Narrative Identity Theory: The Psychology of Memory and Identity

It’s entertaining to imagine what could have happened in past situations or dream about what your future could look like. But did you know that these thoughts form your identity and who you believe you are?

Psychologists call this process Narrative Identity Theory: a person’s internalized and evolving life story, integrating their past and imagined future to provide their lives with purpose and unity. It occurs when individuals do not remember every single event objectively, but rather reconstruct the past, re-interpret, and assign meaning to certain moments. Imagined futures shape identity because people define themselves partly through who they hope to become. This term is most closely associated with psychologist Dan P. McAdams, especially through his work on life stories and personality psychology. 

The theory postulates that a person’s life narrative integrates their reconstructed past, perceived present, and hoped-for future. This means that a life narrative is a continuous story: with characters, episodes, seasons, imagery, different settings, and a plot that follows the traditional model of a television show or movie. 

Narrative Identity Theory poses a new way to live life: to be conscious of how to interpret, revise, and narrate life events in order to ground oneself and understand one’s identity. The theory is important to understand because it supports how someone’s perceived identity is formed by how they interpret past scenarios and how they plan to improve in the future, rather than being just based on objective events. Instead of viewing a mistake as a “fail,” we can try to view it as “a learning moment,” because how we define the event’s meaning can attach to our identity and become a part of what we believe.