Psychology Report: Exploring Transitional Themes in Frank Land's Life

This report presents an analysis of Frank Land's life transitions, based on a narrative interview conducted to explore the key moments that shaped his experiences. The research employs a qualitative approach, using purposive sampling to gather in-depth insights into Land's childhood, education, and the role of religion in his life. The report identifies three primary themes: early childhood, life during elementary school and teenage years, and the role of religion. The analysis reveals the challenges faced by Land and his family, including the destruction of their property, relocation, and the impact of historical events such as the rise of Hitler. The report highlights how these transitional moments influenced Land's development and offers reflections on the broader implications of life-changing events, emphasizing the importance of empathy and understanding in navigating personal and societal changes. The findings underscore the value of narrative interviews in providing detailed accounts of individual experiences, offering valuable perspectives on the complexities of human life and resilience.

What themes does Frank
Land draw on to talk
about the transitional
moments in his life

Abstract
This report is based on an interview transcript that was conducted with Frank Land about
transitional moments in his life. In order to collect the information, the researcher has used
narrative interview method. This has helped him/her in providing a rich description of the
experiences in an effective manner. The findings of the report are that there can be different
moments in them life of a person that can change their overall lives to a great extent. Therefore,
by using a narrative method, an interviewer can gain useful insights about the experiences in the
lives of participant.

Contents
Abstract......................................................................................................................................................2
INTRODUCTION.....................................................................................................................................4
Method/Methodology................................................................................................................................4
Results/Analysis.........................................................................................................................................5
Theme 1: Early Childhood.......................................................................................................................5
Theme 2: Life during elementary school and teenage..............................................................................6
Theme 3: Role of religion in childhood...................................................................................................6
Discussion...................................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES..........................................................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
During their lifetime, a person can go through different transitional moments that can
change their life to a great extent. This research is based on an interview transcript between the
interviewer as well as Frank Land about the transitional moments in his life (Hill and Burrows,
2017). The respective report is categorized into different themes so as to provide the readers with
a thorough understanding of the research topic. A narrative approach was taken for this research
because this will help the interviewer in gaining in-depth insights about the different moments
that acted as transitional points for Frank Land. Also, the researcher will be able to present the
real-life experiences of Frank Land in a story or narrative form to the readers. This is because the
narrative approach allows an elaborate description of these experiences as well as an exploration
of the meanings that the participant derives from his experiences. The research question for this
research is ‘What themes does Frank Land draw on to talk about the transitional moments in his
life?’
Method/Methodology
A narrative interview can be defined as a method of data collection wherein the
researcher asks open-ended questions and the interviewee or the participant is expected to
respond in a narrative form. This means that they have to retell experiences of the events as and
when they happened. Narrative researchers look for different ways in which they can understand
as well as present the real-experiences of the participants. In order to collect data through
narrative interviews, the researcher interviewed the participant, i.e., Frank Land at a time in order
to draw narratives. Frank Land had to verbally share his story through conversations. The
interviewer explained the purpose of the interview to the participant before initiating the
interview. By telling the participant about the same, the researcher can gather useful information
and gain valuable insights from the interview (Lind and et.al., 2020). In context to this research,
the interviewer asked different questions to Frank, relating to his childhood, early youth as well
as the different transitional moments of his life. Frank Land narrated the different moments of
transition in his life through early childhood to his youth in the form a story. This helped the
researcher in gaining useful insights as well as developing an understanding about the same in an
effective manner.

The respective research is a qualitative research and in order to select the participant for
the research, the interviewer used purposive sampling. It can be defined as a sampling method
wherein the researcher focuses on selecting those members of the community who they think
will provide the best information. In context of the respective research, the researcher has
selected Frank Land to answer the questions of the interview. This is because the researcher
believes that he has experienced a lot of moments in his life, starting from childhood to his youth
that have transitioned his life. Therefore, he will be able to provide useful information that can be
presented to the readers through stories. The researcher has selected the participant through
purposive sampling because it is one of the most cost-effective as well as time-effective methods
of sampling. Also, since there were limited sources who could contribute to the study, the
researcher has used this method to gather information.
In order to collect the information, the researcher conducted a narrative interview. A
comfortable place with no distractions was chosen, keeping in mind that Frank will be able to
answer to the questions effectively. Next, he was briefed about the purpose of the interview and
the terms of confidentiality were addressed by the researcher. the interview was conducted at
Frank’s home considering his age (Maclean, Harvey and Stringfellow, 2017). His informed
consent was obtained regarding recording the interview. The interviewer ensured that Frank was
comfortable while answering the questions and on completion of the interview, the interviewer
asked him if he had any questions. The interview was conducted on a weekend when the
interviewer was free and he/she had already discussed about the same with Frank Land. This
helped the interviewer in completing the interview in an effective manner.
Results/Analysis
Theme 1: Early Childhood
Frank Land was initially asked about experiences of his childhood to which he responded
that he was born in the year 1928 in Berlin, Germany. He recalled that he used to live in a nice
flat with his moth, father and a twin brother. But in the year 1938, there was destruction of the
Jewish community and they lost much of his family’s property. At that time, Dachau has
concentration camps and his uncle was among the first one to go there. Following this, in April
1939, Frank and his family came to England and they did not know the English language. They
lived in Kilburn and went to the local primary school there (Mueller, 2019). It can be interpreted

