Telling Stories about Ourselves: Interdisciplinary Exploration of Narrativist Paradigm in Literary Studies and Psychology

Julia Vassilieva, Monash University, Victoria, Australia

Abstract: The past three decades in the development of human sciences have been marked by an explosion of interest in narrative both as an object of study and as a methodological tool which has gained such momentum that it has been defined as a narrativist turn. Since the 1980s the study of narrative has gradually moved away from the dominant semiotic or structuralist perspectives, which had focused primarily on literary texts, to the examination of narrative as represented in wide and diverse fields of knowledge and practice. An interest in narrative as a mode of production and as an explanatory paradigm became prominent in communication and media theory, pedagogy, sociology, ethnography, jurisprudence, politics and artificial intelligence studies. That was followed by the proliferation of notion of narrative within the field of psychology. Since the eighties psychology has witnessed an exponential growth of research and teaching activity centring on narrative. This is evident not only in the conceptualization of vast arrays of materials, ranging from experimental protocols to therapeutic conversations as narratives but most importantly in the elaboration of models of personality and self as based on narrative principles (developed by D. McAdams in the US and H.Herman in the Netherlands). In therapy, this development is paralleled by a rapid growth in the popularity and acceptance of narrative methods (advocated by M.White in Australia and D.Epston in New Zealand). It appears that psychology is joining other disciplines within a broad field of human sciences and is undertaking its own narrative turn. In this context, the present paper critically examines the degree to which narrative ideas initially originating within philosophy, literary theory and discourse analysis have been assimilated within psychology and explores the yet unacknowledged resources for further inter-disciplinary development. Keywords: Narrative, Philosophy, Critical Theory, Literary Studies, Psychology, Personality Theories, Therapeutic Methods

OLLOWING THE NARRATIVIST turn in the human sciences in general narrative ideas have been advanced in psychology by such scholars as Bruner, Sarbin, Polkinghorne, Taylor and MacIntyre, among many others.1 Since the nineteen eighties psychology has witnessed an exponential growth of research and teaching activity centering on narrative.2 This is evident not only in the conceptualization of a vast array of materials ranging from experimental protocols to therapeutic conversations as narratives, but also most importantly in the elaboration of models of personality and self as based on narrative principles, such as those developed by Don McAdams and Hubert Hermans. In therapy, this development has been paralleled by the rapid growth in popularity and

acceptance of narrative methods, launched by Michael White and David Epston. The present paper delineates how the recent development in narrative psychology has contributed to the theorizing of such categories as subject, identity and self; how the grounding of such categories in moral and ethical deliberations has become critical in the changed cultural, social and political landscape of the twenty-first century; and suggests how this move can be further expanded by bringing into consideration the Russian psychological scholarship, in particular the ideas developed by Lev Vygotsky. The narrative approach in psychology became prominent during the last quarter of the twentieth century the period that is often characterized as late or post-modernity. With regard to both a concep-

For a review of the narrativist turn see Krieswirth, M., 1992, Trusting the Tale: The Narrativist Turn in the Human Sciences, New Literary History, Vol.23, No.3, and Kreiswirth, M., 2000, and Merely Telling Stories? Narrative and Knowledge in the Human Sciences, Poetics Today, 21:2. The results of interdisciplinary interest in narrative can be seen in the appearance of book series such as Studies in Narrative, published by John Benjamins, Theory and Interpretation of Narrative published by the Ohio State University Press, Narratologia, published by Walter de Gruyter, internationally recognised journals such as Image (&) Narrative, Journal of Narrative Theory, Narrative, Narrative Inquiry and a publication of the Routledge Encyclopedia Of Narrative Theory in 2005. Another manifestation of this development is a spate of recent conferences such as Contemporary Narrative Theory: The State of Field held in the US in 2003 or Narrative Matters in 2002 and 2004 organised in Canada. One of the major forums for psychologists interested in narrative ideas is the International Conferences on Dialogical Self which was first held in 2000 at the University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands, and has led to the emergence of the International Society of Dialogical Sciences. 2 Hevern, V.W., 2003, Narrative Psychology: Internet and Resources Guide, accessed on 38/05/2006 http://web.lemoyne.edu/~hevern/nrmaster.html#general THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE HUMANITIES, VOLUME 5, NUMBER 5, 2007 http://www.Humanities-Journal.com, ISSN 1447-9508
Common Ground, Julia Vassilieva, All Rights Reserved, Permissions: cg-support@commongroundpublishing.com

