Getting a life: The emergence of the life story in adolescence.

“The development of a narrative identity is a gradual process that is reciprocally influenced by the individual’s repertoire of cognitive skills and the relational and cultural contexts in which he or she lives (Blustein & Nourmir, 1996; Habermas & Bluck, 2000).”

“The experiential, phenomenological dimension of these “reliving” operations is often characterized as a personal life story (Habermas and Bluck, 2000; Fivush, 2008).”

“…events can particularly alter the self as soon as they are interpreted or linked to previous experience or previous self-knowledge, by means of reflective processes called “autobiographical reasoning” (Blagov and Singer, 2004; Habermas and Köber, 2015; McLean et al., 2007; Singer et al., 2013).”

“Other researchers refer to the relevance of the future in clinical improvement (Habermas & Bluck, 2000).”

“…& Rahe, 1967; Lundberg, Theorell, & Lind, 1975; Tennant, 2002), life-span psychology (Galambos & Krahn, 2008; Gluck & Bluck, 2007; Habermas, 2007; Habermas & Bluck, 2000; Hareven & Masoka, 1988; PerrigChiello & Perren, 2005), personality psychology (Blagov & Singer, 2004; McAdams, 2001; Singer &…”

“The importance of the life stories as a strong trigger of reflection and self-improvement has been discussed in several studies [8, 16].”

“…first, by arguing that autobiographical memory is constantly updated and reorganized according to self-relevant parameters; second, by insisting on the dialogical nature of this self-construction through the notion of “autobiographical reasoning” (Bluck and Habermas 2000; Habermas and Bluck 2000).”

“Creating a coherent life story is key to a healthy identity development and leads to feelings of continuity, purpose, and meaning (Kernberg, 1984; Antonovsky, 1985; Bluck and Habermas, 2000; Habermas and Bluck, 2000; Habermas and de Silveira, 2008).”

“As part of the process of exploring and establishing a mature personal identity, adolescents begin to construct a personal narrative that organizes and unifies the developing sense of self (Habermas & Bluck, 2000; McAdams, 2001).”

“It has been theorised and demonstrated that elements of the life story develop in childhood (Habermas & Bluck, 2000; Habermas & de Silveira, 2008), and thus the early adolescents demonstrated some ability in abstracting beyond the details of an event and connecting it to a personal narrative.”

“…formation and role socialization which require active efforts by the developing individual to forge a strong sense of adult identity along with a coherent life story (Chandler, et al., 2003; Erikson, 1968; Habermas & Bluck, 2000; Kroger, Martinussen, & Marcia, 2010; Waterman & Archer, 1990).”

“Narrative theories in psychology developed to provide richer descriptions of subjective experience than trait conceptions allowed (Habermas & Bluck, 2000; McAdams, 2011b; McAdams & Pals, 2006; McLean et al., 2020).”

“As former teachers of early adolescents, we used our knowledge of students’ developmental needs for assistance in developing life narratives (Habermas & Bluck, 2000) and made informed judgments about how to elicit and interpret their descriptions (Polkinghorne, 2004; Schwandt, 1994).”

“Thematic coherency in family stories allows storytellers to consider the past in light of current events and to look toward the future guided by the shared family identity (Haberman & Bluck, 2000).”

“This is important as ‘… autobiographical memory is constantly updated as life progresses … the view of the personal past is also reinterpreted and reintegrated driven by age-typical concerns and fueled by significant life events’ (Habermas and Bluck 2000; Bluck and Habermas 2001).”

“Age may affect storytelling abilities in the selection interview, especially because young applicants may have a less consolidated life story (Habermas and Bluck 2000) or because older adults produce better-structured stories (Pratt and Robins 1991).”

“…are substantial age-related changes in the cognitive and emotion regulation skills needed to construct coherent and meaningful accounts of past experiences (e.g., Habermas & Bluck, 2000; McClean & Thorne, 2003; Tsethlikai & Greenhoot, 2006), and these have implications for the links to well-being.”

“The rationale for this choice is that, according to narrative psychology (Angus & McLeod, 2004; Bruner, 1990; Dimaggio & Semerari, 2004; Habermas & Bluck, 2000; Hermans & Dimaggio, 2004; Mandler, 1984; Neimeyer, 2000), individuals, when narrating, segment their speech of their own accord.”

“This life script definition follows what Habermas and Bluck (2000) termed the cultural concept of biography, suggesting a set of biographically salient events with related age norms (Neugarten, Moore, & Lowe, 1965).”

