The Role of Personal Narrative in the Construction and Projection of Identity

Chris Garvin

Mentor: Kim Barnes

For the last twenty years I have been thinking about identity. At first it was phrased in the religious terms of “What is God’s plan for my life?” The question grew into the ancient question “Who am I?” In my twenties I had a “crisis of meaning” and set out to find myself. I didn’t. In my thirties I have finally found resolution to many of my questions regarding identity. For starters I have discovered that I am a husband. I have also discovered that I am a father. Embracing and entering into these “base layers” of identity have begun the process of building an identity I can be proud of. There are other layers that are more particular. I have discovered that I am a writer and a counselor. By that I do not mean that I am a proficient professional in those fields, just that it is through writing that I explore and understand my world and that I have a desire to help other people explore and understand their world and make sense of their stories. Learning my own “story” has been a key element of this process. Understanding how I got where I am now has helped me locate myself and find a stable platform to come back to during crisis and to move from in the process of growth and development.

As I plan to enter the field of counseling I am curious about the role of narrative in the construction and projection of identity. I am curious not only about current trends and practices but also in the possibilities for the future. Also, I am interested not just in personal narratives but also in a meta narrative in which smaller stories can locate themselves and find points of connection with others.

My research so far tells me that this conversation is currently going on and has been for quite some time. There are different approaches depending on the worldview of the theorists. Some are based on modern essentialism, others on post-modern social constructionism.

What I need to do now can be divided into two parts. First I need to familiarize myself with the field and the conversations that are going on. I would like to gain a generalized sense of the history of these approaches and the philosophical backgrounds coming into play. Against these I would like to balance my own philosophy and goals for engaging in the counseling profession and begin to discover where I might fit in. It might be a specialized niche because, so far, I have not found a theory in mainstream thought that I find to be adequate or compatible with my own at a practical level. The second thing I would like to do is study some of the works of writers who have engaged in this construction process in a personal way. I want to see how this process is actually being done in a real way by skilled writers. This is where the project moves beyond theory and into reality. For some the approach may be a clinical one with certain theories and formal approaches in mind. For others it may be a more natural or intuitive process. For works in the latter category I will look to the field of creative non-fiction.

I will use this research as the basis for an exploratory essay in which I draw on various sources from different disciplines and search for connections between them. I also hope to establish connections between the objects of study and my own experience of them in the context of my own story.

I would like to present my work in an entertaining and informative power-point presentation that will clearly communicate my subject , justify my choice and approach to it, and provide points of connection and relevancy to the audience.

Bibliography

Campbell, Joseph. The Hero With a Thousand Faces. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1968.

Freedman, Jill. Gene Combs. Narrative Therapy: The Social Construction of Preferred Realities. New York:

W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1996.

Ingram, Kate. “The Getting and Giving of Wisdoms.” NarrativeApproaches.com. 2003

Jamison, Kay Redfield. Unquiet Mind: a Memoir of Moods and Madness. London: Picador, 1997.

Jung, Dr. Carl. Memories, Dreams, Reflections. New York: Pantheon Books, 1963. 

Slater, Lauren. Lying: a Metaphorical Memoir. New York : Penguin Books, 2001.

Additional  works under consideration

Anaya, Rudolfo. Bless Me, Ultima. 1972

Duncan, David James. My Story as Told By Water. 2001

Eldridge, John. The Sacred Romance.  1997

Rivera, Tomas. Y no se lo trago la tierra. 1987