Meaning making occupies a generative crossroads in the depth-psychology corpus, where constructivist, narrative, existential, and somatic traditions converge on a single orienting question: how do human beings render experience intelligible, bearable, and purposive? Neimeyer's grief-theory work establishes meaning reconstruction as the central task of mourning, insisting that loss shatters the assumptive world and that adaptive bereavement depends less on 'making sense' of a death than on finding redeeming significance within it. Singer and his collaborators locate meaning making within narrative identity research, demonstrating that the capacity for integrative sense-making emerges developmentally across the lifespan, correlates with ego development, and is most strongly activated by memories inflected with tension, mortality, or relational rupture. Ogden's sensorimotor framework insists that meaning making is never purely cognitive: the body's anticipatory, physiological, and postural systems constitute its substrate, and old somatic meanings actively constrain the assimilation of new experience. Von Franz, working within the Jungian tradition, elevates the term toward the transcendental: the realization of meaning in synchronistic experience is not discursive cognition but a felt illumination, a 'quantum leap in the psyche.' Running through all these positions is a shared conviction that meaning making is not a passive reception of significance already present in events but an active, co-constructed, and often agonizing process—one whose success or failure shapes psychological health, grief resolution, and the coherence of the self.
In the library
25 substantive passages
New meaning-making is constrained by the old meanings made of earlier experiences, even in childhood. The little boy with the downcast eyes and collapsed chest who believes he is stupid has been unable to take in new information that could upgrade his meaning-making.
Ogden argues that somatic postures and early-formed beliefs form a self-reinforcing system that actively blocks the revision of core meanings, making embodied intervention essential to therapeutic change.
Ogden, Pat, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Interventions for Trauma and, 2015thesis
one factor that consistently predicted emotional adjustment over the length of the study was the extent to which people were able to find meaning and not the extent to which they were able to make sense of the loss.
Davis distinguishes 'finding meaning' (locating benefit or value) from 'making sense' (causal comprehension), arguing that only the former reliably predicts long-term emotional adjustment after bereavement.
Neimeyer, Robert A, Meaning Reconstruction and the Experience of Lossthesis
meaning making was most linked to memories that expressed some form of tension or conflict, particularly those memories that displayed themes of mortality or relationship. Achievement and leisure memories were less likely to lead to efforts at integrative meaning.
Singer reports empirical findings showing that integrative meaning making is selectively activated by conflict- and mortality-themed memories, and that this capacity strengthens developmentally from late adolescence into adulthood.
Singer, Jefferson A., Narrative Identity and Meaning Making Across the Adult Lifespan: An Introduction, 2004thesis
Realization of 'meaning' is therefore not a simple acquisition of information or of knowledge, but rather a living experience that touches the heart just as much as the mind. It seems to us to be an illumination characterized by great clarity as well as something ineffable—a lightning flash.
Von Franz, following Jung, situates the realization of meaning at the junction of intellect and affect, arguing that genuine meaning is a non-discursive, quasi-transcendental event rather than a cognitive achievement.
von Franz, Marie-Louise, Psyche and Matter, 2014thesis
making sense of our lives entails constructing a plausible account of important events, a story that has the ring of narrative truth, regardless of whether it co
Neimeyer grounds meaning making in constructivist epistemology, arguing that narrative truth—the plausibility of the story we construct—is the operative criterion, not correspondence to external fact.
Neimeyer, Robert A, Meaning Reconstruction and the Experience of Lossthesis
Kelly (1955) instructed that understanding or meaning is constructed through contrasting differences, and 'languaging,' a form of social activity, is the path to meaning construction.
Drawing on Kelly's constructivism, this passage argues that meaning is inherently social and linguistic, constructed through the dialectical play of difference within narrative matrices.
Neimeyer, Robert A, Meaning Reconstruction and the Experience of Lossthesis
narrative identity research—has emerged. Its organizing concern is how individuals employ narratives to develop and sustain a sense of personal unity and purpose from diverse experiences across the lifespan.