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tualization of the subject and experience of subjectivity this period is often considered as leading to fragmentation. The notion of self as coherent, bounded, individualized, intentional, the locus of thought, action, and belief, the origin of its own actions, the beneficiary of a unique biography3 that had formed the horizon of Western conceptualization for so long, was substantially challenged during this time. Various quarters of the humanities such as anthropology, feminism, history, social sciences and philosophy questioned the unified and coherent model of self, highlighting the historical and cultural relativity of self as well as how the self fractured along the lines of gender, race and class. As Anthony Elliot has recently noted, In contemporary social theory the cultures and conflicts of identity loom large, with the fragilities of personal experience and the self viewed as central to critical conversation concerning social practice and political transformation.4 The different aspects, dimensions and grounds of this fragmentation have been articulated through a variety of discourses: socio-political, philosophical, cultural theories and psychological scholarship as such. The socio-economic theory has highlighted the consumer character of postmodern society, resulting in its liquid nature, which requires as a counterpart a liquid identity.5 This theory has also noted the multifarious effects of globalization leading to the destabilization of geographical, ethnic, and cultural anchors of identity, the disintegration of a face-toface community, and the growing fragility of family ties. Cultural criticism has articulated the powerful effect of saturation of the inner psychological landscape with images, which are increasingly characterized by their simulacrous nature. In contemporary philosophical thought the critique or deconstruction of interiority, of self-presence, of consciousness, of mastery, of the individual or collective property of the essence6 has been a leading theme. This inquiry intensified toward the end of the last century, centering on the question Who comes after the subject? A similar deconstructive move occurred with regard to morality and ethics. Alasdair MacIntyre opened his famous treatise After Virtue by stating: What we posses () are the fragments of a conceptual scheme, parts which now lack contexts from
3 4

which their significance derives. We posses indeed a simulacrum of morality, we continue to use many of the key expressions. But we have very largely, if not entirely lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, or morality.7 Partially sharing MacIntyres critique, Kenneth Gergen argued that the longstanding presumption of a palpable self, personal consciousness as an agentive source, or interior character as a touchstone of the moral life is no longer viable.8 While for MacIntyre a way of overcoming the problem can be found in grounding morality in the community, Gergen suggests that both self and community need to be subsumed within a broader reality of relatedness. Although psychology was slow to acknowledge this development, it has finally started to question its assumptions about giveness, centeredness and the bounded nature of self, identity and subjectivity. While psychoanalysis has always argued that the coherent sense of self is imaginary at best and only masks deep, underlying ruptures, the ideal of a unified, coherent, masterful self has been by and large embraced by practically all theoretical and practical branches of the discipline. Since the emergence of psychology as a discipline towards the end of the nineteenth century, and until World War II the idea of self as a unified subject of investigation guided various psychological approaches, even though they might have disagreed regarding their definitions of self and methods of investigation. In the second half of the twentieth century self as a unified object started to disintegrate into subsets such as self-image, self-perception, self-conception, self-discovery, selfconfidence, self-esteem, self-knowledge, self-acceptance, self-reference, self-modeling, self-consciousness, self-interest, self-persistence, self-control, selfdenial, self-deception and more. 9 Around the same time the experience of fragmentation, disintegration and emptiness of self started to be recognized more and more often in psychological theorizing. That was reflected in a plethora of terminological definitions such as the empty self10, the decentralized identity11, the quantum self12, the saturated self13, generated by various psychologists in the nineteen eighties and nineties.

Rose, N. Inventing Our Selves, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, p.12. Elliot, A., Concepts of the Self, Polity, Cambridge, 2005, p.15 5 Such description is advanced by Zigmund Bauman, see Bauman, Z., Liquid Life, 2005. 6 J.-L. Nancy, Introduction, in E. Cadava, P. Connor, J.-L. Nancy, eds. Who comes after the subject?, New York and London, Routledge, 1991, p. 4-5. 7 MacIntyre, A., After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory, Notre Dame University Press, Notre Dame, IN, 1981, p.2. 8 Gergen, K. (undated). Technology, Self and the Moral Project p.4, http://www.swarthnore.edu/SocCsi/kgergen1/text3.html , accessed on 17/04/2007. 9 Martin, R., Barresi, J., The Rise and Fall of Soul and Self, New-York: Columbia University Press, 2006, p.297. 10 Cushman, P., Why the Self is Empty? American Psychologist, 45, May 1990. 11 Sampson, E.E., The Decentralization of Identity, American Psychologist, 40, Nov 1985. 12 Zohar, D., The Quantum Self, New York: Quill/William Morrow, 1990. 13 Gergen, K.J., The Saturated Self, New York: Basic Books, 1991.

