The narrative identity dimension in transnational migrations: the Brazilian case in Santiago, Chile

Disturbances of the narrative self and personal identity accompany the onset of psychotic disorders in late adolescence and early adulthood (a formative developmental stage for self-concept and personal narratives). However, these issues have primarily been studied retrospectively after illness onset, limiting any inferences about their developmental course. Youth at clinical high risk for psychosis (CHR) (n = 49) and matched healthy comparison youth (n = 52) completed a life story interview (including self-defining memory, turning point, life challenge, and psychotic-like experience) and questionnaires assessing self-esteem, self-beliefs, self-concept clarity, and ruminative/reflective self-focus. Trained raters coded interviews for narrative identity themes of emotional tone, agency, temporal coherence, context coherence, self-event connections, and meaning-making (intraclass correlations >0.75). Statistical analyses tested group differences and relationships between self-concept, narrative identity, symptoms, and functioning. CHR participants reported more negative self-esteem and self-beliefs, poorer self-concept clarity, and more ruminative self-focus, all of which related to negative symptoms. CHR participants narrated their life stories with themes of negative emotion and passivity (ie, lack of personal agency), which related to positive and negative symptoms. Reflective self-focus and autobiographical reasoning were unaffected and correlated. Autobiographical reasoning was uniquely associated with preserved role functioning. This group of youth at CHR exhibited some, but not all, changes to self-concept and narrative identity seen in psychotic disorders. A core theme of negativity, uncertainty, and passivity ran through their semantic and narrative self-representations. Preserved self-reflection and autobiographical reasoning suggest sources of resilience and potential footholds for cognitive-behavioral and metacognitive interventions.

Personhood, animalism, and advanced directives: The intersubjective and affective heart of the matter

Narratives of the self are embedded within families in which narrative interaction is a common practice. Especially in adolescence, when issues of identity and emotional regulation become key, narratives provide frameworks for understating self and emotion. The authors' research on family narratives suggests that adolescents' personal narratives are at least partly shaped by intergenerational narratives about their parents' childhoods. Both personal and intergenerational narratives emerge frequently in typical family dinner conversations, and these narratives reflect gendered ways of being in the world. Adolescents who tell intergenerational narratives that are rich in intergenerational connections and perspective-taking show higher levels of well-being. These findings suggest that individual narrative selves are created within families and across generations.

In this yearlong research study examining rural adolescent girls’ narratives of identity, I did not originally propose to interview the girls in focus groups. However, in the isolated and small community context in which the girls lived, being singled out for individual interviews posed a significant threat to the girls and a misunderstanding of how the girls’ narratives of identity were developed. Where girls already experienced feelings of loneliness and fears that others might use relational aggression to further separation, being pulled aside or singled out for an interview was anxiety provoking. Such a realization reflects my misguided assumption as an outsider about the way in which narratives of identity were crafted, as in such a tight-knit community context, the girls’ stories of self were not individually developed but communally built. Using a relational framework, I explore my decision to use focus groups and the way in which focus groups might dispel the notion that identities are created as individual acts. Instead, evidence is presented to show that the development of a narrative of self in this context is a communal and negotiated process.

Psychologists and philosophers agree that personal narratives are a central component of one’s identity. The concept of narrative self has been proposed to capture this aspect of selfhood. In recent times, it has been a matter of debate how the narrative self relates to the embodied and experiential dimension of the self. In this debate, the role attributed to inner speech is that of constructing and maintaining personal narratives. Indeed, evidence suggests that inner speech episodes are involved in self-reflection and autobiographical reasoning. That is, previous works have focused mostly, if not solely, on the role of inner speech for narrative self-understanding. However, inner speech is also involved in enacting personal narratives. In such cases, the content of the inner speech episodes is not in the service of the construction of narratives, rather it implies the identification with the character of the personal narratives. I introduce two instances of the use of inner speech for narrative self-enactment: positive self-talk and stereotype threat. I conclude by considering the implications of the examples introduced for the debate regarding the relation between the narrative and the embodied dimensions of selfhood.