“Language and narratives play critical roles in autobiographical memory (Habermas & Bluck, 2000; Rubin, 2006), and developmental research suggests that language is not simply the way in which memories are expressed, but is instrumental in providing an organizational structure for remembered events…”

“Young adulthood is a particularly important period in this process of construction of a life story (Habermas and Bluck 2000), i.e., of a coherent account of one’s own life in narrative form.”

“Through this integrative process, the mPFC might contribute to contextualize specific event representationswithin one's life story, thus renderingmemories and future thoughts truly autobiographical (Conway, 2005; D'Argembeau, 2015; Fivush, 2011; Habermas and Bluck, 2000).”

“Cultivating an endurable sense of meaning and purpose in life has been suggested as one of the critical developmental tasks for individuals in late adolescence (Baxter Magolda, 1992; Habermas & Bluck, 2000; McLean, 2005) and emerging adulthood (Arnett, 2000).”

“They provide a contribution to personal identity, give a sense of coherence to our lives (Conway, 1997; Conway & Holmes, 2004; McAdams, 2001, 2006; McAdams et al., 2006), and create the building blocks of a life story (Habermas & Bluck, 2000; McLean, Pasupathi, & Pals, 2007).”

“Creating a coherent life story also depends on autobiographical reasoning, which includes reasoning about connections between events and the self (Habermas & Bluck, 2000).”

“Autobiographical narratives jointly form a stable identity, beginning in adolescence (McAdams, 1995; Habermas and Bluck, 2000), and continuing throughout the life span (Singer and Blagov, 2004; Waters et al., 2014).”

“Indeed, excessive self-focus, self-identity salience, and self-referent reactivity to negative information are core features of depression (Farb et al. 2011; Habermas and Bluck 2000; Mor and Winquist 2002).”

“Emotional or significant life events may be catalysts for personal examination of the self-concept, particularly when these stimulate opportunities to reassess purpose and meaning in life and construct an alternative future self that aligns with realistic possibilities (Habermas and Bluck, 2000).”

“It may also reflect the increasing appreciation of autobiographical memory during adolescent and adult periods (Habermas & Bluck, 2000).”

“This narrative identity emerges in adolescence and provides individuals with a sense of continuity and purpose in life (Habermas and Bluck, 2000; Habermas, 2019).”

“Habermas ( 2007 ) looked at age differences regarding two aspects of cultural concept of biography (Habermas & Bluck, 2000 ): (a) biographical salience, operationally defined as whether an event would be expected to be included in a life narrative and (b) age norms for life events.”

“The criteria were influenced by narrative theory and previous clinical research, particularly those proposed by Baerger and McAdams (1999), Habermas and Bluck (2000) and Androutsopoulou et al. (2004), which were adapted to ensure their applicability to war trauma and to fragmented and disorganised…”

“…life-changing events that occur during this period, such as graduating from college, starting a career, getting married, and having children (McAdams, 2011); and given the fact that the capacity for constructing a personal life story is well in place by emerging adulthood (Habermas & Bluck, 2000).”

“…consciousness that is inherent to Tulving’s (1985, 2002) original conceptualization of mental time travel, whereas the temporally extended sense of objective self encompasses semantized autobiographical memory and narrative continuity (e.g., Conway & Pleydell-Pearce, 2000; Habermas & Bluck, 2000).”

“Psychologists additionally advocated a more mainstream positioning of the construct (Breakwell, 1986; Habermas & Bluck, 2000), pointing to the human need to achieve and sustain self-continuity (Vignoles, 2011; Vignoles et al., 2006).”

“Bruner’s view has received considerable support: Habermas and Bluck (2000) suggested that “temporal ordering provides a fundamental form of coherence in life narratives” (p. 750) and considered temporal coherence as a type of causation among events essential in the construction of the…”

“It is in adolescence that, for the first time, young people begin to draw connections across life events and between life events and their personality (Habermas & Bluck, 2000; Habermas & de Silveira, 2008; Habermas & Reese, 2015; Reese et al., 2014).”

“However, one may question whether the pattern of change in adolescents is similar to the one found in adults, as the capacity to elaborate mature autobiographic thought is gradually developed during adolescence (Habermas & Bluck, 2000; McAdams, 1985).”

“Narratives are tools to develop identity by reflecting on past experiences in relation to the present and future self (Habermas and Bluck, 2000).”

