The Emergence of Narrative Identity

© 2008 The AuthorJournal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Social and Personality Psychology Compass 2 (2008): 10.1111/j.1751-9004.2008.00124.x

The Emergence of Narrative Identity

Kate C. McLean*Western Washington University

AbstractThis paper reviews the current research on narrative identity. Narrative identityis quickly becoming accepted as a promising process approach to self-developmentin a variety of fields, including developmental, clinical, cultural, personality, andsocial psychology. This paper reviews factors surrounding the emergence ofnarrative identity in adolescence, relations between narrative patterns and age andpersonality, as well as factors that are important to developing a coherent narrativeidentity, such as the emotional valence of experience, storytelling, and culture.Finally, new and emerging issues are raised for those interested in the study ofnarrative identity, with a particular focus on narratives that are difficult to telland may violate cultural norms.

‘I had ACL surgery this past year. The surgery was successful and I have madea normal recovery so it is not the surgery in particular that constituted a majorturning point in my life, it is more the other issues that came out of it. In themonth or so after the surgery I experienced a lot of depression, apathy, anxiety,and self-doubt. I have always been a positive person who tries to make the bestof things instead of getting stuck or complaining. Therefore the feelings I wasexperiencing in the weeks after the surgery were very distressing for me becauseI didn’t recognize the decisions, actions or attitudes that I had. They were sodifferent than the way that I had previously seen myself. It made me questiona lot about myself and my perception of self. I think overall I felt a lack of security.I think this was a significant point in my life because it made me become awareof a lot of things about myself. I figured out quite a bit about myself in relationto my family, friends, and boyfriend. I also figured out a lot about my own wayof thinking and handling things.’

This narrative comes from a 17-year-old female, whom I will call Annie.She participated in a study I conducted on adolescent identity development,and this is her response to the request for a turning point memory: ‘aparticular episode in your life story in which you underwent an importantchange in terms of how you understand yourself.’ There are several aspectsof Annie’s narrative that are notable, but most relevant here, she is reportingher emerging identity. This paper focuses on the emergence of identity,developmentally, but also on the emergence of narrative identity as a fieldof research that has taken a central role in psychological approaches tounderstanding self and identity development.

2 Narrative Identity

© 2008 The Author Social and Personality Psychology Compass 2 (2008): 10.1111/j.1751-9004.2008.00124.xJournal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Questions about identity should be questions about developmentalprocesses; yet, people go about this developmental process in quite differentways, which makes identity questions also fundamentally about personality.I focus on a narrative approach because it is a process approach, and becausenarratives can reveal important individual differences in the process ofconstructing a meaningful identity. In this paper, I will address whennarrative identity begins to emerge, as well as facilitating factors in narrativeidentity development. I will then turn to a discussion of the role thatpersonality plays in the course of identity development and conclude withsome suggestions as to what I see as the interesting and important issuesfacing narrative identity researchers.

Narrative Approaches to Identity

Narratives about the self are not only stories about what happened in aparticular time and place; they also provide both an evaluation of pastevents in relation to the self and a sense of temporal continuity (e.g., Bruner,1990; Fivush & Haden, 1997; Habermas & Bluck, 2000). Indeed, one ofthe essential questions facing narrative researchers is how people developa sense of self that is continuous through time – a temporal coherencethat serves to integrate the person (e.g., Chandler, Lalonde, Sokol, &Hallett, 2003; Habermas & Bluck, 2000; McAdams, 1988, 1993). Althoughchildren are able to talk about self-attributes (e.g., I am nice) and to organizeevents temporally (e.g., Nelson, 1986), it is not until at least adolescencethat the temporally continuous self begins to develop (Chandler et al.,2003; Habermas & Bluck, 2000). The mechanism of creating temporalcontinuity is to story the self. For example, Habermas and Bluck (2000)suggested that in adolescence individuals begin to be able to explain theself in terms of stories, and to see connections between the self in differentsettings and across time via personal story construction. The goal of thisbeginning story construction is to create a life story, which is a selectivenarrative of one’s past experiences and thoughts about those experiencesthat serves to integrate the self (McAdams, 1988).

Bruner (e.g., 1990) has suggested that stories are used to make sense ofexperience, particularly experiences that violate our expectations, or thecanonical narrative. That is, storytelling facilitates managing ‘trouble’ in theworld as we seek to make sense of experiences that are new or unexpected.It is through this process of making sense of trouble that a storied self beginsto emerge.

