The Life Story Schema Bluck2000 PDF

P1: FVK/FGL/LZX P2: FTK
Motivation and Emotion [me] PP007-290059 October 30, 2000 13:26 Style file version Nov. 19th, 1999
Motivation and Emotion, Vol. 24, No. 2, 2000
The Life Story Schema1

Susan Bluck2,3,5 and Tilmann Habermas2,4,5
Current work on autobiographical memory does not take the term autobiograph-
ical seriously enough. Doing so requires taking not just single events, but the
whole life and its coherence, into account: Only memories that are linked to self
through their emotional or motivational significance over one’s life are truly au-
tobiographical. We introduce a new construct, the life story schema, a skeletal
mental representation of life’s major components and links. The life story schema
provides 5 conceptual extensions to current models of autobiographical memory.
The conclusion that results from these extensions is that the life story schema
serves to bind autobiographical memory and the self over time. Research needed
to substantiate our claims and further questions generated by the life story schema
construct are discussed.
Research on autobiographical memory over the last 15 years has made both basic
and applied contributions to the understanding of human memory, thus broaden-
ing purely cognitive views of memory to include the role of social, emotional,
and motivational forces. The term autobiographical memory (AM) is, in a gen-
eral way, a fine one for describing this field. However, although most work done
under the rubric of AM certainly involves memory, not all of it clearly pertains to
autobiography, at least not the layperson’s or literary view of autobiography.
1 The authors would like to acknowledge their colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Human
Development for their feedback during the development of these ideas. We would also like to thank
David Pillemer for his comments on an earlier draft of the paper.
2 Center for Lifespan Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany.
3 Present address: Institute on Aging, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida.
4 Present address: Institute for Medical Psychology, Free University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
5 Address all correspondence to Susan Bluck, Institute on Aging, University of Florida, 1329 SW 16th
Street, P.O. Box 100177, Gainesville, Florida 32610-0177; e-mail: sbluck@hpe.ufl.edu or to Tilmann
Habermas, Institute for Medical Psychology, Free University of Berlin, Habelschwerdter Allee 45,
Berlin 14195, Germany; e-mail: habermas@zedat.fu-berlin.de.
121
0146-7239/00/0600-0121$18.00/0 °
C 2000 Plenum Publishing Corporation
122 Bluck and Habermas
In this article we take the term autobiographical more seriously. That is,
though individuals may have thousands of memories of their personal past, not all
of these would be considered worthy for inclusion in a story of one’s life. Mem-
ories that individuals consider autobiographical are likely to be those that have
an emotional impact or that provide a motivational explanation for later devel-
opments. That is, memories that are highly self-relevant when they are encoded
or that maintain significance at the time of retrieval or both of these are likely
to be included in a life story (Conway & Holmes, 2000). Thus, we contend that
only those memories that are linked to the self through emotional or motivational
significance for one’s life are truly autobiographical.
Some researchers have shown a concern for clearly autobiographical memory
by studying only significant memories (e.g., Fitzgerald, 1988), or how people create
narratives of their lives (e.g., Habermas & Paha, 2000). This work concerning life
narratives raises a second point to be considered if the term autobiographical is to
be taken seriously. Autobiographies, or life stories (McAdams, 1990), do not only
contain important events. The events do not stand alone but are given structure and
meaning in the context of the whole life by their inclusion in a more flowing life
story (Kenyon & Randall, 1999).
Our interest is not to discuss formal autobiographies here. We do, however,
think that the use of the term autobiographical in autobiographical memory should
be given more weightage. We adopt a more literal view of AM by using the
life story. This concept is particularly appealing because it addresses the two
issues just raised: it focuses on personal memories that are highly meaningful to
the individual (e.g., see Pillemer, 1998) and thus truly autobiographical, and it
strings them together such that events are considered as part of the entire life. In
contextualizing specific memories within the whole life, we support Staudinger’s
(Staudinger, 1999) “life perspective.” She states that
Using human life as the unit of aggregation, observation and integration of psychological
inquiry may allow us to ask new questions that would otherwise not have arisen. To give
an example: what would it imply if cognitive psychology were to take a life perspective
seriously? It might lead to efforts to understand cognitive structures and procedures that
reflect the structures of life. (p. 7)
Increasingly, researchers are at least implicitly adopting this perspective. For

