The Life Story: Its Development and Relation to Narration and Personal Identity.

In this article, we review, on three grounds, the nature of the life story. First, we evaluate the appropriateness of the proposal that the life story emerges in adolescence (the time of the traditional identity crisis). Second, we examine the relation between big stories (of which the life story is one) and small stories. Finally, we consider whether the construction of the life story (and narration more broadly) represents the sole mode of identity formation. It is argued here that (a) the belief that adolescence marks the emergence of the life story is based on an unnecessarily limiting requisite for autobiographical reasoning; (b) collective understanding of stories, big and small, would be furthered through a more thorough consideration of their relation; and (c) the construction of a life story represents one of at least two viable routes for identity formation; identity can also be attained via a non-narrative, paradigmatic route.