McAdams (e.g., 1988, 1993) has written most specifically about the lifestory and how that particular narrative serves to make sense of, or drawcontinuity to the self. Forming a life story involves the process of integratingone’s past, present and anticipated future by using important past eventsto weave a personal story of one’s life (McAdams, 1988). McAdams (1988)has suggested that individuals use life stories as a way to interpret the past


Narrative Identity 3

and the present and to anticipate future experiences. According to McAdams,the life story is constantly revised, making identity development a life-longtask. Although the life story plays an important role across the lifespan,adolescence marks the beginning of life story development primarily dueto the onset of formal operations and, in many societies, demands forestablishing oneself in the world through work, school, and relationships.

To understand this integration, narrative researchers have focused mostrobustly on how people make meaning of past experiences (e.g., Habermas& Bluck, 2000; McLean, Pasupathi, & Pals, 2007). This process of meaning-making involves thinking and talking about specific experiences and howthey relate both to the self and to other experiences one has had (Habermas&Bluck, 2000; McLean & Fournier, forthcoming). Interestingly, we do notget a specific example of meaning in Annie’s narrative, precisely because, Ipropose, she is in the midst of constructing that meaning; she has not yetfigured it out. Another adolescent, an 18-year-old from the same study whoI will call Sara, reported the following meaning after she decided to walkout of school to protest the Iraq war, against the advice of her teachers whothreatened suspension. She discusses the dilemma she felt within her self inmaking that decision, and then what she specifically learned about herself:

... I generally follow rules, and I didn’t want to risk not getting accepted tothe high school of my choice. The turning point for me in this event is thatI walked out anyway. ... I walked out of school and marched through SanFrancisco, standing up for what I believed in. That day I learned that to do whatI really felt was right, I had to take a risk and face the consequences. I learned that tobe true to what I believe, I sometimes have to let other people down. I also learned howto use my voice to advocate for others. I found a strength that day that I had never usedbefore, and whenever I’m afraid of standing for what I believe in or owning my voice,I remember this turning point and how good it felt to do what I knew I had to do.

In Sara’s example, we see specific meaning attributed to a past experience,as opposed to Annie who is still working to develop her meaning. Overall,in engaging in the process of making meaning of the past, one is devel-oping and then sustaining, one’s identity. Finding unity in a multiplicityof experiences is a challenge that takes time, but once that unity is found,the life story is a powerful integrative force for the person.

The Process of Identity Development

When does identity emerge?

Lawrence Friedman’s (1999) biography of Erik Erikson is titled, ‘Identity’sArchitect’. Indeed, Erikson (1968) proposed that the central task of adolescenceis to construct a personal identity, and that failure to do so would result instunted development in subsequent stages of the life course. Interestingly,like Annie, Erikson also experienced feelings of insecurity and uncertaintyabout himself in late adolescence and young adulthood. Friedman writes,



‘Clearly Erik was in a fragile state at the start of adulthood. The stepson’sidentity of ‘mixed’ and confused parentage, religion, and nationality hadproduced a person who felt himself living precariously ‘on the line’ andhaving to negotiate multiple border crossings’ (Friedman, 1999, 49). Thisdescription is representative of the stage of ‘identity crisis,’ during whichmost people experience a questioning and exploration of who they are andtheir role in society. Thus, whereas Erikson and Annie were both wrestlingwith different kinds of experience (the aftermath of surgery and heritage),both were also wrestling with the selves of the past in trying to organizea present and future self on the cusp of adulthood.

The critical initiation of the process of identity development is therecognition of inconsistency, contradiction, or to put it more positively,possibilities, within the self; that is, the recognition of ‘trouble.’ Mostoften, this initial realization of different aspects of the self is distressing. Indeed,Annie discusses becoming aware of more aspects of herself, coupled with feltlack of security. Similarly, the sense that Erikson was living a precariousexistence ‘on the line’ reflects the difficulty of managing the emerging awarenessof many aspects of self. Sara describes the distress of feeling the contradictionin her desires to express her views and the lack of acceptance from authorityfigures. Although making meaning of violations in the canonical narrative,or managing trouble, is a challenge for everyone, this meaning-making processmay be particularly distressing at younger ages when narrative skills are stilldeveloping, or for people who have had less narrative practice with reflectionin childhood (e.g., Fivush, Marin, Crawford, Reynolds, & Brewin, 2007;McLean & Breen, forthcoming; McLean, Breen, & Fournier, forthcoming).