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In a recent definitive analysis of the development of concepts of soul and self from antiquity to the present, Martin and Baressi concluded: The notion of a unified self was introduced into scientific theory in the seventeenth century, particularly in the theories of Descartes and Locke, as a replacement for the notion of soul, which had fallen on hard times. But eventually the notion of a unified self fell onto hard times of its own. Its demise was gradual, but by the end of the twentieth century the unified self died the death if not of a thousand qualifications, than of a thousand hyphenations.14 In light of these various developments dismantling the twin idea of a unified self and self as a moral agent the question arises of how we are to think about and account for subjectivity, meaning and agency in human life. As I shall argue, narrative psychology responds to the challenge presented by the postmodern experience of the fragmentation of the category of self and subject, and simultaneously takes on the theoretical advances of postmodern scholarship. In doing so it follows Gergens suggestion that psychology should rethink its major assumptions from the point of view of postmodernist critique and move from the assumptions of individual reason to communal rhetoric, from an objective to socially constructed understanding of the world and from a notion of language as truth bearer to an understanding of language as pragmatic practice.15 Although narrative psychology represents an umbrella term for a variety of approaches, all of them position narrative at the centre of their theorizing. Narrative has been defined on various levels of generalization: most broadly, as a mode of verbal representation seemingly natural for human consciousness.16 It has also been understood as a means of apprehending, depicting and /or communicating temporal and causal relationships between agents and events, that is, as internally consistent interpretations of the past as presently understood, the experienced present, and the anticipated future.17 As such narrative is typically credited with several functions: it maintains continuity18, it can bring coherence by integrating different parts within a unified story, but
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first and foremost it is concerned with the production of meaning. Narrative makes the unfolding of life meaningful, it imbues the lived experience with sense, and renders such construction communicable. In my view, the appeal of narrative psychology was initially prompted by the meaning-making function of narrative, and its emergence should be understood within a larger cultural development in the postmodern era, where the joint effect of decentering, fragmentation and alienation was to put meaning in jeopardy. Consequently the task for an individual to make the context of his or her life intelligible and the experience of his or her personal journey sensible acquired a heightened urgency.19 Positioning narrative construction at the centre of theorizing the subject, self, and identity allowed to link them inextricably with meaning. However, the broad category of meaning which serves as a common uniting ground for innovative narrative approaches needs a clear and rigorous delineation itself after all, narrative psychology is not the first to draw attention to meaning. Approaches such as psychoanalysis, pragmatism and humanistic psychology were all concerned with how people make their lives meaningful, and it is against this background that the specificity of the narrative approach can be best delineated. Furthermore, the often reiterated link between meaning and agency requires an elaboration of mechanisms that could explain how narrative starts to play a regulative function. It is by way of contributing to this discussion that we now turn to the analysis of three prominent approaches within narrative psychology represented by McAdams identity as a life story model, Hermans dialogical self theory and Epston and Whites narrative therapy. The common threads that run through these approaches illustrate what unites them within a broader narrative framework and at the same time highlight the unique specificity of this framework. It is then suggested that it would be constructive to utilize the cultural-historical theory elaborated by Vygotsky to address the issue of agency from narrative position. McAdams suggested that personality should be analyzed on three levels: level of dispositional traits, level of characteristic adaptation and level of integrative life narrative. On the first level personality is

Martin, R., Barresi, J., The Rise and Fall of Soul and Self, New York: Columbia University Press, 2006, p.297. Gergen, K.J., 2001, Psychological Science in a Postmodern Context, American Psychologist, Vol.56, No.10. 16 White, H., The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation, Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 1987, p.26. 17 Cohler, B.J. , Personal Narrative and Life Course, in P.B.Baltes & O.G.Brim (Eds.), Life-Span Development and Behavior, pp.205241, New York: Academic Press, 1982. 18 Paul Ricouer argues that narrative, in this sense, accounts for the phenomenology of time. See Ricouer, P., Time and Narrative, translated by Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer, 3 vols., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984-1988. 19 While the interest in meaning is generally acknowledged as one of the main driving forces behind the emergence of narrative psychology, it is typically understood as the reaction to the dominance of cognitive paradigm in psychology in the seventies and not within larger sociocultural context. See for example, Bruner, J., Acts of Meaning, Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1990, Chapter 1 in particular.