“Narrative processing includes meaning making (Habermas & Bluck, 2000), whereby the person draws lessons from AMs about the self, relationships, or life.”

“Second, while children can access event-specific autobiographic knowledge, some claim that they have not yet developed the cognitive skills to connect single events with each other to tell a full life-story, a skill which emerges in adolescence (Habermas & Bluck, 2000).”

“Finally, autobiographical reasoning is another dimension of SDMs that is interesting to explore (eg, Habermas & Bluck, 2000 ; Singer & Bluck, 2001 ; Staudinger, 2001 ).”

“The mature life story also develops in adolescence (Habermas & Bluck, 2000; Habermas & Reese, 2015; McAdams, 2013).”

“Finally, integrative coding schemes are autobiographical reasoning schemes that attempt to capture how the protagonist engages in processing what this event means specifically for self-understanding (Bruner, 1991; Fivush & Baker-Ward, 2005; Habermas & Bluck, 2000).”

“Narratives contain interpretations of personal experiences that allow individuals to integrate contradicting ideas and emotions into a self that is continuous across time and context (Bruner, 1990; Habermas & Bluck, 2000; McAdams, 2003; McLean, 2005; Pillemer, 1998).”

“People’s selfauthorship begins early in life with the emergence of autobiographical memory in childhood (Fivush, 2011), an understanding of features in storytelling (Mandler, 1984), and the development of autobiographical reasoning skills from late childhood (Habermas & Bluck, 2000).”

“…in later adolescence or adulthood that narratives of past events are integrated with one another to fashion a life story or autobiography (e.g., Fivush & Zaman, 2014; Habermas & Bluck, 2000; Thomsen, 2009; see Bohn & Berntsen, 2014), that serves as a further aid to remembering over the long term.”

“In fact, the coherence of life story emerges through two complementary processes: autobiographical reasoning and temporal coherence [2,6].”

“Although this idea of “the path” has been described in the theoretical literature (Habermas, 2007; Habermas & Bluck, 2000), there has been little attention to how individuals learn about this path.”

“…past events and self-attributes (for instance, “ that journey changed many things for me; I understood what is meant by the meaning of life, and since then I am more self-confident ” ; “ When I came back to Vietnam, I realized that in the meantime I had grown away from my own culture ” ) [19,20].”

“, social comparisons and direct interactions) suggestive of prosocial traits and themes during self-construal processes (see Markus and Wurf 1987; Habermas and Bluck 2000), such as attempts to connect the self to the larger community (see Erikson 1968; Youniss et al.”

“Life events constitute and organize autobiographical knowledge (cf. Conway & Pleydell-Pearce, 2000) and may thus serve as (temporal) landmarks that organize memory (cf. Shum, 1998) and constitute one’s life story (McAdams, 1996; cf. Habermas & Bluck, 2000).”

“Unlike life review, life reflection is not confined to old age but is a lifelong process starting in adolescence (cf. Habermas & Bluck, 2000).”

“Narrative coherence can be defined as the extent to which either full life narratives (i.e. global coherence; Habermas & Bluck, 2000; Habermas & de Silveira, 2008; Habermas & Reese, 2015; Köber et al., 2015) or single-event narratives (i.e. local coherence; Baerger & McAdams, 1999; Reese et al.,…”

“The narrative facilitates thematic, causal, and temporal connections between the experience and the self (Habermas & Bluck, 2000).”

“These memories and sensibilities in turn guide collective and individual agency (T. Habermas & Bluck, 2000; Waters, Shallcross, & Fivush, 2013).”

“The autonoetic tool of autobiographical memory (Markowitsch & Staniloiu, 2011) can act as a resource as they negotiate this complex path to adulthood (Habermas & Bluck, 2000).”

“Young adulthood is devoted to creating a sense of self (e.g., Arnett, 2000; Erikson, 1968; Habermas & Bluck, 2000), whereas in late life one’s perceptions of self are more stable (Roberts & DelVecchio, 2000).”

“Sharing personal experiences by storytelling is a fundamental aspect of human social behavior (Fivush et al., 2005; Fivush and Nelson, 2004; Habermas and Bluck, 2000; Bamberg, 2006; Thorne, 2004; Bohanek et al., 2008; Thorne and Nam, 2009; McLean and Thorne, 2003; Pratt and Fiese, 2004).”

“We expected the increase to start in the lower age range, because children have not yet acquired a concept of life (Habermas & Bluck, 2000).”