In recent years a significant debate has arisen as to whether Kierkegaard offers a version of the “narrative approach” to issues of personal identity and self-constitution. In this paper I do not directly take sides in this debate, but consider instead the applicability of a recent development in the broader literature on narrative identity—the distinction between the temporally-extended “narrative self” and the non-extended “minimal self—to Kierkegaard's work. I argue that such a distinction is both necessary for making sense of Kierkegaard's claim that we are ethically enjoined to become selves, and can indeed be found in Either/Or and the later The Sickness Unto Death . Despite Kierkegaard's Non-Substantialism, each of these texts speaks (somewhat obliquely) of a “naked self” that is separable from the concrete facticity of human being. In both cases, this minimal self is linked to issues of eschatological responsibility; yet the two works develop very different understandings of “eternity” and correspondingly divergent accounts of the temporality of selfhood. This complicates the picture of Kierkegaardian selfhood in interesting ways, taking it beyond both narrativist and more standard neo-Lockean models of what it is to be a self.

Research has a long tradition of quantitative research which still dominates many university courses on research methods. Qualitative research is a younger phenomenon that was established in research after the second world war. An emerging research field that needed new analysis methods tailored for qualitative data. Two of the most frequently used approaches in qualitative data analysis are content analysis and thematic analysis. In several aspects content analysis and thematic analysis both share a common approach to analytically examine qualitative data, and the fact that they have been used interchangeably has made it difficult for the more unexperienced researchers to distinguish and choose between them. The aim of this study is to examine doctoral students’ perceptions of qualitative analysis with content analysis and thematic analysis. The study had a qualitative approach with data collected from two webinars on qualitative data analysis, where a total of 76 doctoral students participated. Data consists of participant reflections in a Padlet on content analysis and thematic analysis at the two webinars. Webinar participants have given their consent to use their reflections in the Padlet for research. Content analysis with an abductive coding approach was used to analyse the collected data and formulate categories that answer the study’s aim and research question. Results show both perceived similarities and differences between content analysis and thematic analysis. Both are perceived to have a similar process in the coding of data, although content analysis has a wider selection of coding approaches and thematic analysis support deeper immersion. Content analysis is also perceived as more practical and straightforward, while thematic analysis is perceived as more intuitive and faster to learn. Both content analysis and thematic analysis are perceived to have individual opportunities and challenges that make them appropriate for different types of research. Findings presented in this study can be used by researchers at any level to explore similarities and differences between content analysis and thematic analysis, and where to apply them in research.

Traumatic experiences are significant life events that are thought to impact one's personal life narrative and narrative identity. Individuals who have experienced trauma may display fragmented memories and decreased narrative cohesion, resulting in trauma narratives that are disjointed and poorly integrated into the larger picture of their lives. Metacognition, defined as the ability to form increasingly complex and integrated ideas about the self, others, and the wider world, offers a framework to better understand life narratives and has been proposed as a construct that allows personal narratives to evolve in response to new experiences. In this paper, we will review the alterations commonly observed in trauma narratives. We will utilize the integrated model of metacognition as a framework to understand these deviations with an eye toward clinical implications. Although treatments that focus on trauma narratives exist, we argue that the study of metacognition provides unique insights into the process of integration of traumatic experience into an evolving personal narrative and may allow for more complete treatment of trauma-related disorders.

In narrative identity research, variables are typically captured through detailed content-coding of personal narratives. Yet, alternative methods have been suggested, notably self-report scales, because they capture a participant’s own interpretation of their personal narratives, and because they are efficient to administer as a supplement to more labor-intensive coding methods. This study developed and validated the Narrative Identity Self-Evaluation (NISE) questionnaire. In Study 1, the questionnaire was developed through exploratory factor analysis (n = 425) and its criterion validity examined. In Study 2, the NISE factor structure and criterion relationships were confirmed (n = 304). In Study 3 (based on the same sample as Study 1), content-coding of 11 narrative identity characteristics in open-ended personal story accounts was conducted, and NISE scores were compared to corresponding content-coded variables. The 20-item NISE has three factors replicating common dimensions in narrative identity (autobiographical reasoning, desire for structure, positive motivational/affective themes) and a novel fourth factor capturing disturbances of narrative identity. The NISE correlated in theoretically-coherent ways with content coded narrative identity variables, self-report traits, and measures relevant for narrative identity, self-concept, well-being, and psychopathology. We discuss the scale’s advantages in complementing content-coding of narrative accounts to assess variation in narrative identity within both clinical and non-clinical populations.