So, why adolescence? The first answer concerns cognitive development.A major revolution in an individual’s thought processes occurs in the transitionfrom childhood to adolescence and continues across adolescence. Specifically,new cognitive structures that are critical to the developing self-systememerge in adolescence (Harter, 2003, 2006; Harter & Monsour, 1992; Harter,Bresnick, Bouchey, & Whitesell, 1997), such as those relating to considering andtesting possibilities (Inhelder & Piaget, 1958) and those that allow for theintegration of single abstractions into higher order abstractions (Case, 1985;Fischer, 1980). Adolescents can hold multiple variables in mind at one time,can engage in scientific reasoning, metacognition, and can think aboutabstractions, such as love, faith, and politics. With the ability to hold multiplevariables in mind, one can begin to hold different ideas of the self in mind,particularly the self in terms of the past and the present. Further, with thedevelopment of analytical reasoning skills (Inhelder & Piaget, 1958),adolescents have the ability to make causal connections between experienceand the self, as Sara did, a critically important process in developing a lifestory (e.g., Habermas & Bluck, 2000; Lilgendahl & McAdams, forthcoming).Thus, these new cognitive skills allow one to begin to see the self in timeand to begin to bring coherence to that self across time. Nevertheless, theseskills emerge slowly over the course of adolescence. For example, the skills that



arise that enable adolescents to see contradictions in the self come beforethe skills arise to integrate those contradictions (e.g., Harter & Mon-sour, 1992), creating the possibility for the distress reported by Annie.

The second answer to the question of ‘why adolescence’ centers more onsocial and cultural perspectives. Erikson (1968) viewed identity developmentas situated in an historical place and time, and as a particular problem ofmore industrialized societies that allow for choice in and exploration of theself. Thus, identity development is not a solo endeavor, but is constructedin concert with and in reference to one’s cultural and societal milieu (e.g.,Bruner, 1990; Fivush, 2004b; McAdams & Pals, 2006; McLean et al., 2007;Pasupathi, 2001; Thorne, 2000, 2004). Consequently, we are pressed bothby our emerging capacities to think in abstract and complex ways and bysociety to develop a coherent sense of self.

While adolescence is a crucial time in the development of identity, mostresearchers do not view identity development as done by 18 or even25 years of age (Kroger, 2007). Indeed, most identity theories, particularlythose that have a process perspective, hold that identity development is alife long process, such that identity is revised as new experiences andaspects of self arise that need to be integrated into an ongoing narrative. Forexample, from adolescence through mid-life there is an increasing frequencyof engaging in reflection on and autobiographical reasoning about theself (Habermas & Paha, 2001; McLean et al., forthcoming; Pasupathi &Mansour, 2006), supporting the idea that identity development is not‘completed’ at adolescence. It is important to note, however, that viewingidentity development as ongoing is not to suggest that an identity is neverformed. Rather, the idea is that the healthiest trajectory is one in which,like a plant, roots are established in adolescence and young adulthood. Theseroots can be seen as the establishment of an identity, and once the rootsare established, the plant can grow in a variety of ways, changing over time.Thus, with solid roots our identities can be revised and re-worked withnew experiences and insights that one gathers about the self.

Whereas age predicts certain factors of identity development in positiveand linear fashions across adulthood, there are also some important qualitativeshifts in narrative identity in adulthood. Specifically, it seems that the contentand function of identity development changes across adulthood, particularlywhen looking to old age. Indeed, beginning around age 60, narrativereflection appears to level off or decline (Pasupathi & Mansour, 2006;McLean, 2008). That is, the frequency of self-event connections (Pasupathi& Mansour, 2006) increases from early to middle adulthood, and thenappears to become asymptotic (see also, McLean, 2008). Furthermore, thecontent of that reasoning for older people (65–85 years old) turns to reflectionson self-stability as compared with younger people (18–35 years old) who reportmore self-change (McLean, 2008). That is, although younger and older adultsare experiencing transitions in relation to jobs, health, and relationships,for example, older adults are more likely to make connections between the



past and the self that are about enduring, stable characteristics (e.g., ‘Thisexperience shows that I am a strong person’ as opposed to ‘I became astronger person after that experience.’). Some have argued that this is dueto the threats that occur in old age, such as mortality, such that a morestable, less exploratory sense of self is more adaptive (e.g., Cohen, 1998;Sneed & Whitbourne, 2005). This research does not suggest that narrativeidentity becomes irrelevant in old age, or that older adults are not activelyengaged in life review, but rather these results suggest that the ways inwhich narratives are used to sustain the self shift across adulthood.

