ABSTRACT
One way to innovate empirically, methodologically, and conceptually in qualitative psychological research is to develop evocative new metaphors. It is easy to think of examples ranging from psychoanalytic models of the mind to the narrative as a root metaphor for psychology. In this chapter, I propose to think of human lives as lines and employ the image of the line as a metaphor for qualitative psychology. I will unfold the implications of this metaphor on three levels: an ontological level that borrows from the “linealogy” of anthropologist Tim Ingold to develop a kind of relational realism; an epistemological level that depicts human knowing as connections through the laying down of lines; and a methodological level concerned with the concrete “knotworking” of tying lifelines together in human encounters and conversations, which are central activities for qualitative psychologists.
