Table Of ContentNARRATIVE
PSYCHOLOGY
Identity, Transformation and Ethics
JULIA VASSILIEVA
Narrative Psychology
Julia Vassilieva
Narrative Psychology
Identity, Transformation and Ethics
Julia Vassilieva
Monash University
Clayton , Australia
ISBN 978-1-137-49194-7 ISBN 978-1-137-49195-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-49195-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016937741
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Contents
1 Introduction 1
References 8
2 Th e ‘Narrative Turn’ in Psychology 9
2.1 Th e Emergence of Narrative Psychology 9
2.2 Dan McAdams: Identity as a Life Story 13
2.3 Hubert Hermans: Th e Dialogical Self Th eory 21
2.4 Michael White and David Epston: Narrative Th erapy 29
2.5 Narrative Psychology: Limitations,
Tensions and Challenges 35
References 40
3 Constructing the Narrative Subject 49
3.1 Th e Critique of the Subject and the Challenge
of Fragmentation 49
3.2 Life Story: Identity, Subject and Subjectivity
in McAdams’s Approach 58
3.3 Th e Dialogical Self Th eory: Towards
Decentralization 67
v
vi Contents
3.4 Narrative Th erapy: Between Subjectivation
and Agency 73
3.5 Conclusion 80
References 82
4 Narrative Subject: Between Continuity
and Transformation 87
4.1 Stability and Change: Psychological
and Narratological Perspectives 87
4.2 McAdams’s Life Stories and ‘Th e Making
of the Self’ 96
4.3 Hermans’s Dialogical Self: Meaning as Movement 104
4.4 White and Epston’s Narrative Th erapy: ‘Storying’
and ‘Re-Storying’ Lives 113
4.5 Conclusion 120
References 123
5 Narrative Methodology 127
5.1 ‘How Psychology Makes Itself
True – or False’ 127
5.2 ‘Narrative Identity Empiricized’:
Protocols for Narrating the Self 129
5.3 Th e Dialogical Self Th eory, Valuation
Th eory and the Self-Confrontation Method 136
5.4 Th e Maps of Narrative Practice 141
5.5 Conclusion 150
References 154
6 Narrative Ethics 157
6.1 Ethics and Academic Psychology 157
6.2 Self as a Story: Plot, Temporality, Closure
from an Ethical Point of View 159
Contents vii
6.3 Th e Dialogical Self: Between Polyphony
and Power 166
6.4 Th e Ethics of Narrative Th erapy 174
6.5 Conclusion: From Ethical Practice
to the Practice of Ethics 181
References 189
Index 193
1
Introduction
At the beginning of the twenty-fi rst century narrative psychology has
emerged as a force to be reckoned with on par with psychoanalytic,
cognitive and family approaches. As a distinct fi eld of inquiry, narrative
psychology is characterized by the elaboration of models of personality
and self based on narrative principles. Representing a reaction against
the cognitive-behaviour paradigm with its strong focus on information-
processing, which has dominated academic psychology for nearly half a
century, narrative psychology puts self-experience at the core of inquiry
and therapy. As such, the valorizing of self-experience by narrative psy-
chology corresponds to the growing trend of theorizing explicitly the
place of selfhood and identity within politics and culture. As Anthony
Elliott notes in his critical monograph, C oncepts of the Self : ‘In contem-
porary social theory the cultures and confl icts of identity loom large, with
the fragilities of personal experience and the self viewed as central to criti-
cal conversation concerning social practice and political transformation’
(Elliott 2 005 : 15).
Narrative psychology represents an extension into the domain of psy-
chology proper of a ‘narrative turn’ that took place in the human sciences
over the course of the last 30 years. Th is trend has refl ected a growing
© Th e Editor(s) (if applicable) and Th e Author(s) 2016 1
J. Vassilieva, Narrative Psychology,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-49195-4_1
2 Narrative Psychology
awareness and recognition of the fact that narrative represents ‘a basic
human strategy for coming to terms with time, process, and change—
a strategy that contrasts with, but is in no way inferior to, “scientifi c”
modes of explanation that characterize phenomena as instances of gen-
eral covering laws’ as R outledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Th eory explains
(Herman et al. 2 005 : ix). As a result, an interest in narrative as a mode
of production and as an explanatory paradigm has become prominent
in communication and media theory, pedagogy, sociology, ethnography,
jurisprudence, politics and artifi cial intelligence studies.
Tangible results of this development can be seen in the appearance of
interdisciplinary books, series of books,1 and internationally recognized
journals2 devoted to narrative theory and research. Another manifesta-
tion of cross-disciplinary interest in narrative is a proliferation of societ-
ies and associations dedicated to the study of narrative (including the
European Narratology Network (ENN), the International Society for the
Study of Narrative (ISSN) (formerly Society for the Study of Narrative
Literature), the Centre for Narrative Research (CNR) at the University
of East London, the Nordic Network of Narrative Studies (NNNS), and
the Narrative Network in Australia), and a number of recent conferences
intended to bring together humanistic and social-scientifi c approaches to
narrative, such as ‘Narrative Matters’, an interdisciplinary conference on
narrative research, perspectives and approaches across the humanities and
social sciences.
As Vincent Hevern (2 004 ) shows, since the 1980s psychology has wit-
nessed an exponential growth of research and teaching activity centring
on narrative. Th e intersection of narrative theory and psychology pro-
duced signifi cant results regarding the narrative structuring of reality, the
achievement of narrative intelligibility in conversation and the function
of narrative in individual life experiences. It also led to the conceptual-
ization of an array of ‘materials’—ranging from experimental protocols
to therapeutic conversations—as ‘narratives’. Finally, this development
culminated in the elaboration of models of personality and self based on
1 See, e.g., S tudies in Narrative, published by John Benjamins, Th eory and Interpretation of Narrative
published by the Ohio State University Press, Narratologia, published by Walter de Gruyter.
2 See, e.g., Image (&) Narrative , Journal of Narrative Th eory , Narrative , Narrative Inquiry.
