The Remembering Self Construction and Accuracy in the Self-Narrative

Ecological/cognitive approach applied to self-narrative.

This book brings a surprisingly wide range of intellectual disciplines to bear on the self-narrative and the self. The same ecological/cognitive approach that successfully organized Ulric Neisser's earlier volume on The Perceived Self now relates ideas from the experimental, developmental, and clinical study of memory to insights from post-modernism and literature. Although autobiographical remembering is an essential way of giving meaning to our lives, the memories we construct are never fully consistent and often simply wrong. In the first chapter, Neisser considers the so-called 'false memory syndrome' in this context; other contributors discuss the effects of amnesia, the development of remembering in childhood, the social construction of memory and its alleged self-servingness, and the contrast between literary and psychological models of the self. Jerome Bruner, Peggy Miller, Alan Baddeley, Kenneth Gergen and Daniel Albright are among the contributors to this unusual synthesis.

1. Self-narratives: true and false Ulric Neisser; 2. Literary and psychological models of the self Daniel Albright; 3. The remembered self Jerome Bruner; 4. Composing protoselves through improvisation Craig R. Barclay; 5. Mind, text and society: self-memory in social context Kenneth J. Gergen; 6. Personal identity and autobiographical recall Greg J. Niemeyer and April E. Metzler; 7. Constructing narrative, emotion, and self in parent-child conversations about the past Robyn Fivush; 8. Narrative practices: their role in socialization and self-construction Peggy J. Miller; 9. Emotionality and narrative in the emergence of the self-concept Rebecca A. Eder; 10. Is memory self-serving? Wilem A. Wagenaar; 11. Creative remembering Michael Ross and Roger Buehler; 12. The remembered self and the enacted self Alan Baddeley; 13. The authenticity and utility of memories Eugene Winograd; 14. The remembered self in amnesics William Hirst; 15. Perception is to self as memory is to selves Edward S. Reed.

Ulric Neisser's ecological/cognitive approach to the problem of self-knowledge is applied to the paradox of the self-narrative: remembering is an essential way of giving meaning to our lives, but the memories we construct are never fully consistent and often simply wrong. This problem is addressed by distinguished contributors from literary studies as well as from experimental, developmental, clinical and social psychology.