Professor Adler's research focuses on the interface between adult identity development and clinical psychology. Broadly conceived, his research interests revolve around the reciprocal relationships between self/identity processes and psychological functioning. He is especially interested in the most productive ways people make sense of the difficult things that happen to them and how that personal meaning facilitates changes in identity. In other words, he is interested in how the process of making sense of negative experiences influences important life outcomes, including physical and mental health, personality maturity, and the process and outcome of psychotherapy treatment. For more information about Professor Adler's research, see his personal website: http://faculty.olin.edu/jadler
Articles
Living Into the Story: Agency and Coherence in a Longitudinal Study of Narrative Identity Development and Mental Health Over the Course of Psychotherapy, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (2012)
Narrative identity is the internalized, evolving story of the self that each person crafts to...
Epistemological Tension in the Future of Personality Disorder Diagnosis, The American Journal of Psychiatry (2011)
To the Editor: In August 2011, the DSM-5 Personality and Personality Disorders Work Group posted...
The Successful Treatment of Specific Phobia in a College Counseling Center (with Robin Cook-Nobles), Journal of College Student Psychotherapy (2011)
Specific phobias are highly prevalent among college students and can be quite debilitating. However, students...
Rising to the Challenge of Identifying and Analyzing Clients’ Narratives, Pragmatic Case Studies in Psychotherapy (2010)
Psychotherapy researchers and clinicians alike are faced with two primary challenges in the service of...
The Political Is Personal: Narrating 9/11 and Psychological Well-Being (with Michael J. Poulin), Journal of Personality (2009)
Making meaning out of negative experiences is one of the primary psychological challenges in the...
Contributions to Books
Developmental and Narrative Perspectives on Religious and Spiritual Identity Development for Clinicians (with Paul Wink and Michele Dillon), The Psychology of Religion and Spirituality for Clinicians: Using Research in Your Practice (2012)
Identity gives an individual a sense of sameness and continuity (Erikson, 1968) and provides answers...
Autobiographical Memory and the Construction of a Narrative Identity: Theory, Research, and Clinical Implications (with Dan P. McAdams), Social Psychological Foundations of Clinical Psychology (2010)
Going back to Freud, cliniciants have listened to, tried to understand, and tried to change...
The Most Important Fiction, The World Book of Happiness (2010)
We are all protagonists in our own life story - and also the narrator. Crafting...
Telling Stories About Therapy: Ego Development, Well-Being, and the Therapeutic Relationship (with Dan P. McAdams), The Meaning of Others: Narrative Studies of Relationships (2007)
We need narratives of relationships to understand them precisely because relationships have idiosyncratic meanings in...
How Does Personality Develop? (with Dan P. McAdams), Handbook of Personality Development (2006)
There are good reasons to be skeptical about any efforts to bring together two fields...