By studying more than twenty autobiographies of people who clearly had a mission in life, the author identifies commonalities and weaves them into a general story or plot. The common story involves a detailed description of four phases of life from childhood through old age. It illustrates how a significant form that unifies desire arises in youth, how individuals transform themselves to adopt a meaningful role in a drama, how a work of life develops, and how a sense of vocation culminates. Thus, the book is important as a descriptive answer to the question of what makes life meaningful. It provides a paradigm case of career at its best.

This book is about individuals who have made dramatic changes in their lives. In the beginning, these people were living as patients or victims of circumstance. In the end, they were living as agents, free to shape the courses of their lives, to choose, set goals, plan-to make things happen, rather than to experience life as events happening to them.The authors describe what is involved in such remarkable transformations. They identify a common structure of transformation involving four distinguishable phases. They also clarify a progressive dialectic between living the plot of a patient and living the plot of an agent, and show how an old plot is destroyed or deconstructed and a new plot is constructed.