Understanding the Interplay between Narrative Identity and Mental Illness: A Framework

Abstract

In Chapter 14, we propose a framework for understanding the interplay between narrative identity, mental illness, and personal recovery. First, narrative identity may constitute a vulnerability to mental illness. If individuals grow up in a narrative ecology characterized by silencing, hostile coauthors, and/or maladaptive vicarious stories, they may struggle to narrate negative events in ways that support a positive view of themselves and others. When encountering stressful events, such vulnerable narrative identities may trigger symptoms in some individuals. Second, narrative identity is affected by psychopathology. Mental illness may disrupt the ongoing life story and give birth to the ill self, the negative self, and the self as different. Simultaneously, individuals may feel that they have lost their previous selves and the projected future becomes uncertain and bleak. Certain healthcare practices and negative master narratives may magnify this toxic change in narrative identity. Third, individuals may work with narrative identity to recover from the damage done by mental illness and negative narrative ecologies. We suggest that such narrative repair addresses the narrative identity costs presented in our analyses (e.g., fear of the ill self and the negative self) and boosts narrative identity resources (e.g., the growing, agentic, and dreaming selves).