Psychiatry, philosophy and the self

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.

Balkan Journal of Philosophy

Humans tend to seek their identity as entities existing over a period of time by making narratives. The paper argues that seeking diachronic self-identity through narratives or stories results in the self-experience being one of separation or alienation from the real world. This happens because language is primarily a form of secondary representation, and the means by which we attempt to find identity often appear in the form of narratives. The dominance of the metaphor of life as a journey shows this. The remedy is to reduce the hold of narrativity by making selfexperience fundamentally episodic.

Roczniki Filozoficzne

In MacIntyre’s view, the agent in order to have a consistent identity should be able to narrate a story about her life, which relates the different episodes of her life together. This story should explain the transition between these episodes. This story is based on the notion of the good of human beings. A notion of the good should be present in the agent’s life to give a direction to her life. This integrity forms an identity for the agent. We intend to challenge this narrative view of identity in this paper. We will argue in this paper that though identity is formed in the eye of others, it does not need to be constituted in a unified narrative form, i.e., the agent does not need to place all episodes of her life in narrative order and have a consistent and unified account of her life, which includes her life from birth to death. Rather, shorter-term episodes of time suffice for identity formation. We will appeal to some findings of empirical psychology and neuroscience to suppor...

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.

Self and identity are examined as significant complementary processes in the psychoanalytic psychotherapy of two adolescent patients. The distinction between these processes is underscored as emergent from neuropsychological developmental changes while being expressed within a shared unconscious process. These cases examined how the analyst and patients fostered their co-constructed potential space for therapeutic transformation. Each patient had adopted compensatory identities in response to profound psychic conflict. The treatments explored the function of their identities as objectified processes to cope with psychic trauma while also addressing an essential respect for the subjectivity of self as a vehicle for psychological truth.

2011

Hypatia, 2010

In this paper we defend the notion of narrative identity against Galen Strawson's recent critique. With reference to Elyn Saks's memoir of her schizophrenia, we question the coherence of Strawson's conception of the Episodic self and show why the capacity for narrative integration is important for a flourishing life. We also argue that Saks's case and reflections on the therapeutic role of “illness narratives” put pressure on narrative theories that specify unduly restrictive constraints on self-constituting narratives, and clarify the need to distinguish identity from autonomy.

B@belonline vol. 8 Paul Ricœur: Narrative Identity Between Hermeneutics and Psychoanalysis/Paul Ricœur: L’identità narrativa tra ermeneutica e psicoanalisi, 2021

Our aim is to see how melancholia is a remarkable disorder of narrative identity: the patient can still tell her or his life story, or even write it, but she or he cannot construct a narrative in the Ricœurian sense, nor can she or he understand herself or himself according to a dynamic identity. With the help of Freudian literature and three selected melancholic narratives, we will be able to put the Ricœurian theory of narrative identity into a problematic perspective.

Sociological Quarterly, 1998

This article argues for a synthesis of George Herbert Mead's conception of the temporal and intersubjective nature of the self with Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutic theory of narrative identity. Combining the insights of Ricoeur's philosophical analysis with Mead's social-psychological orientation provides a subtle, sophisticated, and potent explanation of self-identity. A narrative conception of identity implies that subjectivity is neither a philosophical illusion nor an impermeable substance. Rather, a narrative identity provides a subjective sense of self-continuity as it symbolically integrates the events of lived experience in the plot of the story a person tells about his or her life. The utility of this conception of identity is illustrated through a rereading of Erving Goffman's study of the experience of mental patients. This example underlines the social sources of the self-concept and the role of power and politics in the construction of narrative identities.