This is a summary of the article McAdams, (2011). Narrative identity. In S. Schwartz, K. Luyckx, & V. Vignoles (Eds.), Handbook of identity theory and research (pp. 99-115). New York, NY, US

Narrative identity

McAdams, 2011

“To be adult means among other things to see one’s own life in continuous perspective, in both retrospect and prospect. By accepting some definition as to who he is, usually on the basis of a function in an economy, a place in the sequence of generations, and a status in the structure of society, the adult is able to selectively reconstruct his past in such a way that, step for step, it seems to have planned him, or better, he seems to have planned it. In this sense psychologically we do choose our parents, our family history, and the history of our kings, heroes, and gods. By making them our own, we manoeuvre ourselves into the position of proprietors, of creators. (Erikson, 1958, pp. 111–112)”

Outline:

• Interdisciplinary history of the concept of narrative identity
• Forms and functions of narrative identity
• Role of narrative identity in personality
• Development of narrative identity
• Cultural manifestations and meanings of life stories

Narrative identity:

“People naturally employ stories to make sense of goal-directed human behaviour”

• Narrative identity: internalized/evolving story of the self that a person constructs to make sense and meaning out of his or her life --> selective reconstruction of the autobiographical past and a narrative anticipation of the imagined future
  • Subjective historical account of one’s own development
  • Moral justification of who a person was, is, and will be
  • Serves to explain, for the self and others, how the person came to be and where his or her life may be going
  • Provides unity, purpose, and meaning.

McAdams:

• Erik Erikson (1963) --> challenge of ego identity: emerging adults living in modern societies construct integrative narratives to explain how they came to be, where their lives are going, and how they hope to fit into the adult world
  • Function of identity is to organize a life in time and culture
• McAdams (1985) theoretical model of narrative identity --> (McAdams & Cox, 2010) integrative theory of human selfhood across the life course

Analysing narrated life-stories

• Relative salience of motivational themes related to agency (e.g., power, achievement, autonomy)
• Communion (e.g., love, intimacy, belongingness)

Research:

• Psychological health and well-being have been linked to narrative identities that show high levels of coherence and themes of redemption, emotional closure and personal growth and integration
• Life narratives of conservatives suggest an underlying fear of chaos and conflict, whereas life narratives of liberals suggest a parallel fear of emptiness

Psychological insights of the storyteller:

• Life stories are broad and stable enough --> can be coded for themes that reveal important psychological insights about the storyteller
• Arguments Against:
  
  • Gergen (1991): “contemporary selves are ‘saturated’ with the complex and shifting demands of social life. Contemporary selves rarely achieve unity and purpose; instead, fragmentation and multiplicity”
  • Raggatt (2006b): “life is too complex and inconsistent to afford the kind of neat identity consolidation that Erikson once envisioned”

Layers of Human personality

McAdams and Pals (2006)

• 1^st Layer: consists of broad dispositional traits (e.g. extraversion/neuroticism) --> account for consistencies in behavioural style
• 2^nd Layer: entails values, goals, personal projects, defences --> socially contextualized and motivational aspects of psychological individuality
• 3^rd Layer: narrative identity --> spell out what a person’s life means layered over adaptations (1^st layer) and traits (2^nd layer)

Framework for conceptualizing human selfhood

McAdams and Cox (2010)

“Conjoining of ‘I’ and ‘Me’ to comprise the full ‘self’”

• Human life course:
  • (1)The self as actor: Reflecting our evolutionary heritage as social animals, human infants begin life as social actors, and progressively an actor-self begins to form, as the ‘I’ begins reflexively to take note of the basic traits that make up the ‘Me’ --> essentialist
  • (2)The self as agent: Goals, plans, desires take up residency in a newly expanded ‘Me’ --> motivated agents
  • (3)The self as author: Seeking to fashion the ‘Me’ into a self-defining story

Narrative Identity and the Life Course

“More like a novelist than a secretary. The job is to tell a good story rather than to report exactly what happened at the meeting”

• Theory of Mind:
  • 2^nd Year of Life:
    • Emergence of a storytelling, autobiographical self --> “A subjective ‘I’ that observes (and begins to construct) an objective ‘Me’”
  • 3^rd/4^th Year of Life:
    
    • Understand that intentional human behaviour is motivated by internal desires and beliefs
    • Able to give a relatively coherent account of their past experiences
    • Mindblindness: children with autism do not understand people as intentional characters or do so only to a limited degree
      
      • Severe cases --> may reside a disturbing dysfunction in “I-ness”
  • 5^th Year of Life:
    
    • Stories are set in a particular time and place and involve characters who act upon their desires and beliefs over time.
    • Begin to internalize their culture’s norms and expectations concerning what the story of an entire human life should contain (e.g. getting a job, getting married, …
  • Adolescence:
    
    • Causal coherence: efforts to provide narrative accounts of one’s life that explain how one event caused, led up to, transformed, or in some way was/is meaningfully related to other events in one’s life
      
      • (e.g. a girl may explain how it came to be that her junior year in high school represented a turning point in her understanding of herself)
    • Thematic coherence: identify an overarching theme, value, or principle that integrates many different episodes in her life and conveys the gist of who she is
    • Early adolescence --> wonders about who they’ll be when they grow up may begin to take narrative form in fantasies, diaries, web postings, and other self-expressions
    • Personal fables: early drafts of narrative identity, often grandiose and breathless --> spell out a coherent story of life, but it is typically one that is wildly unrealistic
      
      • Personal fables are edited, revised, and often the whole thing is started over, so as to compose life narratives that are better grounded in reality, reflecting a keener understanding of social constraints and a more astute appraisal of personal skills, values, gifts, and past experiences --> however, narrative identity never completely descends into literal realism
• Life review: encourage older adults to relive and reflect upon past events
  
  • Life review can improve life satisfaction and relieve symptoms of depression and anxiety among older adults

Culture and Narrative

“Narrative identity, therefore, reflects gender and class divisions and the patterns of economic, political, and cultural hegemony that prevail at a given point in a society’s history”

• The redemptive self: adults move into and through midlife they become better able to construct life stories that derive positive meaning from negative events
  • “protagonist is delivered from suffering to an enhanced status or state”
• American exceptionalism: narratives of success, recovery, development, liberation, and self-actualization