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PsychologyMust Read
intermediate

Getting a life: The emergence of the life story in adolescence.

Tilmann Habermas & Susan Bluck (2000)

Published
Jan 1, 2000
Journal
Psychological Bulletin · Vol. 126 · No. 5
DOI
10.1037/0033-2909.126.5.748
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At a GlanceAI

Integrative review on how adolescents develop coherent life stories and why this matters for identity.

SummaryAI

This paper explains how a “life story” emerges during adolescence and how it supports a sense of personal identity over time. As a Psychological Bulletin article, it synthesizes research to clarify what changes in adolescence make narrative self-understanding more coherent and organized. The main implication is practical and theoretical: to study identity (and support adolescents in therapy or education), we should pay attention to narrative skills and how young people link events into meaningful life chapters.

Method SnapshotAI

Integrative literature review of developmental and narrative-identity research on adolescence.

BackgroundAI

Basic developmental psychology and narrative identity concepts (autobiographical memory, coherence, identity formation).

In Collections

Psychology14 papers

Narrative coherence in life stories

The essential papers that built our understanding of how people turn lived experience into coherent stories — and why that coherence matters for identity. From Linde's life stories as linguistic acts, through McAdams' narrative identity framework, to Habermas and Bluck's developmental account of the life story — this collection traces how the field learned to see personality not as a set of traits, but as a story being told.

ES
Evgeny Smirnov

The main work, in my view, is splitting coherence into domains. It’s important for understanding that different coherences are needed for the narrative to look plausible.

— ES