 5. Narrative Identity and the Life Story 137
sination attempt of the first President Bush 
in the early 1990s. By overthrowing Saddam 
Hussein, then, the second President Bush 
could protect America and her allies from 
weapons of mass destruction, he reasoned, 
while simultaneously accomplishing a per -
sonal motivational agenda. Invading Iraq to 
overthrow Hussein found ideological justi -
fication, moreover, in the peculiar brand of 
conservative values George W. Bush devel -
oped as an adult, which combined the evan -
gelical spirit of compassionate conservatism 
with the neoconservative vision of fostering 
freedom around the world. Invading Iraq 
represented much more than merely defend -
ing America (and his father) against a ter -
rible foe. In George W. Bush’s mind, it was 
just as much a noble war of liberation.
The President’s action traits and his agen -
tial goals and values ultimately dovetailed 
with the story he authored for his own life. 
George W. Bush struggled throughout his 
20s and 30s to develop a satisfying and 
meaningful story for his life, a narrative 
identity that would provide him with a sense 
of unity and purpose. He finally succeeded 
sometime around his 40th birthday, after 
settling into a series of generative commit -
ments in life, experiencing a religious trans -
formation, and pledging to give up alcohol 
for good. The redemptive story he formulat -
ed for his life at midlife was a classic Ameri -
can tale of atonement and recovery through 
self- discipline (McAdams, 2013). Reflecting 
the time-  honored conservative tendency to 
reclaim a glorious past, his redemptive story 
depicts a prodigal son who recaptures the 
sobriety, goodness, security, and freedom he 
had enjoyed long ago, once upon a time, in a 
remembered and imagined paradise named 
Midland, Texas. The construction of his re -
demptive life narrative—  the process of mak -
ing the story and the content of the story he 
made—  follows closely the empirical find -
ings from nomothetic research on political 
conservatism and life stories (McAdams & 
Albaugh, 2008; McAdams et al., 2008).
Consistent with research on generativity 
and the redemptive self (McAdams, 2013), 
George W. Bush’s redemptive story for his 
life proved to be a valuable psychological 
resource. The story focused him on the gen -
erative life aspirations that ultimately landed 
him in the Texas governor’s mansion and the White House. But after the 9/11 attacks, 
George W. Bush made a critical authorial 
move: He began to project his own redemp -
tive story onto America.  If he  could over -
come the chaos of his young adulthood years 
and recover his own goodness and freedom 
through self-  discipline (and God’s help), so 
too would America  (God’s chosen nation) 
recover from the devastation of 9/11 and 
overcome a tyrant who had wrought chaos 
on his own people, and in the process export 
goodness and freedom to the world. As the 
author of a personal narrative identity that 
was to become, in the author’s mind, the 
story of his nation, George W. Bush knew 
in his bones that the story must end happily. 
No matter how many setbacks the Iraq War 
would present, the author was convinced 
that the mission would ultimately be accom -
plished, victory would be assured, and free -
dom and goodness would be restored. He 
knew all this because that is how his own 
life story had worked out. As inspiring as 
his own redemptive story proved to be for 
Bush’s personal struggles with identity, the 
very same story prevented him, as President, 
from considering alternative strategies in 
American foreign policy. In the end, George 
W. Bush became the victim of the same kind 
of story that had once liberated him, with 
fateful results for America, Iraq, and the 
world.
For better and for worse, stories have con -
sequences.
Conclusion
Focusing their research on the concept of 
narrative identity, personality psychologists 
and other social scientists examine the con -
tent and structure of life stories, their devel -
opmental origins and their functions across 
the life course, their relations to traits and 
motivational constructs, and how people 
make narrative sense of suffering and set -
backs, how stories determine and are deter -
mined by mental health and psychological 
maturity, and their contextualization in cul -
ture, class, gender, and the social ecology of 
everyday life. The concept of the life story 
has generated many different lines of no -
mothetic research in personality psychology 
and related disciplines, and it has begun to 