How do people go about constructing an identity?

Whereas the first stage of identity development is the recognition ofcontrasts within the self, the next stage is finding a way to integrate thesecontrasts, which is where the formation of a narrative life story becomescritical. There are three topics that I will touch on to discuss the processof identity development via the narrative approach: storytelling, culturalconstraints, and variations in experience.

Storytelling: In solitude and with others

In some ways, the most intuitive way to think about identity developmentis personal reflection. The idea that people think about themselves andthe past in order to construct a story makes sense. Indeed, adolescents,who are in the midst of identity construction, spend far more time alonethan do children (Laursen, Richards, Moneta, Holmbeck, & Duckett, 1996).Thus, the interest in and time to reflect on oneself in solitude is an importantpart of identity development.

Nevertheless, the social world intrudes on the solitary one in many ways.First, even when one is engaged in solitary reflection, one might imagineconversations about specific events (Pasupathi, Weeks, & Liu, 2005). Further,although even solitary reflection has a hint of the social world, we actuallydisclose most of the memorable events in our lives to others. For example,the great majority of our memorable and emotional experiences aredisclosed within days of their occurrence, across gender and culture (Pasupathi,McLean, & Weeks, forthcoming; Rimé, Mesquita, Philippot, & Boca, 1991).Married couples and families tell stories with surprising regularity (Bohanek,Marin, Fivush, & Duke, 2006; Pasupathi, Lucas, & Coombs, 2002). Finally,90% of personally important memories, like Annie’s story, have been sharedat least once in the past (Thorne, McLean, & Lawrence, 2004). Thus, whereassolitary reflection occurs and is likely important, others quickly andubiquitously become our listeners, interlocutors, and co-authors of our stories.

Recently, colleagues and I proposed a process model of self-developmentthat has personal storytelling at its center (McLean et al., 2007). We suggestedthat a major way that identity is constructed and maintained is by sharing



stories with others. Sharing stories not only allows others to help to constructthe story, but also moves the story into the external world for validation. Fur-thermore, recent data have shown that there are clear aspects of conversationalcontexts that impact later story development. For example, in experimentaldesigns, Pasupathi and colleagues (Pasupathi, Alderman, & Shaw, 2007;Pasupathi & Hoyt, forthcoming) have shown that listener behavior changeshow elaborative the story is in the moment of telling, with effects that areevident on subsequent remembering occasions. These findings are also sup-ported by a wealth of longitudinal and experimental research in childhoodshowing that the way in which parents scaffold their children’s personalnarratives impacts later narrative development (see Fivush, Haden, &Reese, 2006 for a review).

Culture

The discussion of the social construction of identity brings us directly toa discussion of culture. The data are clear showing that narratives are useddifferently and vary in content across cultures (e.g., Wang & Brockmeier,2002). Cultures also vary in the existing possibilities for identities and inthe kinds of available stories used to create those identities (e.g., McAdams& Pals, 2006). For example, McAdams (2006) has shown that in Americathe ‘redemptive self ’ is a particularly relevant and powerful narrative. This isa narrative in which negative experiences are transformed into positivethat McAdams (2006) suggests, is a ‘life story made in America’ (p. 3). Forexample, in discussing the attacks of September 11, 2001, McAdams (2006,3–4) writes, ‘... men and women who had never known a foreign attackon American soil ... felt deep in their bones that bad things, even things thisbad, ultimately lead to good outcomes, that suffering is ultimately redeemed.’Using this powerful narrative of good triumphing over bad to structure one’sown experiences is not only a way to develop a culturally acceptableidentity, but is also a narrative that appears to reflect, affect, or sustainpsychological well-being (McAdams, Reynolds, Lewis, Patten, & Bowman,2001). Thus, cultures provide us with possibilities for who we might becomeand the story structures to create those identities. These narratives thatreflect cultural norms provide a structure that may ease the emergenceof identity because individuals have an acceptable story structure in whichto construct their experiences. However, for others, whose experiencesand identities are not part of the canonical narrative, this can be a particularchallenge to identity construction, to which I will return in discussingfuture directions.