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characterized through broad, nonconditional, relatively decontextualized, linear, and implicitly comparative constructs (traits). While acknowledging that the trait level is important in providing a dispositional signature in personality description, McAdams argues that such description does not tell much beyond a psychology of the stranger, and that to go beyond this level one should seek information which is conditional and contextualized. This kind of description can be obtained on a second level. Here, at the level of characteristic adaptations personality description invokes more specific motivational and strategic variables that are contextualized in time, situations, and social roles (e.g., motives, goals, coping strategies, relational patterns, domain specific styles, interests, beliefs, and values).20 However, McAdams affirms, although strivings and goals are indicative of what person is trying to do they are not enough to tell the psychologist who a person is trying to be, or ... what person the person is trying to make.21 Thus, a third level concerns the making of the self and is represented by internalized and evolving life stories that reconstruct the past and imagine the future to provide a persons life with identity (unity, purpose, meaning). 22 Such an approach theorizes personality as a differentiated as well as an integrated entity. While at the lower levels its parameters are characterized by greater stability, at the highest level the level of personal identity it is open to changes. The development of the sense of who we are understood as a life-long process. Identity as a revitalizing life myth clearly has a constructed character: the self is made, it has to be created in the process of fashioning and re-fashioning of ones life story. McAdams model also strives to eclipse the division between cultural and individual dimensions: Self and culture come to terms with each other through narrative, he writes.23 Similarly, the notion of story was used by White and Epston in the elaboration of their narrative approach to therapy. They proposed an analogy between therapy and the process of storying and /or re-storying of peoples lives and experiences.24 In contrast to psychoanalysis their therapy does not rely on interpretation: personal story is their first, and final material. However, White and Epston acknowledge that stories people live by can become problem-saturated, and when a problem-saturated story becomes dominant people have greater and greater difficulties coping with their life, filtering problem-free experiences out of their memory and
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perception. At the same time, as White and Epston insist, a particular story a person is constructing about his/her life is always heterogeneous and at the same time selective, never including all the facts related to this persons functioning. The therapeutic process consists in generating a thick description, a multifaceted description of human life, as a result of which alternative descriptions come to the surface and become a major therapeutic resource for the reconstruction of a more effective life story. Narrative therapy aims at facilitating the emergence of a flexible, openended story of the self, where different directions can be taken in the future and the past can be re-interpreted in light of the experienced present. The process of therapy represents a collaborative endeavor between the therapist and the people who come to consult him. White uses the concepts of scaffolding and zone of proximal development to describe his therapeutic approach: it is a mutual activity where people dealing with their problems assisted by a therapist can experiment with something that they cannot do on their own develop a new sense of identity, or make life choices, for instance. The joint activity provides scaffolding which supports the new constructions until the time a person is able to proceed in dealing with his or her challenges independently. For White and Epston it is not an individual past but the collective present which is determinant for peoples functioning, understanding of themselves and developing psychological problems. In that Foucaults thought has always been an important influence on their theorizing. Following Foucaults argument regarding power/knowledge nexus, White and Epston contend that therapists are unable to stay impartial in their practices, which are inevitably political. They see origin of the problems as closely linked with unitary knowledges and truth discourses that subjugate people and believe that persons can identify and separate themselves from such practices. Therapy can assist in that by an identification of previously neglected or subjugated knowldeges and provide space for performance of alternative scenarios. For example, in his most recent book Maps of Narrative Practice White argues that the norms of contemporary Western culture that tie up successful personhood with self-possession, self-containment, self-reliance, self-motivation, and self-actualization in effect set up the individual to develop a sense of failure. He argues that Despite efforts to reproduce these norms of successful personhood, most people

McAdams, D.P., The Redemptive Self, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2006, p.290. McAdams, D., Can Personality Change? Levels of Stability and Change Across the Life Span, in T.F. Heatherton & J.L. Weinberger (Eds.) Can Personality Change? Washington: American Psychological Association,, 1994, p.306. 22 McAdams, D.P., The Redemptive Self, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2006, p.290. 23 McAdams, D.P., The Redemptive Self, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. 24 White, M. and Epston, D., Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends, New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1990.

