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Over the past two decades, research on life 
stories has moved from the periphery of per -
sonality psychology to the center. Building 
on broadly based narrative theories of per -
sonality and identity (e.g., McAdams, 1996; 
McLean, Pasupathi, & Pals, 2007) and in -
corporating insights regarding life stories 
and autobiographical memory to be found 
in cognitive science, developmental and so -
cial psychology, life-  course sociology, edu -
cation, literary studies, and psychotherapy 
practice, a new generation of personality 
researchers has established laboratories and 
programs dedicated to the empirical study 
of personal narratives (Adler, Lodi-Smith, 
Philippe, & Houle, 2016). Rather than pro -
posing a radical alternative paradigm, nar -
rative studies of personality tend to serve as 
an important complement to traditional no -
mothetic approaches in personality science, 
such as those that focus on dispositional 
personality traits, social-  cognitive concerns, 
and motivation (McAdams & Pals, 2006). 
At the same time, narrative approaches have 
begun to show promise for revitalizing the 
field’s historical commitment to idiographic 
inquiry (Allport, 1937), as evidenced in psy -
chologically informed case studies and psy -
chological biography (Schultz, 2005).
This chapter begins by situating the study 
of life stories in historical context, defining 
key terms and articulating important dis -
tinctions. While many different approach -es to studying life stories have arisen, the 
concept of narrative identity  has recently 
emerged as a central organizing construct 
(McAdams & McLean, 2013). Next, the 
chapter synthesizes recent research on the 
development of narrative identity and on the 
recognizable features that distinguish one 
person’s life story from another, with some 
attention to describing empirical methods 
for collecting, coding, and analyzing life- 
narrative accounts. The chapter then consid -
ers two issues that have received consider -
able attention in the research literature on 
life stories—  the narration of suffering and 
the role of culture in shaping life narrative. 
The chapter concludes by highlighting re -
cent efforts to adapt life-  narrative concepts 
to the study of the single case.
Background and Key Ideas
In the first half of the 20th century, a num -
ber of psychoanalytic theorists wrote about 
dreams, myths, and imaginative stories as 
deep wellsprings of personality formation 
(e.g., Jung, 1936/1969). In his founding text 
for personality psychology, Murray (1938) 
argued that salient themes in Thematic Ap -
perception Test (TAT) stories and in auto -
biographical accounts reflect pervasive mo -
tivational trends in human lives. But none of 
these classic sources for personality theory CHAPTER 5
Narrative Identity and the Life Story
Dan P. McAdams