TY - JOUR
T1 - The Psychology of Life Stories
AU - McAdams, Dan P.
PY - 2001/6
Y1 - 2001/6
N2 - Recent years have witnessed an upsurge of interest among theorists and researchers in autobiographical recollections, life stories, and narrative approaches to understanding human behavior and experience. An important development in this context is D. P. McAdams's life story model of identity (1985, 1993, 1996), which asserts that people living in modern societies provide their lives with unity and purpose by constructing internalized and evolving narratives of the self. The idea that identity is a life story resonates with a number of important themes in developmental, cognitive, personality, and cultural psychology. This article reviews and integrates recent theory and research on life stories as manifested in investigations of self-understanding, autobiographical memory, personality structure and change, and the complex relations between individual lives and cultural modernity.
AB - Recent years have witnessed an upsurge of interest among theorists and researchers in autobiographical recollections, life stories, and narrative approaches to understanding human behavior and experience. An important development in this context is D. P. McAdams's life story model of identity (1985, 1993, 1996), which asserts that people living in modern societies provide their lives with unity and purpose by constructing internalized and evolving narratives of the self. The idea that identity is a life story resonates with a number of important themes in developmental, cognitive, personality, and cultural psychology. This article reviews and integrates recent theory and research on life stories as manifested in investigations of self-understanding, autobiographical memory, personality structure and change, and the complex relations between individual lives and cultural modernity.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=0002547278&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=0002547278&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1037/1089-2680.5.2.100
DO - 10.1037/1089-2680.5.2.100
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0002547278
SN - 1089-2680
VL - 5
SP - 100
EP - 122
JO - Review of General Psychology
JF - Review of General Psychology
IS - 2
ER -