Totalitarian regime in life stories of Czech adults

0550025 - PSÚ 2022 RIV CZ eng A - Abstract
Dubovská, Eva - Chrz, Vladimír - Poláčková Šolcová, Iva
Totalitarian regime in life stories of Czech adults.
. červenec (2021)[International Congress of Psychology /32./ Psychology in the 21st century: Open Minds, Societies, and World. 18.07.2021-23.07.2021, online]
R&D Projects: GA ČR(CZ) GA20-08583S
Institutional support: RVO:68081740
Keywords : narrative * midlife * communism
OECD category: Psychology (including human - machine relations)

The objective of this study is to describe the imprint of spending substantial part of one´s life in totalitarian regime in former communist Czechoslovakia on today´s narrative identity, or life-story. The present study was a part of a large cross-cultural study where tests of some psychometric measures, such as wellbeing, satisfaction, ego integrity, and generativity, were administered together with the Life Story Interview (LSI). In the present study, we used the data of all 166 Czech participants and from these, we selected a subsample of 88 participants, who in their life story mentioned the totalitarian regime in some way. The analysis was grounded in the narrative approach, where aging is perceived as autobiographic work, and the nature of narrativity is viewed as an enactment of constitutive trouble. A categorical narrative analysis was applied, using narrative categories: thematic lines, agency, positioning and moral identity statements. Most frequent themes were: 1. ordinary life: employment, education, daily living, travel, 2. emotions: fear, grievance, and feelings of injustice, 3. moral deterioratio, 4. persecutions, immigration, 5. advantages of being a member of Communist Party, 6. significant historical events: occupation in 1968, period of normalisation. Narrative categories agency and moral identity seem to be substantial for the narrative integration of the experience of the totalitarian regime into one´s life story.

Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0325887