Singer introduces narrative identity research as the systematic study of how meaning making through storytelling underpins personal coherence and purpose across the entire lifespan.
Singer, Jefferson A., Narrative Identity and Meaning Making Across the Adult Lifespan: An Introduction, 2004thesis
the need for meaning has been so frequently observed and so urgently pursued by individuals coping with such events that a number of theorists have suggested that finding meaning is critical for successful adjustment.
Davis surveys the bereavement literature to establish that the search for meaning is a near-universal response to severe loss, while noting that 'meaning' itself remains inconsistently defined across theoretical frameworks.
Neimeyer, Robert A, Meaning Reconstruction and the Experience of Losssupporting
the ability to see connections and find meaning from traumatic or stressful experiences is associated with personal growth. Woike and Matic's study lends support to Singer, King, Green, & Barr's (2002) finding
Singer synthesizes several studies to show that integrative meaning making in narrative—seeing connections across traumatic experiences—is a reliable predictor of stress-related growth.
Singer, Jefferson A., Narrative Identity and Meaning Making Across the Adult Lifespan: An Introduction, 2004supporting
in a constructivist view meanings are anchored not only in the linguistic—cultural realm but also in a personal—agentic domain that is partly presymbolic.
Neimeyer distinguishes explicit linguistic meaning from a tacit, prereflective layer of personal meaning, arguing that therapeutic work must engage both the spoken and the preverbal dimensions of the client's constructions.
Neimeyer, Robert A, Meaning Reconstruction and the Experience of Losssupporting
The two families made meaning, intricately weaving their stories together... They continue in the early stages of meaning making as I write this chapter.
Nadeau illustrates through a clinical case how bereaved families engage in collaborative, narrative-based meaning making that is relational, ongoing, and co-constructed rather than individually accomplished.
Neimeyer, Robert A, Meaning Reconstruction and the Experience of Losssupporting
Paying attention to the types of meaning being made helps the clinician track the family's progress in grieving and target certain meanings as the focus of treatment.
Nadeau proposes a clinical typology of meanings in family grief, arguing that identifying the specific kind of meaning being constructed enables targeted therapeutic intervention.
Neimeyer, Robert A, Meaning Reconstruction and the Experience of Losssupporting
The body's language itself is richly nuanced, mysterious, and multifaceted. It interfaces with a multitude of systems that together comprise the complex moment-to-moment process of making meaning and forecasting the future.
Ogden, citing Tronick, establishes that meaning making is a somatic as much as a cognitive process, grounded in the body's continuous engagement with physiological, behavioral, and symbolic registers simultaneously.
Ogden, Pat, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Interventions for Trauma and, 2015supporting
Clients construct their own meanings. Although therapists assist in the coconstruction of meaning through the therapeutic dialogue it is, ultimately, the personal meanings clients carry away that
Rigazio-DiGilio articulates a coconstructivist therapeutic principle: the therapist facilitates but does not determine meaning; agency and ownership of the meanings produced remain with the client.
Neimeyer, Robert A, Meaning Reconstruction and the Experience of Losssupporting
our capacity to turn experience into narrative emerges from a social cognitive developmental process defines another point of intersection for this group of narrative identity researchers.
Singer locates the development of meaning making capacity within a lifespan social-cognitive framework, tracing how narrative transforms experience through progressive stages from childhood through adulthood.
Singer, Jefferson A., Narrative Identity and Meaning Making Across the Adult Lifespan: An Introduction, 2004supporting
The meanings they attach can be defined as their cognitive representations of reality... individuals do not grieve in a vacuum. They make sense of their experience by interacting with others.
Nadeau argues that meaning making in grief is fundamentally interpersonal, with cognitive representations of loss shaped and sustained through ongoing social interaction and family narrative exchange.