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experience a secret knowing that they are not quite as together as they present themselves to others in everyday life. For many, this discrepancy provides a foundation for conclusions about personal incompetence and inadequacy.25 Consequently, the first step for the narrative therapist is to expose the constructed rather than ontological nature of such understanding and distance individuals from their immediate experience. He then proceeds to work on developing a sense of agency and self-mastery based on unique abilities and skills of an individual, regardless of whether they fit into a socially prescribed ideal or not. The relations of power are equally critical for Hermans elaboration of his dialogical understanding of self, which is always affected by the dynamics of social dominance. However, initially the dialogical approach to self was inspired by Bakhtins ideas on dialogism expressed in his analysis of Dostoevskys novels. In his foundational work Problems of Dostoevskys Poetics 26 Bakhtin demonstrated that the novels are structured not as a unified objective universe subordinated to an omnipresent authors will, but as a plurality of independent consciousnesses and worlds entering into dialogical relationship with each other. Drawing on Bakhtins ideas and integrating them with Sarbins conception of I as author and Me as actor Hermans and Kempen elaborated a model of the dialogical self which is characterized by the presence of many voices, multiple dramas and overlapping narratives.27 Within this model the authors suggested to use the metaphor of characters to denote organized acts. Later Hermans described the self in terms of a dynamic multiplicity of relatively autonomous I-positions in the landscape of the mind[]As different voices these characters exchange information about their respective Me(s) and their worlds, resulting in a complex, narratively structured self.28 Within this model meaning is understood as emerging from dialogical movements between I positions.29 For Hermans dialogue is characterized by the tension between two tendencies: to dominance on the one hand, and to intersubjective exchange on the other. The dialogue proceeds through turn taking. Hermans further argued that the basic structural organization of self, in terms of its two basic motivational characteristic centers around the striving for
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self-enhancement and the longing for contact and union with the other.30 Hermans concluded that self and dialogue have two characteristics in common on the basic level: (1) the separateness and autonomy of self correspond with dominance in turn-taking behavior; and (2) the openness and participation in the self correspond with intersubjective exchange in dialogue.31 Dialogue is not restricted, according to Hermans, to different parts of the self, it also includes a dialogical relationship between an individual and the outside world. The dialogical self presupposes a farreaching decentralization of both the concept of self and the concept of culture. It challenges both the idea of a core, essential self and the idea of a core, essential culture and proposes to conceive self and culture as a multiplicity of positions among which dialogical relationships can be established. Cultures and selves begin to be seen as moving and mixing and as increasingly sensitive to travel and translocality. This is evident in three critical propositions recently emphasized by Hermans and Dimaggio: (a) other persons, groups, or cultures are parts of an extended self in terms of a multiplicity of contradictory voices or positions; (b) relations of social dominance are not alien to dialogue but belong to its intrinsic dynamics; and (c) emotions play a crucial role in closing or opening the self to global or local influences.32 Understood in such a way the self becomes a concept transgressing boundaries of the individual and opens up into the real context of its existence its social world, which simultaneously shapes a persons subjectivity. The underlying mechanisms of dialogical negotiation make the self contingent on changing situations, highly open to new input and involved in the active process of positioning and repositioning. Such an approach not only decentres the self, which depends critically on the dialogical relationship between the subject and his/her social context, but allows to ground narrative approach in ethics. There are several important dimensions that unite these innovative narrative approaches. The ideological commitment to meaning is the most important aspect that such approaches share. However, meaning is understood in a particular way, which can be clarified by a comparison with the approach to meaning in such influential psychological and philosophical approaches as psychoanalysis, pragmatism and hu-

