Summary Of Reading Lives: Narrative And Identity Formation
887 Words4 Pages
Jongha Lee(2216798)
Reading Lives: Narrative and Identity Formation/ Dr. Karen Scheib
09/29/2015
Narrative Identity Formation
The three books Reading our Lives, Living Autobiographically, Pastoral Care, History Lessons and The Redemptive Self cover Narrative Personality Theory. Especially, Reading our Lives is for people who study gerontology, psychology, anthropology and history. The book connected the narrative personality process to the relationship to growing older. Especially the author suggested ‘growing older’ instead of getting old in the book. This book explains features of aging that central theoretical models consider through gerontology, which focus on the visible, measurable, or outside dimensions of aging. Drawing on the new…show more content… The authors also explains the idea that our lives are like novels, albeit ones in which the words and the plot are ever changing, and whose ends are yet unwritten. Especially, he explains his argument by referring to the storytelling mind, the developmental psychology, variations in narrative identity, the role of the audience, the life story interview and the redemptive self. Our consciousness starts when the brain is around the age of 2 years old. For that period, most children acquire extended consciousness. McAdams mentioned the Two Major Themes in Narrative. He suspected that we would almost certainly end up telling how characters in our lives aimed to find, achieve, or experience one or both of two fundamental human motives: agency and…show more content… For example, my father drank every day, so it caused him to bother the family by creating a terror atmosphere. Then, I feared that he came to the house every day. I had hurt from father for a long time. However, I did not express my emotion to the father. I also had never got praised by my parents. My parents just loosened my hide. When I was a child, I thought that I was a nothing in the world because nobody acknowledged me. However, my self-esteem was recovered when I went to university. I studied theology hard, so I got the scholarship for 3 years. After I received scholarship, I felt a sense of achievement. This experience gave me confidence that I can do anything. Although my parents made me be low-esteem, the experience make me motive to achieve something in my life. As my experience, my low self-esteem was recovered by the scholarship from the