Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of contributors
- The remembering self
- 1 Self-narratives: True and false
- 2 Literary and psychological models of the self
- 3 The “remembered” self
- 4 Composing protoselves through improvisation
- 5 Mind, text, and society: Self-memory in social context
- 6 Personal identity and autobiographical recall
- 7 Constructing narrative, emotion, and self in parent–child conversations about the past
- 8 Narrative practices: Their role in socialization and self-construction
- 9 Comments on children's self-narratives
- 10 Is memory self-serving?
- 11 Creative remembering
- 12 The remembered self and the enacted self
- 13 The authenticity and utility of memories
- 14 The remembered self in amnesics
- 15 Perception is to self as memory is to selves
- Name index
- Subject index
Preface
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of contributors
- The remembering self
- 1 Self-narratives: True and false
- 2 Literary and psychological models of the self
- 3 The “remembered” self
- 4 Composing protoselves through improvisation
- 5 Mind, text, and society: Self-memory in social context
- 6 Personal identity and autobiographical recall
- 7 Constructing narrative, emotion, and self in parent–child conversations about the past
- 8 Narrative practices: Their role in socialization and self-construction
- 9 Comments on children's self-narratives
- 10 Is memory self-serving?
- 11 Creative remembering
- 12 The remembered self and the enacted self
- 13 The authenticity and utility of memories
- 14 The remembered self in amnesics
- 15 Perception is to self as memory is to selves
- Name index
- Subject index
Summary
Several independent lines of thought come together in this book. The first of these is an ecological/cognitive analysis of the self that was initially proposed by one of us (Ulric Neisser) in 1988. Five different sources of self-relevant information were identified in that analysis and described in terms of the different “selves” that they establish. The “ecological” and “interpersonal” selves, based on perception, have been considered in a preceding volume called The Perceived Self. The “private” and “conceptual” selves will be the subject of a volume currently in preparation. Here we are concerned with what was initially called the “temporally extended” self-that is, with memory and the self-narrative.
The second group of ideas that animates this book comes from recent studies of memory development. The research of the last few years, including our own (Robyn Fivush), has made it obvious that remembering does not just happen. Instead it is a skill that must be learned, a socially motivated activity with a specific developmental history in early childhood. This means that the remembering self has a course of development too, one that is explored in several of these chapters.
Our third theme is one of the more prominent currents in late 20th-century intellectual life. The concept of narrative has recently become important across a surprisingly wide range of disciplines. The seven fields listed on the contributor information page of the Journal of Narrative and Life History – anthropology, education, folklore studies, linguistics, literary criticism, psychology, and sociology – are just the tip of the iceberg; history, philosophy, and theology are among many that could be added.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Remembering SelfConstruction and Accuracy in the Self-Narrative, pp. vii - viiiPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1994