Neimeyer, Robert A, Meaning Reconstruction and the Experience of Losssupporting
significant others are the most important players in reality construction and maintenance... Her meaning came from her interaction with her husband as they had interacted in life.
Applying systems and social constructionist theory to bereavement, Nadeau demonstrates that the meanings survivors make of a death are co-constituted through relational history and ongoing family interaction.
Neimeyer, Robert A, Meaning Reconstruction and the Experience of Losssupporting
the tendency to use integration in both types of memory narratives correlated with stress-related growth. Once again, the ability to see connections and find meaning from traumatic or stressful experiences is associated with personal growth.
Woike and Matic's data, as synthesized by Singer, confirm that the narrative capacity to integrate disparate experiences into a coherent meaningful account predicts growth in the wake of trauma.
Singer, Jefferson A., Narrative Identity and Meaning Making Across the Adult Lifespan: An Introduction, 2004supporting
He finds richly illustrative case material in the diary of C. S. Lewis, whose reflections on the intermingling of joy and suffering prompt Attig's own on the way in which we both discover and invent new meaning in the face of loss.
Neimeyer's editorial framing introduces the dual movement of meaning making in grief—discovery and invention—positioning meaning reconstruction as both a found and a created achievement.
Neimeyer, Robert A, Meaning Reconstruction and the Experience of Losssupporting
Meaning, on the contrary, implies feeling reactions and ethical decisions; it contains a personal nuance.
Von Franz distinguishes meaning from mere order or information, insisting that genuine meaning always carries an affective and ethical charge and is irreducibly personal in its realization.
von Franz, Marie-Louise, Psyche and Matter, 2014supporting
narrative identity researchers take seriously McAdams's proposal that 'identity is a life story.' That is, individuals' ongoing sense of self in contemporary Western society coheres around a narrative structure.
Singer restates McAdams's foundational claim that identity is constituted through narrative, framing meaning making as the essential activity by which the protagonist of the life story achieves self-coherence.
Singer, Jefferson A., Narrative Identity and Meaning Making Across the Adult Lifespan: An Introduction, 2004supporting
'Coincidancing,' the fourth strategy families used to make sense of the loss of a family member, is the term I gave to the 'meaning of the death.' The dancing component of the word was used to capture the interactive nature of this strategy.
Nadeau identifies 'coincidancing'—the interpretive linkage of co-occurring events—as a distinctive family strategy for meaning making, highlighting the creative, interactive, and sometimes magical character of grief cognition.
Neimeyer, Robert A, Meaning Reconstruction and the Experience of Losssupporting
narrative identity emerges from and remains sensitive to developmental crises throughout our lives.
Singer grounds the developmental arc of meaning making in Eriksonian psychosocial theory, arguing that the salience and content of self-defining narratives track the stage-specific concerns of the life cycle.
Singer, Jefferson A., Narrative Identity and Meaning Making Across the Adult Lifespan: An Introduction, 2004aside
cut off from a sense of meaning... Edinger (1972) further stated that with this attitude psychic energy is dammed up and must emerge in covert, unconscious or destructive ways such as psychosomatic symptoms, attacks of anxiety or primitive affect, depression, suicidal impulses, alcoholism.
Dennett, drawing on Edinger, links the disruption of meaning making to ego-Self alienation in addiction, positioning loss of meaningful self-narrative as a precipitating condition for destructive symptom formation.
Dennett, Stella, Individuation in Addiction Recovery: An Archetypal Astrological Perspective, 2025aside
the IS attempts to tie together the pieces of a person's life, trying to work it into a coherent narrative. And so it provides the materials to answer the question just as it poses it.
Goodwyn frames the psyche's dream-producing 'Invisible Storyteller' as an endogenous meaning-making system, continuously narrativizing lived experience in the service of psychological integration.
Goodwyn, Erik D., Understanding Dreams and Other Spontaneous Images: The Invisible Storyteller, 2018aside