Narrative Psychology (Or in other words, what I studied in college)

Narrative psychology is a highly psychosocial approach to understanding human behavior. In its essence, it explores how human beings deal with experience by constructing stories and listening to the stories of others. Psychologists studying narrative are challenged by the notion that all human activity and experience are filled with "meaning" and that self and socially constructed stories, rather than logical arguments or lawful formulations are the vehicle by which we intemperate, integrate and predict our behaviors, our perceptions of our selves, and the world around us. Just as an author creates a story with rich characters and meaningful plot, so too does the individual process and resolve the many individual moments of her live as a story that not only makes independent life scenes “make sense” for herself and her world but ultimately serves as a script to help her anticipate her future and her future behaviors.

From birth, we are socially programmed to see what could otherwise be random events as stories: predictable, logical sequences of inter-playing variables influencing a series of climaxes and resolutions throughout the lifespan. We train our brains to interpret the behaviors of ourselves and others based on perceptions of plot, script and character--and develop who one SHOULD be in relation to their interplay. Just as characters in novels, we see individuals in our lives as personas more-so than persons--imagoes such as ”the tomboy,” “the princess, “ “the victim,” “the hero.” And, as we work to understand ourselves and put meaning to the experiences of our lives, we work within and against these imagoes in our decision process, defining our life story. In many cases, we come to incorporate characteristic patterns of interaction, gestures, mannerisms, facial expressions, intonations and verbal utterances with these prescript personas. Narrative Psychologists focus on critical areas of the individual where the interpersonal interactions and manifestations of a persona conflict with that manifested by another. Personified self-images are indeed individualized, but their interactions in social situations create in the life-script character or ego conflict. Ultimately the success of the individual falls on her ability to incorporate her script with a social counter script. Put simply, each individual has a prescript notion of how one with her set of experiences will act, based on her history as well as others’ perceptions of her history. This script is used as the backdrop of her understanding of herself--indeed the character that she is, and as she lives she uses the script to substantiate and guide her choices as if to say “of course! When I do this it makes perfect sense according to who/what I am, “ This prescript perspective of her life gives her a greater sense of her future. She can feel she can predict what may come because of what has come before her--a “self-fulfilling prophesy“ of either positive or negative consequence. Overtime, the developing persona can make prescript and developing script conflict. Indeed, the individual can outgrow or rebel against her prescript and then have to learn to write the script as she lives it. For mental health, resolving the anxiety, depression or fear of overcoming a prescript for one which she ultimately controls from moment to moment has to be achieved.

In a therapeutic setting, the use of the narrative perspective helps translate the life story of the patient from a first to a third-person perspective. The therapist, after delineating the conflict between the expression of the individual for who they are in relation to who they perceive they are pre-scripted to be, helps the individual to become the omniscient narrator or re-scripter of her own life. In a literal application of this approach, a third-person evaluation would include the writing of memories to include and hi-light any triumph that would excise the prescript of stagnated ‘victim.’

Ultimately, it is the goal of therapy to enliven the individual’s sense of agency over her life-script. This is done by in-tuning the places agency was lost or expressed unhealthily in the past (because of expressions of an undesirable character) and shifting the focus to imagoes suggesting a potential for the power/agency to change. This would in application improve self-esteem, productivity, psycho-social health and apparent interpersonal strengths in the individual and aid in the creation of a new and more positive expression of the life-story moving forward.


Researches have used varied ego-types in the development of the narrative paradigm. In the study of women, psychologists have studied how social-economic class, race and family dynamics influence the use and integration of the script, counter-script phenomenon. By studying the life-stories of women with a similar life experience, namely spousal abuse, it was my intention to show that highly self-negative (hopeless) abused mothers, are not predictably unable to elicit change when offered the chance to act for the welfare of their children. It was my intent to show how therapeutically critical it is to empower mothers to act in expressions of agency not just for themselves but for their children. I termed this special act of agency (the expression of the strength to change) maternal agency and found evidence of a narrative success model by studying the narratives of five lower-class women, showing how proactive acts of agency could be developed even in the most broken and downbeat of clients.