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

“Current research, however, has focused on the development of the life story (Habermas & Bluck, 2000), with emphasis on adolescence (e.g., McLean, 2005) and young adulthood (e.g., McAdams et al., 2006; McLean & Pratt, 2006) as well as attention to generativity in midlife (McAdams, 2006).”

“From adolescence onward these narratives are considered to be the building-blocks of identity formation, and help individuals to understand and integrate a variety of positive and negative lifeexperiences [19].”

“The creation and subsequent transmission of the childbirth narrative from mother to daughter raises the following questions: How do the affective and descriptive qualities of the story of one’s birth link to the emerging self-concept of daughters who have recently begun the process of forging their own life stories (…”

“The ability to engage in life refl ection or life review emerges in adolescence (Habermas & Bluck, 2000 ), as we become aware of ourselves and the gestalt of our lives.”

“Habermas and Bluck (2000) introduced the concept of autobiographical reasoning as the process by which the life story is formed in adolescence.”

“This idea is based on the concept of ‘narrative identity’, which refers to the personal life stories that individuals construct to understand who they are 59,60 .”

“Further, memory for the temporal order of past events provides a fundamental form of coherence in our life narratives (Habermas & Bluck, 2000).”

“Whilst coherence has been defined and used transdisciplinary in slightly differing ways (Baerger and McAdams, 1999; Habermas and Bluck, 2000; Lysaker et al., 2002; Reese et al., 2011; Adler et al., 2018), it is generally agreed upon that it is a cornerstone of communication (Labov, 1970).”

“For example, therapeutic journal writing provides survivors the foundation to engage in insightful cognitive processes, organize thoughts and emotions, and gain a deeper understanding of their traumatic experiences (Haberman & Bluck, 2000).”

“Habermas and Bluck (2000) argue that the life story itself only emerges in adolescence due to the development of cognitive abilities such as creating causal links between different autobiographical stories; although those researchers subsequently did in fact develop a procedure that successfully…”

“…theorists have examined the identities of adults (Bauer, McAdams, & Pals, 2008; McAdams, 2006; McAdams & Pals, 2006; Singer, 2004), adolescents (Habermas & Bluck, 2000; McAdams, 2008; McLean, 2005), the elderly (McLean, 2008) and marginalised populations (yi & Shorter-Gooden, 1999) through the…”

“Basic aspects of temporal coherence are acquired during the preschool years, but the ability to solve more complex temporal-sequencing tasks spanning larger periods of time only emerges during late middle childhood, at around the age of 9 years (Friedman & Lyon, 2005; Habermas & Bluck, 2000).”

“For individuals, research has shown that continuity is not something given, but rather a construction that is created and maintained in the face of change over the life course (Habermas & Bluck, 2000).”

“…disconnection experiences are embedded in a life phase where autobiographic reasoning processes and social pressure from peers (Erikson, 1968; Habermas & Bluck, 2000) both facilitate reflexivity and condition the relevance of disconnection, while simultaneously making intentionality and the…”

“Young adults may especially fi nd a sense of coherence from re fl ecting on who they are and how this may relate to the person they aspire to be in their future lives (Habermas & Bluck, 2000).”

“Then, given the age of the sample, the process of creating meaning is important to promote the evolutionary processes of this developmental age, such as the definition of self and identity and the growth of autobiographical process capacities (Habermas and Bluck 2000).”

“Habermas and Bluck [20] and McAdams [21] use the term thematic coherence to refer to the ability to connect disparate experiences together through underlying thematic connections.”

“…that future research explore this further by studying the factors impeding improved well-being after discontinuing NSSI, particularly since we cannot exclude that the narrative coherence suggested by momentum points could be the result of lingual and cognitive development (Habermas & Bluck, 2000).”

“…such as the narrative personality model of change which explores changes in personality traits through examining how people integrate life changing events and structure narrative memory into their life stories to create a “narrative identity” (Habermas & Bluck, 2000; McAdams, 1985; Singer, 2004).”

“Accordingly, only life story memories that are informative in regard to the self and thus biographically salient are theorised to get included into life narratives (Conway et al., 2004; Habermas & Bluck, 2000).”

“In fact, difficulties in psychological adaptation after a negative or traumatic event could lead to a critical development in the formation of a coherent self (Habermas & Bluck, 2000) and a definite identity (Ogle, Rubin, & Siegler, 2013).”

“The latter would be especially interesting for entire life narratives (Habermas & Bluck, 2000) as the most encompassing and identity-relevant narratives.”

“Narratives used to elicit stories are based on the notion that autobiographical memories become organized around identity during adolescence (Habermas & Bluck, 2000) and continue through as a life story to adulthood.”

“…24, No. 2, 240–256, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2014.1001991 examination of childhood memories allowed us to explore the extent to which memories of unique versus repeated events are available as influences on the self-concept and life story (Habermas & Bluck, 2000) at emerging adulthood.”

“Through constructing personal stories, a person establishes a sense of coherence that provides a sense of continuity through life (Habermas & Bluck, 2000) and makes connections between life events and one’s self-image (Linde, 1993; Pals, 2006).”

“Understanding past events is a crucial component of this process, and adolescents and young adults may build identity through finding meaning in the shared experiences of themselves and their families (Habermas & Bluck, 2000; McLean & Breen, 2009).”

“These effects are seen throughout the preschool years and extend into adolescence when children begin to construct more comprehensive and thematic life narratives ( Habermus & Bluck, 2000 ).”

“Habermas and Bluck (2000 ), summarizing across the work of Linde (1993 ), Krantz (1998 ), and others, argue that “when causal links are lacking ( discoherence ; Linde, 1993 ), life appears to have been determined by chance and therefore to be meaningless” (p.”