Variations in experience

The final topic that I want to touch on is the kinds of experiences that areespecially potent for identity construction. A robust finding in the narrative



identity literature is that difficult experiences provide opportunities for thedevelopment of self-understanding and personal growth. At the basiclevel, meaning-making is more likely to occur in negatively valenced eventsthan in positive events (e.g., McLean & Thorne, 2003; Thorne et al.,2004). In more complex designs, researchers have shown that it is the degreeto which individuals are able to process, make meaning, and often to findredemption, in negative experiences that predicts positive well-being (e.g.,King, Scollon, Ramsey, & Williams, 2000; McAdams et al., 2001; McLean& Pratt, 2006; Pals, 2006). Laura King (2001) has termed this phenomenon‘the hard road to the good life.’ Thus, the experience of, reflection on, andresolution of past difficult experiences appears to be a powerful process inidentity development and psychological well-being more broadly (see alsoPals & McAdams, 2004). These findings are also echoed in research ondiary-writing (Pennebaker & Seagal, 1999) where repeated and analyticaljournal writing about negative events leads to increases in physical health.It is important to note the meanings made may not always be positiveand growth promoting. Therefore, this reflective process, difficult as it maybe, is the critical component to the emergence of narrative identity, butit may also be risky as we open ourselves up to the vulnerabilities ofreflection.

Although the processing of negative life experiences seems robustlyimportant to self-development and to well-being, there also seem to be someage differences in the narrative structuring of emotional events. Recently,Jennifer Pals Lilgendahl and I (McLean & Lilgendahl, forthcoming) examinedthe reasons that younger and older people report using their most positiveand most negative life story events (e.g., for identity, relationships, toguide behavior) (see Webster & McCall, 1999). We found that youngerpeople appear to use positive memories and redemptive negative memoriesto develop and sustain an identity. Older adults on the other hand, reportusing negative memories for identity functions, regardless of whether ornot they are redemptive. We suggested that in developing an identity, afocus on the positive may be important as one looks to the future with hopefor what one might become. As one nears the end of life, however, theacceptance and ability to sit with the negative may become more tolerable.Furthermore, it may be that with the more stable sense of self that comeswith age (e.g., Cohler, 1993; McLean, 2008; Sneed & Whitbourne, 2005;Troll & Skaff, 1997), one is able to acknowledge experiences of painwithout painting a silver lining (see also Pals, 2006).

Of course it is important to note that not everyone engages in thesecomplex narrative processes that facilitate personal growth and transfor-mation. There are clear developmental issues, such that children andadolescents may need help in scaffolding more challenging events, particularlythose with a negative emotional valence (Fivush et al., 2007). There are alsoindividual differences in personality that account for the engagement inmeaning-making processes, to which we now turn.



Role of personality

Narrative psychology can point to its beginnings in the writings of per-sonality theorists such as Henry Murray, Alfred Adler, and Sylvan Tomkins(1979). For example, Tomkins’ (e.g., 1979) theory suggests that we havegeneral guiding scripts to organize our many experiences, and that thesescripts usually have their origin in early childhood scenes. Adler (e.g.,1927) focused on the story of one’s earliest memory as a theme for one’slater life and personality development. Finally, Henry Murray (e.g., 1938)is often thought of as the father of personological psychology in which atradition has developed centered on the ‘study of lives.’ Researchers in thistradition focus on individual life stories as critical component to under-standing persons.

Dan McAdams (1988, 1993, 1995) has taken these earlier theories toconceptualize a more modern theory of personality, in which there are threelevels to personality: traits (e.g., extraversion, neuroticism), characteristicadaptations (e.g., goals, ego development), and life stories (see also, McAdams& Pals, 2006). Life stories are thought to constitute one’s identity, and itis only in knowing someone’s life story that one truly knows another person(McAdams, 1995).

The critical challenge for many personality psychologists is to understandthe whole person and the individuality of that person, while at the sametime understanding how to quantify and generalize aspects of persons. Forexample, there are some studies that have shown that simple, but modest,correlations exist between the three levels of personality. For example,between level one and level three, more neurotic people tell more negativestories (McAdams et al., 2004; Pals, 2004; Pennebaker & King, 1999). Incontrast, agreeable and open people tend to tell more positively toned andlinguistically positive narratives (McAdams et al., 2004; Pals, 2004). Betweenlevel two and level three, those higher on ego development report moregrowth and transformation in their stories (e.g., King et al., 2000; McLean& Fournier, forthcoming).