In Identity and Story: Creating Self in Narrative, the fourth volume in the series Narrative Study of Lives, Dan P. McAdams, Ruthellen Josselson, and Amia Lieblich bring together an interdisciplinary and international group of creative researchers and theorists to examine the way the stories we tell create our identities. An increasing number of psychologists argue that people living in modern societies give meaning to their lives by constructing and internalizing self-defining stories. The contributors to this volume explore how, beginning in adolescence and young adulthood, our narrative identities become the stories we live by. This volume addresses the most important and difficult issues in the study of narrative identity, including questions of unity and multiplicity in stories, the controversy over individual versus societal authorship of stories, and the extent to which stories typically show stability or growth in the narrator. The detailed examination of excerpts from stories told to researchers and the analysis of published memoirs, together with the contributors' insights into narrative psychology, make this provocative volume a rich, research-based exploration into how our lives may be the product of the stories we tell.

Impairments in laboratory tasks of metacognition appear to be associated with symptoms, functioning, and neurocognition in schizophrenia. We sought to replicate these results in a study of metacognition within personal narratives of self and illness. Narratives of 61 men with schizophrenia were rated using the Metacognition Assessment Scale and correlated with concurrent assessment of symptoms, quality of life, neurocognition and insight. Controlling for age and education, understanding of one's own mind was linked with better neurocognition across multiple domains, and lesser emotional withdrawal. Greater understanding of other's mind was linked with better verbal memory and less emotional withdrawal. Greater metacognition in the context of purposeful problem solving was associated with better verbal memory, insight and social function, and less emotional withdrawal and paranoia. Deficits in metacognition within the narratives of persons with schizophrenia are linked with symptoms, quality of life, neurocognition and poorer awareness of illness.

The Heart of the Matter

Narrating Selves in Everyday ContextsArt, the Literary, and Life Experience Mari Hatavara (bio), Matti Hyvärinen (bio), and Jarmila Mildorf (bio) Narrative sense making draws resources from cultural expectations, narrative conventions, and generic models. In narrative—just as in life experience—"[t]he coincidental, unexpected, experimental, even the chaotic, are all necessary and integral aspects" (Hyvärinen et al. 9). And the imagination plays a vital role in how we devise and tell our stories (Andrews). For these reasons, making sense of and communicating experiences are necessarily modified by culturally existing models, and people draw on the literary and the artistic in their everyday storytelling and self-expression. What is more, our everyday involvement with social and other media confronts us with stories and storytelling opportunities in ways that blur the boundaries between living one's life and sharing and co-constructing experiences and values. This special issue explores the literary and artistic in everyday narratives across a wide range of contexts: new media, medicine and therapy, social work, and oral history. It looks at various case studies of incidentally occurring storytelling practices and the (auto)biographical processes manifest in these practices. The contributions ask: how is a sense of narrative self constituted and negotiated in different mediatized environments? What are the culturally available stories and modes of narration for sharing our experience? How do different narrative techniques enable us to represent and communicate our own experience and that of another? By paying attention to the interplay between narrative form, story content, and wider situational [End Page 293] or cultural contexts of social interaction, these contributions demonstrate the broad relevance of both narrative and narrative analysis. The six articles address a number of questions pivotal in narrative theory and crucial to practices based on a narrative understanding of the self. These include the relation between culturally available grand narratives and mundane, interactional small stories (Georgakopoulou), between historical accuracy and narrative imagination, between living a life and telling about it, and between the personal and the social in storytelling practices (see also Schiff et al.). Furthermore, we explore how everyday storytelling practices are related both to the larger, more encompassing conception of a narrative we typically call our "autobiography" or someone else's life story—that is, the difference between "small" and "big" stories, as Bamberg calls them. Each article reflects on these major questions both theoretically and through the analysis of a specific test case. These analyses test the applicability and adaptability of theoretical models and analytical methods in transdisciplinary narrative studies. The first article by Daniel D. Hutto, Nicolle Brancazio, and Jarrah Aubourg offers an insightful overview of Narrative Medicine and Narrative Practice with the aim to lend those practices a strong philosophical support. Hutto, et al. demonstrate the importance of narrative to psychological reality, and the vitality to engage in second person storytelling practices to learn and develop a person's narrative abilities. Therefore, it is a misunderstanding to prefer past accuracy over a future trajectory, or to juxtapose unfavorably disjointed reality with plotted narratives in any effort to maintain and improve mental well-being. Narrative skills are shown to be crucial to having better resources and responsiveness in life. Whereas the article by Hutto et al. focuses on the large frame and philosophical ground for narrative practices in medicine and therapy, the article by Anneke Sools, Sofia Triliva, and Theofanis Filippas investigates a case study of unemployed Greek young adults with a view to exploring narrative futuring. This approach is grounded in the insight that gaining new experiences requires differentiating between past and future. What is more, in order to facilitate change, an imagined future needs to be both desired and believable, which requires narrative construction and communication. Sools et al. show future selves to be both cultural and linguistic constructions, where the personal and the cultural are negotiated and where language modes essentially adhere to content matter. [End Page 294] The third article of this issue addresses the epistemological and temporal dimensions of the self from a different angle: Matti Hyvärinen and Ryoko Watanabe analyze rehabilitation encounters with elderly people with advanced dementia with the help of the model of narrative positioning. Their analysis...