White, M., Maps of Narrative Practice, New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007, p.268. Bakhtin, M., Problems of Dostoevskys Poetics, 2nd edn., trans. R.W.Rotsel, Ardis, Ann Arbor, 1973. 27 Hermans, H. and Kempen, H., The Dialogical Self: Meaning as Movement, San Diego: Academic Press, Inc., 1993. 28 Hermans, H., The Dialogical Self: Between Exchange and Power, in Hubert J.M. Hermans and Gincarlo Dimaggio (eds.) The Dialogical Self in Psychotherapy, Hove and New York, Brunner-Routledge, 2004, p.19. 29 Hermans, H. and Kempen, H., The Dialogical Self: Meaning as Movement, San Diego: Academic press, Inc., 1993, p.165. 30 Hermans, H. and Kempen, H., The Dialogical Self: Meaning as Movement, San Diego: Academic press,Inc. ,1993, p. 146. 31 Ibid. 32 Hermans, H.J.M, Dimaggio, G. Self, Identity, and Globalization in Times of Uncertainty: A Dialogical Analysis , Review of General Psychology, March 2007, p.11.

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manistic psychology. The concern with meaning was a paramount orientation in psychoanalysis. The search for true meaning was supposed to move from the manifest meaning to hidden one through the process of interpretation. Moreover, interpretation proceeds according to specific rules which address the dynamics between conscious and unconscious forces, the struggle between Id, Ego and Super-Ego, and in particular the work through resistance in the course of therapy. To make experience meaningful meant to uncover its hidden behind the screen established by the work of defence mechanisms sense.33 Narrative psychology rejects theses assumptions and does not engage in interpretation. For narrative psychologists there is no hidden meaning behind the peoples stories. For humanistic psychologists such as Rogers, Maslow, Frankl, who have radically departed from the main assumptions of psychoanalysis category of meaning also had a paramount, albeit differently understood significance. Within this approach human life is understood as having meaning when it is oriented and committed to the chief values of self-realization, self-actualization and proceeds through height moments of experience. While sharing with the humanistic approach its holistic focus on the human being, narrative psychology does not endorse the imperative of self-actualization or height moment of experience as norms. For pragmatists such as James, Mead and Dewey meaning is contained in the practical or activist consequences, and as such represents a considerably more circumscribed understanding of this notion than that of narrative psychology. In contrast to these approaches narrative psychology associates meaningful life with narrative or an autopoetic assumption human life making sense of itself in the process of its unfolding. Such a line in Western philosophy can be traced back to Aristotle and such an understanding of meaningful life also allows to address the issue of ethics. As Colebrook commented: There ought to be no techne that is disengaged from life, and lifes proper techne the art of life is nothing other than making meaning of, or narrating of, ones life.34 The link between narrative and ethics has been re-articulated by many philosophers throughout the twentieth century. Charles Taylor has been arguing powerfully that in order to make minimal sense of our lives, in order to have an identity, we need an orientation to the good, which means some sense of qualitative discrimination, of the incomparably higher.this sense of the good has to be woven into my understanding of
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my life as an unfolding story. But this is to state that another basic condition of making sense of ourselves, that we grasp our lives in a narrative.35 If, for Taylor, making sense of life depends critically on grasping it narratively, for MacIntyre, life should unfold as a narrative quest, which he characterizes as a circular teleology. Life is lived with a goal, but the most important aspect of life is the formulation and re-formulation of that goal, which is a life-long process.36 Earlier Bakhtin pre-empted such conceptualizations when he argued that verbal expression is never just a reflection of something existent beyond it which is given and finished off. It always creates something absolutely new and unique, something which is always related to life values such as truth, goodness and beauty.37 Narrative is understood as representing an irreducible singularity: narrative is always mine, yours, or hers, even though it is always embedded within a culturally elaborated form, story, and furthermore, is based on and mediated by language. Thus, narrative accounts for the social/cultural dimension without losing sight of the individual as a primary locus of analysis. Importantly, meaning is understood as constructed rather than pre-given or discovered through the process of interpretation. Such an understanding also assigns a greater role to performativity the act of constructing meaning also becomes constitutive with regard to a particular psychological reality. Moreover, such innovative narrative accounts increasingly focus on a process rather than the outcome, a finished story as such; consequently, the story comes to be understood as open both to interpretations, and continuous re-writing. Apart from considering narrative to be the chief means of the construction of self, producing subjectivity, rendering experience meaningful and foregrounding such processes in ethics, innovative narrative approaches state that narrative should also have regulatory functions, and it should help psychologists to account for the subjects agency. This conjuncture which is critical if narrative account of personality and self is to have real explanatory power has proved so far one of the most difficult to negotiate. I suggest that it might be constructive at this point to turn to the Russian philosophical and psychological heritage where the joint issues of meaning, agency and ethics have always been of paramount importance. In particular Vygotskys cultural-historical theory can provide the conceptual apparatus to ac-