In interpreting these findings, it is important not to view narratives asan epiphenomena of traits. First, Bauer, McAdams and Sakeda (2005) foundthat narratives were independent of goals (level 2) and traits (level 1) inpredicting well-being, for example. Second, studying narratives provides amore dynamic view of personality and self than do traits, which are viewedas more or less stable or static over the course of the lifespan (Costa &McCrae, 1994; Roberts & DelVecchio, 2000). This does not mean thatthe relation between traits and narratives is not useful to pursue. To thecontrary, I suggest that an exciting way to embark on the endeavor ofunderstanding narrative identity is to examine the interaction between alllevels of personality.

Although it is likely that personality influences life experience, whichis the raw material for stories, the construction of those stories can just



as likely feed back into one’s personality, maintaining trait stability orinfluencing personality development. For example, in examining 52-year-oldwomen’s narratives of difficult life experiences, Pals (2006) found thatexploratory processing of those difficult experiences at age 52 mediatedthe relation between the traits of coping openness at age 21 andemotional maturity at age 61. Similarly, King has shown that egodevelopment is related to the exploration and elaboration of the selfover time in samples of parents with children with Down Syndromeand divorced women (King et al., 2000). I have also found that egodevelopment is particularly important to processing the kinds of eventsthat may lead to personal growth compared to other kinds of events(McLean & Fournier, forthcoming).

Taking a more microgenetic, or contextual, approach to identitydevelopment, Monisha Pasupathi and I (McLean & Pasupathi, forthcoming)have recently been exploring the nature of meanings about the self inconversations between romantic partners, in which a personally importantmemory is shared by one partner that he or she has never told the otherpartner before. We have been examining what predicts sharing meaningsthat elaborate episodes of self-change or self-continuity, in reference to avariety of variables including, characteristics of the teller (i.e., personalitytraits) and characteristics of the conversational context (e.g., behaviorof the listener). We have found that listeners press for stability; that is,listeners want to hear, or provide, meanings about how the teller hasstayed the same, not about change. This makes sense in that stories aboutpersonal change can be more complicated stories to tell, which mightcreate a more difficult conversational context. This effect of listener’spress for stability is exacerbated with responsive and engaged listenersand tellers who are higher on openness to experience. This suggeststhat these listeners may be actively directing the conversation towardsstability, and that open tellers are either more amenable to listener’sideas or, perhaps, they need to be reigned in. These data are an exampleof how the dynamics of everyday behavior (conversations about thepast) interact with stable aspects of personality in producing personalmeanings. Indeed, these data suggest that stable self-views are particularlyimportant to others (see also De La Ronde & Swann, 1998), such thatthe stories of growth and transformation that are of such great interest tonarrative researchers may be hard won in social situations.

Overall, these kinds of studies provide a dynamic perspective on therole of personality in the development of personal meanings about the selfwith long-term longitudinal data as well as micro analyses of conversations.Indeed, just examining one aspect of personal meanings (whether they areabout personal change or continuity) is related to various levels of personalcharacteristics and contextual influences that together bring a more complexand dynamic lens to the study of narrative meaning-making and the emer-gence of identity.



Emerging issues

Understanding the complex links between the individual differences innarrative identity construction and culture are critically important. Whileeach story is unique, commonalities in stories often reveal something aboutthe culture from which they derive, or put more eloquently, narrativesprovide ‘unique and culturally anchored meanings’ (McAdams & Pals, 2006,210). Indeed, the manner in which the individual negotiates the constructionof his or her own story within his or her culture tells us about the person,the culture, and their intersection.

I suggest that one avenue for future research linking individuals toculture is work with ‘master narratives.’ Broadly, master narratives are storystructures that we accept as a general truth for a particular group of peopleat a particular time and place (Boje, 1991). In studying master narratives,we can learn how people construct their individual stories in reference tothese broader narratives. At the same time, and more provocatively, wecan learn what society silences and what stories are untellable. Indeed, thenarratives that cultures allow and encourage to emerge may not alwaysmatch the personal narratives of the individual. For example, certain storiesmay be silenced, such as sexual abuse or rape (Fivush, 2004b), and certainpeople may be silenced, such as ethnic minority groups (Michaels, 1991),women (Gilligan, 1982), or homosexuals (Cohler & Hammack, 2006;Weststrate & McLean, forthcoming) (see also Cue, Koppel, & Hirst, 2007).Silencing refers to the explicit or implicit message that one’s stories, andconsequently, one’s self, are not acceptable, interesting, or relevant, thusrendering one’s voice unheard. Therefore, the canonical narrative in a givenculture is given privilege and authority over the non-canonical narrative.Voice is given to those people who have personal narratives that match thecanonical narrative, as their experiences are both socially accepted andassumed. Conversely, those people who cannot identify with the canonicalnarrative have experiences that are silenced.

