Teachers College, Columbia University, NY 10027, USA.
Memory. 2013 Jan;21(1):150-6. doi: 10.1080/09658211.2012.745572. Epub 2013 Jan 11.
Despite the widely accepted belief that meaning making is essential for mental health following adversity, the available research continues to provide mixed findings: meaning making is sometimes evident, sometimes not, and more frequently than we would expect associated with poor health outcomes. The papers that comprise this special issue of Memory put flesh to those bones by approaching the question from a narrative memory perspective. Meaning making, these studies demonstrate, is a multi-faceted phenomenon and whether it is necessary or adaptive depends on which particular form of meaning making is considered and on the context and timing in which it occurs. To situate these insights in a broader framework I consider parallels with the emergent literature on regulatory flexibility and briefly review recent research and theory on that construct as it has been applied in the literatures on coping and emotion regulation. Finally, I close by suggesting a basic framework, informed by the flexibility construct, that might guide future research on meaning making.
尽管人们普遍认为，在逆境后进行意义建构对于心理健康至关重要，但现有研究仍提供了相互矛盾的结果：有时可以看到意义建构，有时则不然，而且更常见的是，它与健康状况不佳有关。本特刊中的这些论文通过从叙事记忆的角度来探讨这个问题，为这个问题提供了具体的例证。这些研究表明，意义建构是一个多方面的现象，它是否必要或适应取决于所考虑的特定形式的意义建构，以及它发生的背景和时间。为了将这些见解置于更广泛的框架中，我考虑了与新兴的监管灵活性文献的相似之处，并简要回顾了最近关于该结构的研究和理论，因为它已应用于应对和情绪调节文献中。最后，我建议一个基本框架，该框架受灵活性结构的启发，可能会指导未来关于意义建构的研究。
