A naturalistic inquiry approach to marital and family relationship issues based on best-selling fiction of the 1960's and 1970's

Abstract

This study utilized 12 popular works of fiction, dating from 1970 through 1981, as a data base to generate some specific issues, pertinent to relationships, to which counselors and educators should be sensitive. A naturalistic methodology of grounded theory was chosen as most fitting this type of human behavior study. Through this method of inquiry, which was also grounded in an indepth research of appropriate psycho-social literature, five major categories and their properties were induced through a constant comparative analysis of the data. The categories and properties that were found to have unique bearings on relationships were listed not by order of importance but by order of their emergence from the data. The category of uniqueness incorporated the importance of the self-image of the individual as expressed through the property of identity and the property of one's roots. The category of role was also found to impact relationships. Two properties were crucial to role, namely, gender, which included the expectations of how one behaved because of one's sex, and craft, which included the impact of one's work on relationships. The category of centricity focused on the importance each protagonist attached to being central to some significant other(s). The four properties which enfleshed centricity were caring, expectations, playfulness, and games. The category of finitude incorporated the aspect of limitations in relationships. Death, fear, loss, and time were the four unique properties of finitude that emerged from the data. The category of transcendence which was inclusive of the prospectives of sublimation and escape had also four properties, religion, substance use, tradition, and work. Following the delineation of the categories and properties, substantive and formal theory, viewed of particular interest to counselors and educators by the researcher, was generated and related in narrative form. It was also recommended by the researcher that the theory induced by this research be incorporated into the various levels of family life programming.