Fivush (2004a, b) has eloquently placed this discussion of voicing andsilencing into one of place and power. Simply put, we are located withina certain ‘place’ (e.g., historical or cultural context) and within a certain powerstructure (e.g., one has more or less authority in a given place). Thus, one’splace and relative power will determine how much his or her voice is heardor silenced, and most relevant here, how and whether one’s identity willsuccessfully emerge.

Narrative researchers have done a better job at identifying the appropriateand healthy ways to story the self than they have at identifying the untellableand the silenced self and, of course, part of this is methodological. Forexample, the redemptive self is an American master narrative (e.g., McAdams,2006). That is, one way to narrate past difficulties is to find the silverlining, and to do otherwise may risk censure, misunderstanding, or rejection.Furthermore, McAdams et al. (2001) have convincingly shown that those



with less redemptive life stories are less psychologically healthy. One questionthat arises from these latter results is whether that lower psychological healthis due to the individual inability to construct the ‘right’ story or to thecultural constraints that prevent other stories from emerging?

One place that has been shown to be a fruitful arena for research onvoice and silence is with the narrative identities of homosexuals. As gaysand lesbians do not inhabit the canonical heterosexual narrative in mostcultures, their narratives are silenced through the active oppression oftheir experiences (overt discrimination) and are passively oppressed byvirtue of exclusion from the canonical dialogue, a more subtle form ofsilencing. The fact that gays and lesbians need to ‘come out’ is evidenceof their isolation from the canonical narrative, placing a burden on themto overtly acknowledge their difference from the mainstream narrative,unlike heterosexuals who assume the canonical narrative as their ownwith no need for public acknowledgement. Indeed, King and N. Smith(2004) examined how much gay individuals elaborated on future gay andstraight possible selves. They found that greater elaboration on a gaypossible self was positively correlated with well-being. In another study,King and S. Smith (2004) found that gay individuals who reported comingout stories that were situated in warm, interpersonal contexts had higherwell-being. One way to interpret these results is that the opportunity tovoice, or elaborate, on one’s identity is critically important to psychologicalfunctioning, and that his voicing happens within interpersonal, acceptingcontexts.

Provocatively for researchers, however, over the past 50 years, the socialclimate for homosexuals has evolved dramatically (e.g., greater legal rightsfor gay partners, the identification of prominent gay politicians, greaterrepresentation of gay people in the media), making gay identity an interestingsubject for understanding the influence that culture and changing masternarratives have on the developing self. In other words, the decade inwhich a gay or lesbian person comes of age might in fact influence how heor she constructs his or her self. Moreover, such cultural shifts are reflectedin the dynamics of voice and silence for this population, with a shifttowards greater voice for homosexuals.

Building on previous qualitative research on gay male identity in relationto historical cohort (Cohler & Hammack, 2006), Nic Weststrate and I(Weststrate & McLean, forthcoming) have conducted a large scale studyto examine the phenomenon of voicing and silencing in gay identity. Weconducted an anonymous Internet-based survey with a wide age range ofadult participants, in which one task was to report a self-defining memorypertaining to one’s sexuality. This was described as an event that isremembered vividly, helps him or her to understand themselves better asa gay or lesbian individual, leads to strong positive or negative feelings,and is a memory that is thought about frequently (modified from Singer& Salovey, 1993). We coded the event content of these narratives (e.g., about



sex, coming out, relationships), and we found support for the idea thatolder cohorts experienced greater silencing and more recent cohorts seemedto have more voice to their identities. For example, in the cohort thatcame of age in the 1960s (when discrimination was widespread, and whenhomosexuality was still listed in the DSM) there was one dominant narrativeabout gay identity and it was about sex. For the cohort that came of ageat the millennium (when gay marriage is legal in some countries andlocales, and when some politicians, talk show hosts, and movie stars areopenly gay), there was no one dominant kind of narrative, instead therewere many stories about identities, some having to do with sex, otherswith relationships, discrimination, and coming out, to name a few. In thisstudy we were able to see how the possibilities for voice grew with eachgeneration, at the same time that the culture was changing in terms ofacceptance of this identity. This paradigm of studying cultural masternarratives has also been applied to studies of gender (e.g., Thorne &McLean, 2003) and the struggles of Palestinian and Israeli youth (Hammack,2006), and provides a new paradigm for understanding the emergence ofnarrative identity.

