Document Type

Book Chapter

Publication Date

4-25-2025

Keywords

identity development, motivated agent, narrative psychology personality

Disciplines

Developmental Psychology

Abstract

McAdams’s life story model of identity is a narrative approach to understanding personality which draws on the psychoanalytic writings of Eric Erikson and the personology theory of Henry A. Murray. Other influences include Jerome Bruner and Theodore R. Sarbin who introduced and popularized the term narrative psychology. McAdams, a professor from Northwestern University, believed understanding human behavior should be grounded in the knowledge that people make sense of their lives by constructing and internalizing stories. According to this model, individuals begin to organize their lives in terms of self-stories in late adolescence and young adulthood. People reconstruct their past and anticipate their future in terms of internalized and evolving life stories McAdams’s research showed that examining how people arrange and integrate the plot points of their lives was the key to understanding how they construct their identities.

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