Narrative identity is the internalized story a person constructs about themselves over time, integrating past, present, and anticipated events into a coherent narrative. Dan McAdams proposed it as the highest level of personality: how I tell myself who I am and who I am becoming. It is especially relevant when "starting over": every identity reconstruction passes through re-writing one's own story.
Concept origin
McAdams DP. (2001). The psychology of life stories. Review of General Psychology, 5(2), 100-122. doi:10.1037/1089-2680.5.2.100
How it manifests
- ▸ Capacity to tell one's own life as a story with plot, characters, and direction
- ▸ Integration of contradictory events into a coherent narrative
- ▸ Difficulty when a new event (breakup, crisis) does not "fit" the previous story
Therapeutic approach
Narrative therapy (White & Epston 1990) explicitly works on reconstruction of the personal story. CBT identifies "blind spots" in the narrative that maintain distress. Expressive writing (Pennebaker 1997) facilitates the narrative integration of difficult events.
Related concepts
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