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Chapter 12 - Narrative Coherence and Incoherence

Individual, Developmental, and Contextual Factors

from Part III - How Deviating Autobiographical Memories Shape the Life Story

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2025

By
Robyn Fivush
Edited by
Christin Camia  and
Annette Bohn
Christin Camia
Affiliation:
Zayed University Abu Dhabi
Annette Bohn
Affiliation:
Aarhus University
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Summary

A truism across cognitive, clinical, and personality psychology is that coherence of personal narratives is good for us; overall, narrative coherence is conceptually related to fewer symptoms of depression and anxiety and a higher sense of well-being, meaning, and purpose in life. Yet the empirical findings are inconsistent. In this chapter, I explore theoretical and methodological challenges to the concept of narrative coherence, drawing heavily on Habermas’s (2008) model of global, temporal, and causal dimensions. I take a sociocultural developmental approach, in which I explore how relations between different aspects of coherence vary developmentally and by event type in ways that differentially relate to evolving autobiographical memory and well-being. A more nuanced approach to narrative coherence clarifies the ways in which different aspects of personal memories and narrative coherence do and do not relate to different aspects of well-being both over developmental time and as time since the event occurred.

Keywords

Narrative coherencewell-beingautobiographical memorysociocultural theory

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Type
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Information
Autobiographical Memory and the Life Story
New Perspectives on Narrative Identity
 , pp. 247 - 277
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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