The document discusses the concept of narrative identity and how stories shape our understanding of ourselves. It argues that subjectivity is neither a series of random events nor an immutable essence, but rather lies between these extremes as narrative identity. We attempt to comprehend our evolving selves through imaginative variations in our own narratives. Personal identity emerges from seeing oneself both as the reader and writer of one's own life story, with each story we tell about ourselves reshaping our sense of who we are over time. Clinical practice can benefit from understanding patients' narratives and viewing people as protagonists in their own life stories rather than through a deficit lens.

3. “I am stressing the expression ‘narrative
identity’ for what we call subjectivity is
neither an incoherent series of events nor
an immutable substantiality, impervious to
evolution....
It is therefore by means of the imaginative
variations of our own ego that we attempt to
obtain a narrative understanding of
ourselves, the only kind that escapes the
apparent choice between sheer change and
absolute identity. Between the two lies
narrative identity.”
Paul Ricoeur, ‘Life in Quest of Narrative’

4. “The subject then appears both as a reader
and the writer of its own life... As the literary
analysis of autobiography confirms, the story
of a life continues to be refigured by all the
truthful or fictive stories a subject tells about
himself or herself. This refiguration makes
this life itself a cloth woven of stories told.”
Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative

5. Clinical Practice and the value of narrative
Brendan Stone
b.stone@sheffield.ac.uk
http://www.storyingsheffield.com/downloads/
Using stories

18. Mr. X’s Narrative
So you’ve got a story to tell then?!
Well I noticed that err… how, how it all started… I used to smoke
err.. I used to be err a smoker.. smoked 25, 30… 30 were probably
the top… I may be pushing it.. cigarettes a day
Hmm Hmm
I worked in mines and err.. various factories like with err MDF
dust…
Oh I see!
.. so that got a bit... [gestures to chest with hands]… and err so
then I packed in smoking about 6 year ago, and then you try to
think.. you know… after a while you try to think.. you think –
well, after a while you think I want to eat healthily you know… so…
we’ve always ate fruit you know ‘cause my father always was a big
believer in fruit and veg’..
Yeah!
.. used to grow his… used to have his own allotment and stuff like
that so.. and I did… when I was first.. early on like.. and err so well
think well now I’ve stopped smoking I feel much better so start
eating more healthily.. so you get into that thing and then.. you
might start… all of a sudden you get.. like a.. like a bit of an
infection

19. www.storyingsheffield.com
@storyingshef
• Course
• Research
• Public engagement
• Method

20. To know "who" a person is it will be
necessary to have some appreciation
of the story in which the person
understands him- or herself to be a
protagonist.
Juan Galis-Menendez, ‘Paul Ricoeur on Narrative and
Personal Identity’

21. “...we dream in narrative, day-dream
in
narrative, remember, anticipate, hope,
despair, believe, doubt, plan, revise, cr
iticize, construct, gossip, learn, hate
and love by narrative…"
Barbara Hardy, ‘Towards a Poetics of Fiction...’

22. “The autobiographical act recapitulates the fundamental rhythms of
identity formation […] I am arguing that narrative is the sine qua non
of identity formation.”
Paul John Eakin
“it is through narrativity that we come to know, understand, and make
sense of the social world, and it is through narratives and narrativity
that we constitute our social identities”.
Margaret R. Somers
“A basic condition of making sense of ourselves is that we grasp
our lives in a narrative.”
Charles Taylor
“A person creates his identity by forming an autobiographical narrative – a
story of his life’, and must be in possession of a full and ‘explicit narrative to
develop fully as a person.”
Marya Schechtman.

25. Stories of
Lack
Deficit
Dysfunction
One-dimension

26. Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted
“…one moment made to stand
still and to stand for all the
other moments, whatever they
would be or might have been.
What life can recover from
that?…”

28. • The storied life
• A storied culture (power)
• The colonising power of stories
• The possibility and difficulty of reconfiguration (resources?)
• Therapy and other stories of ‘dysfunction’
• The social /intersubjective nature of stories & identity
• Individualisation and absence of context in medical model
• The potentially alienating effects of “narrative”
• An interest in the fragmentary, the “enigmatic”
• The “everyday” as a resource
• From liabilities to assets
• From extraordinary to ordinary
• Interrogating ‘expertise’ – who is the expert?

29. • Everyday life
• Knowledge
• Small things
• Detail
• Connections
• Collaboration
• Ways of telling
• Telling
value
depth
relation
intervention