Introduction

The focus on narrative studies across the humanities and social sciences reflects a shared concern with the interpretation of subjective experience. Life stories may be, as Mark Freeman asserts, our best “inroad into the phenomenon of self-understanding and selfhood” (1993: 6). Indeed, by listening closely to talk, how tellers describe who they are and where they come from, life stories allow us to explore subjective understandings in great complexity and draw interpretations about how persons make sense of self and world. If we accept the premise that narratives allow us special insight into the process of identity, then, a more adequate understanding of life narratives should help us to better understand the character of identity. We might, therefore, begin by asking, what is a life story? How are we to read and interpret life stories? Are life narratives the product of the person, the situation of telling, or something else?

When interpreting a life story, it is common practice to consider the individual level of analysis. After all, there is a real person who is sitting before us, describing the details of her/his past. Tellers, typically, use the first-person singular and speak with their own distinct voice. Elements of personality and our unique life experience are important contexts in understanding a life story (McAdams 1996). Such a tradition, beginning with Freud's case studies, and on through Henry Murray and Robert White's work, allows us to see how the contours of the past are shaped through the eyes of single persons with their unique developmental history and life circumstances (Runyan 1982).