“Who are we?” is not a question with an obvious and unambiguous answer for us. Over the course of our lives, we discover that we were mistaken about who we thought we were in the past: in retrospect, we discover events in our biography that shape who we are now, as well as those aspects that reveal versions of ourselves about which we did not know before. We understand that we are often mistaken about who other people are, that we and others lie about ourselves, sometimes without even knowing it. However, when we review our past and make plans for the future in the present, we discover in them a subjectively experienced sense of self-identity. Paul Ricoeur’s theory of narrative identity offers an explanation of how the self is formed and constituted and how our identities emerge. This article analyzes the concept of narrative identity, and also provides a response to the frequently encountered objections raised against this theory, which claims that the narrative identity reveals a divided “self”: the initial “empirical self” and the later emerging narrative about the “self” (the “narrative self”). This objection is based on an empiricist-positivist attitude that asserts that what is given directly in sensory perception is most real, while narrative is understood as a “cognitive tool” through which a meaningful order is retrospectively constructed, falsifying the true nature of the subject’s experience of existence. That is, in order for the self to be told, it must already exist. From a critical perspective, this doubling of the self asserts a false understanding of the self in a narrative identity, as we create a division between who we are and who we say we are. The research presented here offers a conceptual answer to this objection, eliminating the apparent division between different levels of the self. Responses to criticism are formed in two directions. Firstly, with the help of Jan Patočka’s concept of ontological dynamics of “movement”, it is possible to demonstrate how the “self” can simultaneously be both an actor and a narrator, constituting a personality. Secondly, the issue of the truth and falsity of narratives that constitute a narrative identity is considered in the context of Judith Butler’s ethics of vulnerability and Christine Corrsgard’s ethical subjectivism.

The following article explores what notion of truth is possible in Ricœur’s narrative identity. It is motivated by the question of how our identity can be constituted in narratives of self when we are often easily self-deceiving and do not choose the building blocks of our narratives. It explores how our identities are constituted in narrative, with others, in order to see what dimensions of truth this allows. Narrative identity implicates a novel notion of truth that is intrinsically ethical, which gives rise to a set of ethical issues. In particular, a truth of self that occurs in relation to others is open to violence and abuse—our very identity is, to varying degrees, in others’ hands. Butler’s ethics of fragility may offer a positive solution.