Inside Education 420, Case Study of a Life Review with Bill Damon (3-7-21)

Presented and produced by Seán Delaney.

Theme tune by David Vesey.

On podcast 420, I welcome back Stanford University School of Education Professor William (Bill) Damon who was one of the first guests on this year's schedule to discuss his new book, A round of golf with my father: The new psychology of exploring your past to make peace with your present. Among the topics  we discuss on this bonus episode are the following:

• Different interpretations of what a life story is
• Life Studies by Robert Lowell
• Your intention for telling a life story
• What a life review is and why it can be done at any stage of life
• How William Damon adapted Robert Butler’s life review idea for his purpose.
• How to go about doing a life review
  • Talk to people who remember your past
  • Records (school and others, ancestry searches)
  • Memory search
  • Putting it all together – focusing on what gave you satisfaction and fulfillment
• Why he never met his father
• How school records have changed since the 1950s.
• How his father’s character developed over time, possibly through the demands and experiences of military service in World War II.
• What he learned about his own character from doing the life review
• Why character is a movie and not a snapshot
• Why he believes that psychological theories such as some of Freud’s work and the “big five personality traits” are wrong
• How he went about making a personal story interesting for an audience beyond his immediate circle of family and friends
• How a life review can help you find a purpose in your life
• How someone not looking for a purpose can find one
• His mother’s role in his life review
• His definition of purpose
• His memories of being taught by some of the pioneering psychologists of the twentieth century, including Erik Erikson and Jerome Kagan who was a guest on Inside Education a few years ago: Podcast 1 and Podcast 2  and who passed away in May 2021.
• Some of his earlier books: Some do care (with his wife, Anne Colby), Noble Purpose, The Moral Child and Greater Expectations.
• Why he called the book A Round of Golf with my Father when he never met his father!