Chapter 5 - Narrative Identity

Summary

In Chapter 5, we present the defining characteristics of narrative, including temporal organization, protagonists pursuing goals, the landscapes of action and consciousness, and meaning as emerging from configuration of events. We argue that experience takes on certain of these defining features (lived story) and that telling stories is anchored in while also transforming lived story. We introduce narrative as crucial to identity since it supports self-continuity by organizing past, present, and future selves into coherent patterns. Further, we describe the memory, imagination, and reflection processes involved in the creation of narrative identity. Finally, we locate narrative identity in social and cultural contexts by introducing the concept of narrative ecology, which includes stories shared by others (vicarious stories), social scaffolding of storytelling, culturally shared stories, such as autobiographies, and master narratives. We discuss how a negative narrative ecology may play a role in shaping narrative identity in some individuals with psychopathology, including negative master narratives of mental illness, inaccurate stereotypes, silencing, absent or hostile coauthors, and lack of adaptive vicarious life stories.