Personal Myths: Narrative Identity and the Meaning of Life

The Human Being as a Storyteller

Paul Ricoeur in "Oneself as Another" (1990) proposed the concept of narrative identity: "Who are you?" means "What story do you tell about yourself?" Identity is not a fixed entity, but a narrative that a person builds from the events of their life, giving them meaning, order, and coherence.

This is not arbitrary fiction. We interpret events of the past in light of the present, and this interpreted past defines our expectations for the future. The narrative allows us to remain the same person over time (to have a story) and simultaneously to change (to be open to new chapters).

Dan McAdams ("The Stories We Live By", 1993) developed this idea into the concept of the personal myth—an autobiographical narrative that a person constructs about their life, using cultural narrative resources (myths, stories, genres). We do not simply recount our life—we choose what kind of story it is.

Types of Personal Narratives

McAdams identified two basic narrative patterns:

Redemption narrative: Life began hard or badly, but this became soil for growth, strength, and meaning. American culture is especially rich in this pattern: "I grew up in poverty—and that made me strong," "the loss of my business became the best thing that happened to me," "illness opened my eyes to what is important."

Contamination narrative: Something good was destroyed and ruined. Life was moving in the right direction, but something happened that broke this path. This narrative pattern correlates with depression and low psychological well-being.

Important: it is not simply what "really" happened—it is an interpretative frame. The same set of events can be told as a redemption narrative or a contamination narrative. Therapy often works precisely with the transformation of narrative—rethinking events, meaning, the person's own role in the story of their life.

The Meaning of Life as a Narrative Achievement

Viktor Frankl, who survived a concentration camp, showed: people can endure almost any suffering if they see meaning in it. The meaning of life is not a given, not a fact that must be found—it is a creation, a narrative construction.

This is not arbitrary: the narrative must be coherent, truthful (in agreement with real events), shared (in dialogue with others). But within these limits—a person has significant freedom in how they interpret their life.

Practical consequence: turning to mythology, literature, biographies of great people—is not escapism. It is the replenishment of narrative resources, by means of which we build our own story. An educated person possesses a rich repertoire of patterns—they can see their situation through the prism of a greater number of stories and choose the one that opens, rather than closes, opportunities.