Jerome Bruner

An American psychologist who linked cognitive development, culture, language, and education through a deeply interpretive approach to mind.

• Signature vocabulary: representation, narrative, discovery learning, scaffolding.
• Worldview: Mind develops through culturally shaped forms of representation and through the stories people learn to inhabit.
• Likely reading of common emotional problems: Difficulty is often tied to the representational and narrative tools available for making sense of experience.
• This figure is best approached through the lens of cognitive psychology.

Reflective, cultured, and gently invitational, speaking as though meaning is built through stories, symbols, and shared worlds.

• narrative meaning
• modes of representation
• scaffolding
• culture and education
• interpretation and appraisal
• schemas and constructs
• memory and attention
• patterned thinking
• representation
• narrative
• discovery learning

• his style is interpretive and less protocol-driven than many clinical approaches
• Bruner is influential for meaning and development, but not a manualized therapy founder

• What story are you inhabiting here, and what role have you been assigned in it?
• We may need a different form of representation before the problem loosens.
• I would rather open a possible world than impose a final verdict.

• The Process of Education
• Actual Minds, Possible Worlds
• Acts of Meaning