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Storying the Self: A View on Autobiography from Developmental Psychology

All human beings are storytellers. We tell stories of great exploits and unbearable losses, of generations past, and, most often, stories of ourselves. In everyday conversation, with friends and family, over the dinner table and over the internet, we tell what happened during the past day and years. These stories define who we are both for ourselves and for others. And, of course, individual life stories are always situated within larger social and cultural frames that define the shape of a life, the value of a person, and the form of the narrative (Fivush, Habermas et al. 322–23). Cultures both compel and constrain narratives. To be a person, one must be able to provide an account of oneself, a story of who one is, how one became this way, and what one will become (McAdams and McLean 235–36). How we each come to tell these stories and create our selves is a developmentally complex question that begins in infancy and evolves throughout our lifetimes. At birth, humans enter storied worlds. Families whisper stories into infants’ ears, bringing this new life into the evolving family story (Fiese et al. 765–66). Young children are drawn into telling stories about their own adventures. Through preschool years, children become more active participants in family storytelling, telling not only what happened but beginning to include their own perspectives on what they thought and felt. By adolescence, family stories are complex negotiations, collaboratively told, sometimes contested but often coordinated (Fivush, Bohanek et al. 47–50). Within these complex contexts, children learn to tell their life stories. Parents who engage in more frequent, elaborated, and coherent shared family storytelling have children who develop more coherent and elaborated stories of their personal past. Moreover, children’s more coherent and elaborated stories of their past are related to higher levels of psychological well-being along multiple dimensions, including emotion understanding and regulation, conscience development, prosocial skills, and self-esteem (Fivush, Maternal 43–46). Clearly, if and how we tell life stories matters.