In psychology, the theory of narrative identity, also known as self-narrative, postulates that individuals form an identity by integrating their life experiences into an internalized, evolving story of the self that provides the individual with a sense of unity and purpose in life. This life narrative integrates one's reconstructed past, perceived present, and imagined future. Furthermore, this narrative is a story – it has characters, episodes, imagery, a setting, plots, and themes and often follows the traditional model of a story, having a beginning (initiating event), middle (an attempt and a consequence), and an end (denouement).
In recent decades, a proliferation of psychological research on narrative identity has provided a strong empirical basis for the construct, cutting across the field, including personality psychology,
social psychology,
developmental and life-span psychology,
cognitive psychology,
Singer, J.A. & Salovey, P. (1993). The remembered self: emotion and memory in personality. New York: Simon & Schuster. cultural psychology, Rosenwald, G., & Ochberg, R. L. (Eds.). (1992). Storied lives: The cultural politics of self-understanding. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. and clinical and counseling psychology. Angus, L. E., & McLeod, J. (2004). Toward an integrative framework for understanding the role of narrative in the psychotherapy process. In L. E. Angus & J. McLeod (Eds.), "The handbook of narrative and psychotherapy: Practice, theory, and research." (pp. 367-374). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
Singer, J.A. (2005). Personality and psychotherapy: Treating the whole person. New York: Guilford Press.
Context
Development Development of narrative identity in childhood is largely influenced by opportunities for narrative expression through conversations with caregivers and friends. Young children whose parents share more detailed personal narratives from their own lives tend to have more detailed and coherent personal narratives themselves by the end of the preschool age period. In addition, young children whose parents or caregivers engage in more elaborative reminiscing techniques with them (such as asking open-ended questions or including emotional information) when co-constructing stories about past events tend to tell more coherent stories in both childhood and adolescence. Talking to attentive listeners is also important to childhood development of narrative identity as speakers provide more accurate autobiographical information when speaking to attentive listeners as opposed to distracted listeners, therefore developing more specific autobiographical memories which give rise to richer personal narratives.
The capability to independently construct narratives for a life story framework and form an identity emerges in adolescence. This aligns with Erikson's stages of psychosocial development, which posits that the central developmental task during adolescence is to establish an individual identity. The development of life story narratives in adolescence is facilitated by co-constructed reminiscing, in which caregivers use discussion, comparison, and analysis of inner motivation to guide reflection about past events and create narratives that explain situations and behavior. This helps adolescents develop an understanding of the relationship between the "self" of the past and their personal narrative in the present. This is achieved through autobiographical reasoning which uses (auto-)biographical arguments to relate distant parts of life to each other and to the development of the narrator's self, thereby contributing to life narrative coherence. Establishing a life story plays a vital role in adulthood by supporting generativity, and it helps to foster meaning-making at the end of life.
Entire life narratives and single event stories tend to increase in coherence and meaning-making over the course of adolescence. When a child, especially a boy, makes stronger semantic connections in early adolescence, he has a worse sense of well-being, but as he moves to late adolescence his well-being increases. The large jump in cognitive learning during adolescence allows this change to take place. Since this is a very important time for children to expand their social groups and conversational constructs, more semantic narratives can be created and allow the meaning making construct to develop.
Personality psychology A person's narrative identity is a layer of personality related to, but distinct from the broad dispositional traits (The Big Five) and contextualized characteristic adaptations, described in Dan P. McAdams's three-level framework. Dispositional traits, drawn from the Five-Factor Model of personality are broad, decontextualized descriptors that are relatively stable across the lifespan and are useful for drawing comparisons between individuals. Characteristic adaptations encompass a person's motivations, developmental concerns, and life strategies and are used to describe the individual within their contextualized time, place, and social roles. Narrative identity, the third level in McAdams' framework, encompasses the internalized, evolving story of the self. It is argued that assessing all three levels simultaneously gives you a personological description of the whole person.
Different ways of interpreting and narrating life changes correlate with different forms of personality development. Because of the close linkage between narrative identity and psychological well-being, a common research focus in narrative identity is in exploring the relationship between characteristics of narratives and how they relate to personality development in the domains of ego development and psychological well-being. Individuals who place a high importance on understanding new viewpoints show higher scores in ego development, and those that placed importance on interpersonal relationships, joy and societal contribution tend to have higher scores on well-being.
