NARRATIVE VERSUS EPISODIC SELF: THE MATTER WITH IDENTITY

From the point of view of hermeneutic psychology, the self is a product of action and of representation, with narratives of the self as a major representational and structuring principle. In this sense reality is interwoven with narrative fictions. Experimental fictions and reflexive narratives are therefore a prime cognitive instrument in the development of complex structures of self-identity and subjetivity.

2022

The author addresses the theme of narrative identity in an interpretative itinerary that employs sociological, psychological and psychoanalytic concepts to explore the circular relationship between sense of identity, self/other recognition and the space-time perspective. Observing the solitude of the individual in late-modern society, the second part of the book proposes a way out: becoming actively involved in the crafting of our lives by writing our own story. Autobiography is not a melancholic withdrawal but a way to restart the journey of life with greater awareness of one's limits and possibilities. In addition to being a learning process, developing the negatives of one's life can foster a sense of both serenity and self-responsibility. The story could have been different, but when we try to tell it honestly we may learn to love it a little more or at least see and accept it for what it truly is.

European Journal of Medicine and Natural Sciences

Over the past years, a multi-disciplinary literature on the significance of personal narratives in autobiography and identity has emerged. This subject has been of interest to authors in the fields of humanities, psychology, and medicine alike. In this paper, we are proposing the term Identity Narrative (IdN) to define a cognitive and emotional framework that serves as an implicit (unconscious) scaffolding of memory on which to build human autobiography. The authors first classify narratives into external (universal history, the humanities, culture) and internal (autobiography, based on personal experiences, both directly and indirectly, through identification and education). All philosophy and social commentary has utilized history for the purposes of prediction and meaning-making. Personalities including Aristotle, St. Augustine, Rousseau, Freud, Marx, Spengler, and Benjamin Franklin have reread history to gain insight about human nature. History has inspired the enlightenment and...

Humanities Bulletin, 2022

The following paper offers an account of Paul Ricoeur's "narrative identity" which proposes that the identity of human persons (or selves) is constituted through narratives about oneself. This account of personal identity is then further formulated through replies to the main objection raised against it, namely, that narrative identity reveals a division in the self: it shows there must be-the objectors argue-a more originary experiential self prior to the self-interpreted narrative self. The replies to the objection offer, first, with the help of Jan Patočka's conception of "movement", a way to conceive a kind of being that is constituted through its self-narration; secondly, with the help of Judith Butler, a way to understanding how an apparent division in the self when one lies about oneself is bridged in an understanding of our own human limitations and fragility.

Human Development, 2007

In this paper, we consider how the life story develops through the creation of selfevent connections in narrating experiences. We first outline the ways in which such connections have been implied by existing work on the life story, and then consider the varieties of such connections that we see in our own work. That work suggests that selfevent connections can construct both a stable sense of self as well as a sense of how the self has changed across time. Moreover, different types of connections have different implications for the development of the life story. We also consider developmental and other factors which make one or another type of connection more likely. Finally, we consider two issues for future work, as well as some methodological considerations involved in testing those proposals.

European Proceedings of Social and Behavioural Sciences, 2020

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There is an on-going debate between those who believe selves are stable kinds of pre-linguistic entity and those who maintain that selves, are themselves, formed by our linguistic practices specifically our capacity to compose stories and appreciate narratives (cf. Kerby 1991: 4, Dennett 1991: ch. 13, MacIntyre, 1981: ch. 15 Riceour, 1992: fifth study). The latter view is usually advanced under the auspices of a particular vision of the nature of language. The essence of that vision, which rejects the idea that language serves a purely referential function, is nicely expressed by Kerby when he writes "language is viewed not simply as a tool for communicating or mirroring back what we otherwise discover in our reality but is itself an important formative part of that reality, part of its very texture." (Kerby 1991: 2). I make a provisional case for thinking that selves might indeed be a 'product' of our narrative practices but from a different angle.

Balkan Journal of Philosophy, 2021

The paper seeks to argue that different ways in which the self is understood, even if radically distinct from one another, are cases of different narratives. This is done by appealing to conceptual metaphor theory. The paper begins by briefly explaining the difference between the minimal and narrative self and then argues that even radically different ways of understanding the self are cases of different narratives arising out of a metaphorical understanding of abstract concepts.

2019

The focus of this dissertation is narrative identity theory, i.e. the proposition that our sense of self is structured like a story. The imputed advantage of narrativity identity is that it enables great coherence and guidance to our complex lives composed of multiple and often conflicting inner impulses and social demands. The manner in which this is accomplished is that narrativity functions metaphorically as a tacit, formative operation, which transfers the intelligibility inherent in the familiar domain of stories to the more elusive domain of personal identity. Narrativity is an epistemically efficient kind of discourse which can synthesize a multitude of elements into a unity called plot. A plot gives unity to the whole of a story and confers significance to its parts. Both narrativity and metaphoricity are the more recognizable products of an underlying mechanism both share, i.e. productive imagination. This faculty pervasively and continually configures the whole field of ou...

Synthesis Philosophica, 2011

The need to narrate is according to P. Ricœur the very core of creating the knowledge of self. The process of identification through narration does not lead us to be focused on our own narration. We always find other people’s narrations first and then start telling the narration of our life. Through narration, as understood by Ricœur, we can simultaneously learn ethics as well as morals. To show this the author compares philosophic view of identity by Ricœur with Frisch’s literary experiment in the novel I’m Not Stiller. Both of them are a hermeneutic intertwining that brings to natural identity. In this hermeneutic process we can rediscover ourselves in a world, in which we will respect our own identity by being fully open to its creative transformation.