Ricouer, P. The Conflict of Interpretations, Evanston, Northwestern University Press, 1974, pp.177-196. Colebrook, C., Happiness, Death and the Meaning of Life, Static/The London Consortium, 2006, p.1, http://static.londonconsortium.com/issue03/colebrook.html 35 Taylor, C., Sources of the Self, Cambridge, MA: Harvard university press, 1989, p.47. 36 MacIntyre, A., After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, Notre Dame University Press, Notre Dame, IN, 1981. 37 Bakhtin, M., Estetika Slovesnogo Tvorchestva, (Aesthetics of Literary Discourse), Iskusstvo, Moskva, 1979, p.299.

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count for the interconnection between narrative and intentionality. 38 Vygotskys starting assumption was that human development is unfolding and can only be adequately understood within its cultural and historical context. Vygotsky defined culture in a broad sense: as an accumulated result of the experience of human kind in making the world livable and meaningful. Such an understanding is most clearly articulated in his notion of cultural tools: Cultural tools allow people to embody their collective experiences (e.g. skills, knowledge, beliefs) in external forms such as material objects (e.g. words, pictures, books, houses), patterns of behavior organized in space and time (e.g. rituals), and modes of acting, thinking, and communicating in everyday life.39 Vygotsky argued that the use of cultural tools does not only dramatically change ways of psychological functioning but produces specifically human forms of it. He introduced a distinction between lower or natural and higher mental functions, where the latter are characterized by their mediated nature. The development of a specifically human higher mental functioning happens under two critical conditions: a child should be introduced to cultural tools and he/she should learn how to use them in cooperation with more skilful others, who can pass their knowledge and continuously guide and extend the childs repertoire, scope and proficiency of skills (an assumption that has been crystallized in the notion of the zone of proximal development). But cultural tools do not remain outside a childs psychological development they grow inside and change the very nature of psychological functioning, its structure, functional organization and mechanisms. For Vygotsky language occupies a central place among the cultural tools. Language is the principal means of integration and reorganization of mental life and the basis of thought. For Vygotsky, as Bruner notes, language is both a result of historical forces that have given it shape and a tool of thought that shapes thought itself.40 Vygotsky also saw a great potential of language in addressing the issues of free will or agentic, self-regulated behavior, and volition. It is through a reflective use of language when it becomes directed to ones own behavior that the road to self-regulated behavior and volition lies.41
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Although Vygotsky did not address personality structure, the issue of self and personal identity I believe his ideas can be productively extended into these areas. In accordance with the major assumptions of the cultural-historical theory I suggest that we should look at the stories people tell about themselves their narrative accounts as cultural tools of constructing their identity. Narrative is a tool, social and cultural in its origin, which has been used and perfected in what Bruner calls folk psychology and also in the rich historical tradition of oral and then written storytelling, culminating in literature. It is a tool children learn to use from their early stages of development in their interaction with adults, and which they gradually start applying to themselves to develop and shape a sense of who they are and to obtain mastery and control over their actions. It is a tool of both self-reflection and agency, although it is not directly equitable with either of these categories. From this point of view the emergence of a sense of identity would be the result of interiorization of culturally developed tools in constructing self-descriptive auto-biographical narratives. It would be also consistent with Vygotskys theory to argue that narrative does not explicate and render visible the sense of identity that somehow preceded the act of construction it is only through such an act that identity is formed and comes to life. It is also not grounded in the individual by its very origin it is distributed between the individual and his or her social surroundings. Furthermore, given Vygotskys earlier insights into the cultural determinants of psychological processes his theory can help narrative psychology to reify its position with regard to the often raised universalist challenge, the question of whether narrative is ethnocentric. One of the main tenets of Vygotskys theory is that psychological processes depend critically on the cultural mediator tools that are used in a particular social, historical and geographical context. He demonstrated persuasively that such cognitive processes as memory, attention, and perception differ depending on the form of cultural mediators used. From this point of view narrative would represent just one, but by no means exclusive tool of organizing self and identity. Vygotskys cultural-historical theory possesses therefore a further potential to advance our under-

