Identity, Narratives and Psychopathology: A Critical Perspective

According to today’s prevailing ethical stance, it is a value for individuals having the absolute and conscious control over their preferences and behaviour. This control usually takes the form of a story, made up of autobiography and public narratives which are consistent with the story of one’s own life. A fully developed individual would be able to hierarchize his or her preferences, making plans to accomplish them, by cooperating or competing with other people. Stories are what hold together all the just mentioned elements. They give them a sense and allow people to monitor the progress of their projects by comparing the events in their personal lives into a comprehensive account. Films, novels, social media, and intersubjective relationships are part of an overall story, partly private and partly public, that measures the quality of one’s life. This picture is both a widely accepted assumption in psychopathology and a claim that is lacking in justification which is offered to interlocutors explicitly.