that Frank had a tough childhood as he and his family had to deal with much difficulties, from
losing their properties to shifting to a new place with no clue of the language. Seeing his father
business along with their other properties getting destroyed can be a lot for a child to deal with
and can even affect their mental health. But from the interview, it has been analyzed that he and
his brother had a sympathetic teacher in their local primary school who managed and helped both
of them learn the English quickly.
“One of my uncles was one of the earlier people to go to the concentration camp at Dachau and
so at that time we tried to get out. so we came to England in April 1939, found ourselves in a
strange country, and we had no English at all, but we lived in Kilburn and we went to the local
primary school there. And we were lucky in that we had a teacher who was very sympathetic and
very good and managed to get us to learn English very quickly…” (Frank Land, lines 8-14)
Theme 2: Life during elementary school and teenage
The second theme of the interview was related to Frank’s life during elementary school
as well as his teenage years. To this, he responded that after few months, i.e., September, all of
them being in England, they had to evacuate the place. They did not have any idea as to where
they were going. They went to Watford station, from where they were taken to a small village
called Bedmond. It has been interpreted that during this time, the school that they went to,
offered an eleven-plus exam, a scholarship exam but since their English was not very good, they
did not take it. During his teenage, he and his brother went into a class below their age range but
went on to finishing the sixth grade with Higher School Certificate which entitled them to apply
for universities. Thus, it can be said that education as well as early life was not easy for Frank as
he had to deal with different transitioning moments. And these moments of transition changed
his life at different segments as at different ages, he and his family had to move from one place
to another.
And this was very necessary because a few months later, very shortly in September, we were
evacuated. We had no idea where we were going. So we finished up in Watford station, we were
bussed then to a little village called Bedmond. our school went to the village hall. But it was an
elementary school at that time up to the age of fourteen. There was an eleven-plus exam, a
scholarship exam, but we, our English wasn’t good enough to even bother to take it…” (Frank
Land, lines 14-20)

Theme 3: Role of religion in childhood
The third and the last theme is about the role of religion in Frank’s childhood. To this, his
response was that his family was not religious at all but they had a Jewish consciousness. It has
been interpreted that with the rise of Hitler, Frank’s family became more assimilated as well as
conscious of being Jewish. It was analyzed that Frank believed that for some people, religion
comes in their youth and they suddenly take to it. But Frank said that in his case, it got knocked
out when during their evacuation.
“No, no. My family were not a religious family at all. I think agnostic would be best to describe
them rather than atheist, but a Jewish consciousness. Although in earlier years we had become,
the family had become more assimilated, the rise of Hitler made us much more, made the family
much more conscious of being Jewish. We attended synagogue occasionally, but very rarely.
My parents really didn’t believe in… have any… believe in any religion and we rather had it
knocked – for some people religion comes in their youth, they suddenly take to it – in our case I
think it was knocked out during our evacuation…” (Frank Land, lines 65-73)
Discussion
The above analysis indicates that there can be certain moments in the life of a person that
can act as transition points and change their lives. In case of Frank, the time of his childhood till
youth was very tough and challenging, not only for him, but his family members as well. This
was because of the rise of Hitler as they had to keep shifting from one place to another. The
family did not know English and due to this, they found it difficult to interact with other people.
Therefore, it can be said that the research indicates that narrative interviews can help the
researcher in presenting a detailed description about the experiences of the participant (Scaratti
and et.al, 2020). The narrative approach has helped in addressing the research question and
explain the themes that Frank Land drew on in order to talk about the different transitional
moments in his life. The experiences are explained under different themes so as to ensure that the
readers are able to develop a good understanding of the same. The results of this research are that
different moments in the lives of people that can completely transition or change their life
completely. The literature of the respective report is about Frank Land as well as the various
experiences in childhood as well as youth that changed his life. Therefore, the results of the
respective research explain the impact of these experiences on the life of a person.

The implications of the findings of this research for the world is that different people deal
with different moments in their life that can change the same completely. Therefore, people
should try to be more generous as well as kind to each other. This will help in promoting peace
as well as harmony around. Besides this, other implications that can be made for the researcher is
that if they want to develop an in-depth understanding of experiences of an individual, they
should adopt the method of narrative interview for the same. In the respective research, a
narrative interview transcript of Frank Land has been interpreted and analyzed in order to present
the readers with the understanding of different transition moments that he went through during
his life. Initially, the researcher conducted a narrative interview with Frank Land in order to
understand the different major moments of his life (Sclater, 2017). The report has been divided
into different sections and in the analysis section, the interview was categorized into three
different themes and a thematic analysis was carried out in order to ensure that the details were
explored. In order to develop the research further, the researcher could have included more
exploratory questions (Secules and et.al., 2018). This would have helped him/her in conducting
the research in an effective manner as well as provided more insights about the difficult times
that Frank had to go through. Besides this, the interview could have conducted on different days
considering the age of Frank. This would have helped the interviewer in gathering more accurate
as well as reliable information. As a result, the findings of the research would have been in more
detail.

REFERENCES
Books & Journals
Hill, C. and Burrows, G., 2017. New voices: The usefulness of a narrative approach to social
work research. Qualitative Social Work, 16(2), pp.273-288.
Lind, M. and et.al., 2020. Narrative coherence in adolescence: relations with attachment,
mentalization, and psychopathology. Journal of personality assessment, 102(3), pp.380-
389.
Maclean, M., Harvey, C. and Stringfellow, L., 2017. Narrative, metaphor and the subjective
understanding of historic identity transition. Business History, 59(8), pp.1218-1241.
Mueller, R.A., 2019. Episodic narrative interview: Capturing stories of experience with a
methods fusion. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 18, p.1609406919866044.
Scaratti, C. and et.al, 2020. Long term perceptions of illness and self after deep brain stimulation
in pediatric dystonia: A narrative research. European Journal of Paediatric Neurology,
26, pp.61-67.
Sclater, S., 2017. The Uses of Narrative: Explorations in sociology, psychology and cultural
studies. Routledge.
Secules, S. and et.al., 2018. Supporting the narrative agency of a marginalized engineering
student. Journal of Engineering Education, 107(2), pp.186-218.