Epistemology Narrative can be approached through one of two epistemological paradigms: hermeneutic (also called "narrative"), or paradigmatic.Bruner, J. "Two Modes of Thought," in Actual Minds, Possible World, (Harvard University Press, 1986), pp. 11-43. The hermeneutic approach seeks to capture the specific, personal, and highly contextualized elements of an individual's story.Josselson, Ruthellen (2004). "On Becoming the Narrator of One's own Life". In Lieblich, Amia, McAdams, Dan P., Josselson, Ruthellen (eds.) (2004). Healing Plots: The Narrative Basis of Psychotherapy (pp. 111–127). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. The paradigmatic approach, on the other hand, tries to classify narratives, determine associations, draw cause-and-effect relationships, and test and validate hypotheses - to transcend the particulars that the hermeneutic approach primarily concerned with, to generate generalizable scientific findings.
Components of identity narratives Life narratives are often examined and evaluated by the presence and extent to which they contain various structural and thematic components.
Structure Coherence is one of the primary structural elements of narratives. As individuals develop from children to adults, four types of coherence emerge in their abilities to tell stories: Temporal coherence: the telling of a story in a clear, chronological way, i.e. event B follows event A. Causal coherence: drawing cause-and-effect relationships between events in the narrative and also between events and their effect on the narrator's sense of self. Thematic coherence: the narrator making a reflective evaluation of their story, revealing themes, overarching trends, and creating meaning from the narrative. The cultural concept of biography: the story assuming the format and prose common to the narrator's culture and context.
Some amount of coherence is always necessary in a narrative, otherwise it will be incomprehensible, while too much coherence may make the narrative hard to believe, as though it too-neatly ties together the complexity of life. The general extent to which coherence is present or absent in a narrative has been found to be related to a variety of important outcomes such as overall psychological well-being and the nuance and complexity of meaning-making processes (ego development).
Content Turning to content, research on narrative identity has focused especially on the thematic elements of personal narratives. When participants in research studies are asked to recount a personal narrative, researchers code the story on the following seven constructs: redemption, contamination, agency, communion, exploratory narrative processing, coherent positive resolution, and meaning making. An additional construct named performance has been newly recognized and also included in some researchers coding.
Redemption: the narrator transitions from a generally "bad"/negative state, to a generally "good"/positive state (A → B). Such a transition can be characterized as being a sacrifice (enduring a negative event A to get the benefit of B), recovery (attaining a positive state after losing it), growth (bettering the self psychologically, physically, personally), or learning (gaining/mastering new skills, knowledge, wisdom). Contamination: the narrator transitions from a generally good/positive state, to a bad/negative state (B → A). Often, this transition is marked by a denial or not being able to remember the 'good' of the state before - it has been overwhelmed by the current 'bad' state. Common sub-themes in contamination include victimization, betrayal, loss, failure, illness/injury, disappointment, or disillusionment. Agency: refers to the extent to which the narrator is autonomous, and has the power to affect his/her own life. Agency is sometimes broken down into four pathways: self-mastery (the protagonist masters, enlarges, or betters the self), status/victory (the protagonist attains a heightened status or prestige amongst their peers), achievement/responsibility (the protagonist has significant achievement in some task, job, or goal), and empowerment (the protagonist is made better through an interaction with something larger and greater than the self). Communion: the narrator is motivated to form intimate friendships/relationships; showing intimacy, sharing, belonging, affiliation, etc. Common themes in communion are: love/friendship, reciprocal and noninstrumental dialogue, providence of caring/help to another, or a general feeling of unity/togetherness with the world/others. Exploratory narrative processing: the extent that the narrator engages in self-exploration while telling a story; a high score suggests profound self-exploration and/or a deep understanding of oneself. The practice of exploratory narrative processing in times of struggle is one avenue through which maturity develops, and narratives of positive self-transformation are often characterized by increased exploratory narrative processing. Coherent positive resolution: the extent to which tensions dissolve, providing closure and a satisfying ending to a narrative. Increased coherent positive resolution in narratives correlate with improvements in ego-resiliency, or one's adaptability under stress. Meaning-making: the extent to which the narrator gleans meaning from a narrative. Scores on responses range from low (no meaning; narrator simply recounts story), moderate (extracting a concrete lesson from the story—for example: do not put hands on hot surfaces), to high (gaining a deep insight from the narrative—for example: learning that you can't judge a book by its cover). Performance: The narrator describes life stories around the outcome of their performance. This narrative tends to be seen typically among elite athletes. It can be considered a very dominant narrative since it is very accepted within the athletic community.
Research in narrative constructs