This paper explains the interdisciplinary narrative research method of psychobiography, using examples from the author's psychobiographical work about Dian Fossey. Dr Fossey was the primatologist and occupational therapist famous for saving the highland mountain gorillas from extinction. She is known worldwide from her popular book, Gorillas in the Mist, and from the 1987 film of the same name. She sustained her research centre in Rwanda successfully for 18 years before her murder in 1985. Prior to her primatology career, Fossey graduated from an occupational therapy programme in the United States and worked with children for 10 years. The paper details the steps to write a psychobiography, the strategies for analysis and the markers of a good psychobiography. It is suggested that psychobiography is a method that can find a home in occupational therapy and occupational science. The reasons that psychobiography can mesh with occupational therapy are discussed. A second paper, a psychobiographical study of Dian Fossey, is in press.

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This study explored the experience of occupational therapists who encountered counterproductive events during their fieldwork training. Interviews were conducted to gather information regarding the participant's perception of factors that contributed to a negative fieldwork experience. The results were divided into major categories: (1) the role of the supervisor, (2) poor supervisory characteristics, (3) the fieldwork infrastructure, (4) misconceptions in the fieldwork experience, (5) student coping strategies, (6) student responses, (7) positive outcomes, (8) negative consequential outcomes, and (9) cycle of the ineffective fieldwork experience. The results showed challenging supervisory events were the major factor in contributing to a negative fieldwork experience; however, the situation was magnified by other factors such as lack of academic program support. To help prevent this phenomenon from occurring or to minimize negative outcomes, positive resolutions such as solutions to dilemmas presented by the current health care system may minimize the difficulties impinging on fieldwork in occupational therapy.

Dr Dian Fossey was the primatologist and occupational therapist who is famous worldwide for saving the highland mountain gorillas from extinction. She sustained her research centre successfully for 18 years in an inhospitable physical and political climate before her murder in 1985. Prior to moving to Africa, Dr Fossey enjoyed a successful 10-year career as a paediatric occupational therapist. After graduating from San José State College (now university) in California, she moved to Louisville, Kentucky, to lead a one-woman department at a well-known hospital where she treated orthopaedic clients, including children from the Appalachian Mountains. Yet, in spite of her considerable accomplishments and successful early career, Fossey is not well known in today's occupational therapy profession and there is little information about her occupational therapy career. This paucity prevents a complete analysis of her life. This paper presents an alternative narrative, which identifies connections between her early lives as an occupational therapist working with children and a primatologist studying the highland mountain gorilla culture. These connections suggest that there is an occupational coherence throughout life that may occur in spite of the pursuit of apparently different careers in very different contexts. The links also imply that certain values and motivations may contribute to this occupational coherence throughout one's lifespan.

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