“…to be told, a recognizable location, a defined moment in time, and specific characters interacting with the narrator and dialoging about relevant topics (Angus & McLeod, 2004; Bruner, 1990; Dimaggio & Semerari, 2004; Habermas & Bluck, 2000; Hermans & Dimaggio, 2004; Mandler, 1984; Neimeyer, 2000).”

“The self-confrontation method was based upon Laura’s own life story, which is less abstracting than standardized questionnaires since the personal context of her experiences was added [25,26].”

“For coherence, one can use the classification suggested by Habermas and Bluck (2000).”

“…to recall information about the what, when, and where of self-referential past episodes, as well as to plan future behaviors, thus contributing to the configuration of one’s life story as told from a subjective point of view (Tulving, 1985; Habermas and Bluck, 2000; Singer et al., 2013).”

“Narrative identity is important because it coincides with the emergence of identity development and is a means of framing identity by connecting chapters of one’s life for a coherent view of the self (Habermas & Bluck, 2000; McAdams &Guo, 2014).”

“The researchers initially provided sufficient information to the participants and prepared them for this process (Habermas & Bluck, 2000).”

“Relating AMs to the concept of self (e.g., Brewer, 1986, 1996; Nelson, 1993; Tulving, 2002), previous work assumed a reciprocal association between autobiographical information and personality (e.g., Conway & PleydellPearce, 2000; Habermas & Bluck, 2000; McAdams, 2001; Rubin & Siegler, 2004).”

“Habermas and Bluck (2000) speak of four different types of coherence that constitute autobiographical reasoning, and that could be observed in people of different cultures worldwide: temporal, causal, cultural and thematic.”

“memory functions are deemed important because of their impact on a coherent life narrative.(38,39) In contrast to Bosboom and Almeida,(36) we focus on older adults with Alzheimer disease (AD) in residential care.”

“Given these cognitive demands, Habermas and Bluck (2000) proposed that the consolidation of a global narrative identity depends on four distinct cognitive capacities, including the capacity to sequence events into beginning, middle, and ending; the capacity to draw causal connections between the…”

“In early adulthood, this meaning making is likely to become more sophisticated due to individuals’ increased abilities to understand the cumulative role of events and circumstance in shaping human actions (Habermas & Bluck, 2000).”

“Drawing on the work of Habermas and Bluck (2000), McAdams (2001) suggests these strategies involve biography (events belonging to a life lived within cultural conventions), temporality (the flow of time which frames one’s sense of development), causality (how events are connected and caused, or…”

“This includes reasoning about the past and future dynamics of human psychosocial systems (Habermas & Bluck, 2000); for example, they become better at “perspective taking”—making reasoned conjectures about what someone else is thinking and feeling—and what they would think or feel in response to a…”

“E-mail: behiceerci@hotmail.com 3 (Habermas & Bluck, 2000).”

“The development of narrative identity is a major psychosocial task of adolescence and emerging adulthood (Erikson, 1968; Habermas & Bluck, 2000; McAdams & Cox, 2010).”

“Habermas and colleagues proposed four types of coherence as essential for the life story (Habermas & Bluck, 2000), and in subsequent research, demonstrated an increase in global coherence from ages 8 to 20 in autobiographical narratives (Habermas & de Silveira, 2008).”

“One of the main interests of our study is to show that autobiographical speech can be characterized quantitatively via mathematical tools borrowed from non-linear time-series analysis ( Habermas & Bluck, 2000 ).”

“Multiple episodes of one’s life can be brought together by giving them similar meanings (Habermas & Bluck, 2000), organizing them along a coherent timeline (Bluck & Alea, 2008), relating them to the stories of others (Fivush, Bohanek, & Duke, 2008), or making them fit into cultural autobiographical…”

“As identity exploration and identity formation as well as the creation of a coherent life story play a particularly prominent role in adolescence and emerging adulthood (cf. Habermas & Bluck, 2000), these phases of life have been studied most extensively in this respect.”

“Adolescence has been identified as an important period for the development of self-concept [1].”

“…may vary across languages and across cultural communities in three main areas: (1) narrative content, which includes ideas and topics [32, 40, 41]; (2) structural organization, fl ow, and macro-level patterns of stories; and (3) functions that focus on intentions, goals, and purposes [4, 42].”

“…identities and identity-change; however, to facilitate our understanding of our selves to grasp what we can learn about our selves and our explaining our selves to others, our narratives need to go beyond our perception of the event (Habermas & Bluck, 2000; Pasupathi, Mansour, & Brubaker, 2007).”

“…me hasten to add that there is lots of good (and up-to-date) work being done on youth identity, much of it deriving from Dan McAdams’s ideas about narrative identity, in adolescence and beyond (see, e.g., Habermas & Bluck, 2000; McLean, 2008; McLean & Pratt, 2006; McLean, Pasupathi, & Pals, 2007).”

“…for young adults (Harris et al., 2014), the greater use of reflective function for the future is attributable to the identity formation processes that take place during late adolescence and early adulthood (e.g., Conway & Holmes, 2004; Habermas & Bluck, 2000; McLean, 2005; Webster & McCall, 1999).”

“Importantly, in adolescence, the generation of a meaningful life story emerges (Habermas and Bluck, 2000).”

“A more recent trend is to view identity as a narrative that integrates one’s past and present (e.g., Habermas and Bluck 2000; McAdams 1996; Singer 2004).”

“This process of drawing relations between the self and experience within the context of a personal story, in turn, functions under the moniker “autobiographical reasoning” (see Habermas & Bluck, 2000) and manifests primarily in one of two forms.”

“For example, younger adults, who face the developmental challenge of forging a new adult identity, score more highly on the Identity function than do older adults (Habermas & Bluck, 2000).”

“Life story construction begins in adolescence (Habermas & Bluck, 2000), but includes important events from our childhood.”