Pathways to life course changes: Introducing the concept of Avenues of Directive Meaning

The concept of Avenues of Directive Meaning is proposed as a notion for understanding the development of trajectories that map psychological phenomenon in their temporal unfolding. This notion aims to include personal constructed meanings as they interact with the directions offered by the sociocultural environment. Focusing on the notion of equipotentiality – introduced by the embryologist Hans Driesch at the turn of the 20th-century – we apply it to the meanings constructed by persons as they set up equifinality points in their life courses. We illustrate the Avenues of Directive Meaning notion through the analysis of two couples that decided to adopt a child in the contemporary Brazilian context.