Another way to study cultural master narratives in relation to silencedidentities is to tackle the question of what stories are not told, why, andwhat the consequences are of having an untold self ? Recently, we havefound that when asked to report stories that are important to the self, butthat are untold, transgressions are the most dominant kind of story toemerge (Pasupathi et al., 2007). Transgressions are a particularly interest-ing identity narrative to study because there are at least two ways to goabout narrating them, both of which have consequences for the self. Onecan narrate transgressions to mitigate the impact on the self via rational-ization of justification, or one can make meaning of them and integratethem into the self. Mitigating the impact of a transgression may preservea positive sense of self (e.g., Baumeister, Stilman, & Wotman, 1990);yet, from a narrative perspective, finding a way to understand and inte-grate a transgression should provide great opportunities for growth. Inother words, understanding when and why one has transgressed may havethe power to transform one’s thoughts about the self and one’s behavior(Breen & McLean, forthcoming). This may be particularly important forpeople who have a history of transgressing, such as criminals. Indeed,recently Andrea Breen and I have suggested that transforming from juveniledelinquency involves desisting from criminal behavior as well as finding away to make meaning of transgressions (Breen & McLean, forthcoming;see also, Maruna, 2001). What makes transgressions more intriguing isthat, as life experiences, they have qualities that make them ripe formeaning-making, namely negative emotion, but we do not appear tohave a master narrative for them, given that they are not told. Thus, theconsequences of these contested stories are an exciting area for futureresearch.



Conclusions

In concluding, I return to Annie who began this discussion of the emergenceof identity. Annie is a typical adolescent, still in the process of discoveringherself, reflecting on her specific life experiences to find meaning in themand unity for her self. The difficult event of surgery led to a cascade ofdifficult experiences, but provided her with an opportunity to learn aboutherself and to allow a personal identity to begin to emerge. Intriguingly,she notes that it was not the event of surgery that caused this reflectiveprocess to begin, but the ‘other issues that came out of it.’ Thus, events canserve as catalysts for seeing things in a different light and for self-discovery.The hope for Annie is that working through the process of storying thisperiod in her life will lead to the emergence of a well-founded identity– one that she has explored, pondered, and earned – and a general feelingof integration as she embarks on her adult life.

In this paper, I have argued that the reflective meaning-making processis one of the major mechanisms by which identity emerges in adolescenceand is revised, deepened, and sustained throughout the life course. We havedifferent kinds of experiences that afford greater or lesser opportunities formeaning-making, and we are different kinds of people who experienceand interpret events according to various aspects of our personalities, age,and historical and cultural place in time. Continuing to explore the linksbetween experience, individuals, and culture is critical as our understandingof this fascinating and complex process continues to grow.

Short Biography

Kate McLean’s research focuses on how individuals represent, tell, and oth-erwise manage momentous memories, and how such memory managementinforms the development of identity in adolescence and adulthood. She isparticularly interested in the development of narrative identity and individualdifferences in developmental trajectories across the lifespan, as well as hownarrative patterns predict well-being and positive functioning. She haspublished articles in journals such as Developmental Psychology, Journal ofPersonality, Journal of Research in Personality, and Personality and Social PsychologyReview. She is currently co-editing a book on narrative identity in adolescencewith Monisha Pasupathi. She is presently an assistant professor at WesternWashington University in Bellingham, WA. She was previously on faculty atthe University of Toronto for 3 years. She has a BA from Mills College inOakland, CA, and holds a PhD from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Jennifer Pals Lilgendahl and Lewis WebsterJones for comments on a previous draft of this manuscript.



Endnote

* Correspondence address: Western Washington University, 516 High Street, MS 9089, Departmentof Psychology, Bellingham, WA 98225, USA; 360-650-3570. Email: [email protected]

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The Emergence of Narrative Identity