The Co-Authored Self: Family Stories and the Construction of Personal Identity

Questions about identity are perennially intriguing, and vexing, to scholars and non-scholars alike. How do we know who we are? How do we define ourselves? How much are we the agents of our own identities, and how much are we defined by others? In The Co-authored Self, Kate McLean addresses the question of how an individual comes to develop an identity by focusing on the process of interpersonal storytelling, particularly through the stories people hear, co-tell, and share of and with their families. McLean details how identity development is a collaborative construction between the individual and his or her narrative ecology. She argues that family stories play a powerful role in defining identities, for better or for worse; it is through these family stories that the self takes on its earliest and most lasting form. Situating the process of identity development in adolescence and emerging adulthood, she shows through quantitative and qualitative data-with compelling narrative excerpts throughout-the ways in which families both support and constrain identity development by the stories they tell.

About the Author :
Kate C. McLean, PhD, is an Associate Professor at Western Washington University. Her research centers on the development of narrative identity in adolescence and emerging adulthood, particularly as it develops in social contexts, and as it relates to individual differences in personality and adjustment.

Review :
"In this engaging and disarmingly profound book, Kate McLean shows how the stories of our own lives are not really our own. We share authorship of our identities with our parents, friends, siblings, and the storytelling culture that envelops us. McLean combines the keen analytic skills of a behavioral scientist with a powerful empathy for the stories of her research subjects, whose voices are indeed the insightful co-authors of this illuminating volume." --Dan P. McAdams, PhD, The Henry Wade Rogers Professor of Psychology, Northwestern University "In this insightful book, McLean weaves a compelling story about stories as the very air we breathe. Through sharing her research and her own personal stories, she describes how individuals are steeped in stories, embedded in layers of family and cultural storytelling in ways that help individuals create their own identities through narrative. Narrative identities are simultaneously unique and communal, at the interface of the self and the world. As McLean states, 'we inhabit a world of stories, ' and these stories are us." --Robyn Fivush, PhD, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Psychology and Associate Vice-Provost for Academic Innovation, Emory University "This book is one of the most original, exciting advances in the study of narrative identity and self-development that I have ever seen. The study of self and human development is steeped in an overly individualistic view of personhood. As this book so clearly showcases, the field of psychology has amassed plenty of data to show that the development of self-identity is not a solely individual endeavor. Yet the field as a whole has not yet got the memo. This book is that memo. And by 'memo' I mean assumption-shattering statement of how personhood unfolds." --Jack Bauer, PhD, Professor of Psychology, University of Dayton "McLean does a masterful job of framing the manner in which the storied self is socially constructed, using the family unit as a case in point example of this larger process." --PsycCRITIQUES