Abstract
Adult development is one of the few fields in American psychology that has traditionally embraced the collection and analysis of individual's narrative accounts of their lives. This chapter discusses newer perspectives on the relationship of these narratives to adult development. It suggests that an individual's narrative accounts play a major role in the construction and understanding of these stages. By drawing on a personological theory of identity and social construction theories of both narrative and affect, the chapter describes different process approaches that demonstrate how life stories reveal and define the developmental and affective challenges of adult life. Each of these approaches has generated a new body of empirical research that has broadened and deepened understanding of the psychosocial “stages” of identity, intimacy, generativity, and ego integrity.
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