Vygotkys theorizing was acknowledged by Bruner as one of his inspirations when he initially elaborated the narrative paradigm in his seminal book Actual Minds, Possible Worlds, Cambridge, MA :Harvard University Press, 1986, pp.70-79. Recently White drew on Vygotskys ideas when he described his therapeutic approach as scaffolding see White, M., Maps of Narrative Practice, New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007, pp.263-291. 39 Stezenko, A., Introduction to Section VI, in The Essential Vygotsky , edited by Robert W. Rieber, David K. Robinson ; (et al.). New York : Kluwer Academic, 2004, p. 505. 40 Bruner, J., Rieber, R.W., Introduction to section I, , in The essential Vygotsky , edited by Robert W. Rieber, David K. Robinson ; (et al.), New York : Kluwer Academic, 2004, p.10. 41 Vygotsky developed these ideas in his works Thinking and Speech, The History of the Development of High Term Mental Functions, and Tool and Sign in the Development of the Child, published in Russian in Vygotsky, L., Collected Works in six volumes, Moskva, Pedagogika, 1983, v.2, v.3 and v.6 respectively. For excerpts in English see The Essential Vygotsky , edited by Robert W. Rieber, David K. Robinson ; (et al.),. New York : Kluwer Academic, 2004.

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standing of the role of narrative in the formation of identity, subjectivity and interiority in the process of historical development of human kind and in the process of individual development. By forging an alliance between narrative psychology and Vygotskys cultural historical theory we can move forward the study of human agency and meaning and start to delineate the concrete psychological mechanisms implicated in these processes. Overall, during the last twenty years narrative psychology has made several important advances. More than any other psychological approach it has been able to engage in general debates in the humanities from which main stream psychology had been notoriously absent. It has been able to draw on advances in philosophy, literary criticism, anthropology, feminism, and cultural studies. In particular, narrative psychology has responded to the postmodern critique of subjectivity and raised to the challenge of finding a new way of articulating the category of subject. In the general cultural, social and economic context of the late twentieth century where fragmentation of self started to be recognized as one of the main problems in the humanities the narrative approach enables us to think about self as differentiated

and flexible, but nevertheless, an integrated phenomenon. By bringing into consideration the dialogical nature of self narrative psychology grounds theorizing of self in ethics. Not an individual subject but the acknowledgment of multiple moralities becomes a warrant of its ethical position. Such considerations bear important implications for politics. In particular, in the changing political landscape of the twenty first century openness for dialogue and tolerance of multiple positions acquire a new urgency. Furthermore, narrative psychology has been able to incorporate the critique of power/knowledge nexus and develop sensitivity to the issues of gender, class, race and social positioning. Despite all these important developments the mainstream psychology has been reluctant to recognize the narrative approach as a systematic form of inquiry and grant it the status of an equal. But the value of critique that the narrative approach articulates even from its marginalized position cannot be overestimated it reminds psychology of its proper task the study of live human beings in the full stream of life, in which understanding of the issues of meaning, agency and ethics remain absolutely crucial.

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Stezenko, A., Introduction to Section VI, in The Essential Vygotsky , edited by Robert W. Rieber, David K. Robinson ; (et al.). New York : Kluwer Academic, 2004. Taylor, C., Sources of the Self, Cambridge, MA: Harvard university press, 1989. The Essential Vygotsky , edited by Robert W. Rieber, David K. Robinson ; (et al.),. New York: Kluwer Academic, 2004. White, H., The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation, Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 1987. White, M. and Epston, D., Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends, New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1990. White., M., Maps of Narrative Practice, New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007. Zohar, D., The Quantum Self, New York: Quill/William Morrow, 1990.

About the Author

Julia Vassilieva My main interest has always been an intersection of art and psychology. I have received an interdisciplinary training and have been exposed to various theoretical perspectives and schools in humanities. I graduated from Moscow State University, Russia in 1989, specializing in psychology, philosophy and cultural studies. My research there was centering on theoretical work of Eisenstein. In 1992 I moved to Australia. In 1999 I completed professional doctorate in psychology at Swinburne University, Melbourne, looking at stability and change of self-referent knowledge structures. At the moment I am working on my PhD project at Monassh University in Melbourne, Australia, exploring narrative approaches in philosophy, literary and cultural studies and psychology. Besides, I am interested in theoretical aspects of cinema studies and Slavic studies, particularly contemporary (postmodern) development in Russian cinema, art and literature.