selfnarrative

Selfnarrative is the personal story a person tells about their life, integrating memories, experiences, values, and social roles. It is constructed and renegotiated over time and can take oral, written, or digital forms. The term is used in psychology, literary studies, and life-writing to describe how individuals narrate their own existence.

In practice, the selfnarrative provides a sense of continuity and coherence, shapes identity, and offers frameworks for interpreting events. People select which memories to emphasize, assign causes, and arrange events into a causal or thematic sequence. Social interaction and cultural scripts influence the content and style of the narrative.

Research in narrative psychology analyzes selfnarratives through interviews, diaries, memoirs, and therapeutic sessions. Analysts look for narrative features such as agency, intentionality, redemption or contamination sequences, and coherence across the life course. Key theories include Dan P. McAdams's concept of narrative identity, and Ricoeur's notion that the self is formed through storytelling.

Applications include life-writing and autobiographical genres, therapeutic approaches such as narrative therapy that seek to re-author problematic narratives, and efforts to understand identity development in adolescence or after trauma.

Limitations: selfnarratives are constructed, not objective histories, and are subject to memory biases, selective recall, and cultural conventions that shape what is told. See also: autobiography, autobiographical memory, narrative identity, life-writing.