example, in some studies of the childhood development of AM we now see ref-
erence to the life story (e.g., Fivush, Haden, & Adam, 1995). McAdams (1990)
has most clearly outlined the life story, including its developmental trajectory, but
his perspective does not specifically include memory. On the other hand, although
authors in the memory literature now refer to a life story, what is actually being re-
ferred to is left vague. Is the life story a temporary linguistic product (a narrative), a
permanent mental representation, or something in-between? Coming from a mem-
ory perspective, the goal of the current paper is to put forth an idea of how the life
story may be mentally represented: the life story schema. We feel that the field
The Life Story Schema 123
of autobiographical memory and narrative is at a stage where setting forth this

conceptualization will provide the first step toward discussion of how individu-
als mentally represent and experience their life story. We welcome and hope to
stimulate research that will support or disprove our claims.
For clarity, we specifically use the term mental, not cognitive, representation
throughout the paper. We do this to reflect that the representation of one’s whole
life is not purely cognitive but also experiential: It combines cognition and emotion
(see Singer, 1990) and is affected by, and potentially also directs, motivation (see
Baumeister & Newman, 1994). Note also that we use the term life narrative only to
refer to a spoken or written narration of a life. Life story schema is reserved to refer
to the mental organization used to produce such narratives. The life story schema
is used whenever one engages in autobiographical reasoning (Habermas & Bluck,
2000), that is, linking (in terms of thinking about or talking about) elements of life
with each other or with the present self.
The paper is organized in five sections. We begin by evaluating whether pos-
tulating the life story schema is justified or whether reliance on single memories
might suffice for thinking about and talking about one’s whole life. Next, we de-
scribe the life story schema in more detail. We then relate the life story schema
to the organization of AM, describing the conceptual extensions that result from
postulation of the life story schema. The conclusion that results from these exten-
sions is that the life story schema serves as an explicit bridge between AM and
the self (see also, Bluck & Levine, 1998). In the final section, we delineate the
research implications of our proposals.
WHY NOT JUST SINGLE MEMORIES OF IMPORTANT EVENTS?
To understand how an individual’s view of a whole life is mentally repre-

sented, we posit the life story schema. The first thing to consider in positing some
higher-order level of organization such as the life story schema is that a simpler
explanation might suffice. In the present case, in producing a life story, why not
just rely on basic memory processes: single memories of important events being
retrieved as required by the situation, spontaneously evaluated and interrelated,
and (sometimes) narrated to others?
This explanation is not satisfactory for two reasons. First, from all possible
personal memories only some are selected for inclusion in the life story. Basic
memory processes are not enough to explain which events are selected. Memory
features often associated with memorability of events include vividness of the
memory (Bluck & Li, in press; White, 1989), distinctiveness of the event, public and
private rehearsal (Larsen, 1992), the affective valence of the event (Christianson &
Safer, 1996) and its consequentiality (Conway et al., 1994). Each of these features
begs a larger question: How can events be perceived as emotional, distinct, or
consequential in a vacuum? These features only make sense when we consider
that people perceive events within the context of a larger view of their lives (e.g.,
following ecological theories such as Bronfenbrenner & Ceci, 1994; Graummann,
1986). The distinctiveness, consequentiality, or affective meaning of events is
dependent on the life context of the person and his or her previous life experiences.
Further, only when an event is perceived as significant for the person’s life, is
it vividly encoded and often publicly or privately rehearsed. In short, the basic
memory mechanisms that are known to increase the memorability of events are
ones that rely on its interpretation in the context of a life.
Second, when an individual produces a life story, the events are organized
in an orderly sequence. The life story schema is a good autobiographical record
because it provides a coherent connection between selected life events and the self.
As discussed later, we suggest that these links are stored to provide an economical
and efficient way of recalling one’s life. Derived largely from the literature on
text comprehension (for a review see Graesser, Mills, & Zwaan, 1997), we have
argued (Habermas & Bluck, 2000) that the life story is organized by four types of
coherence.
The first two aspects (temporal coherence and cultural concept of biography)
provide a skeletal template for ordering life’s events into a sequence and for select-
ing the events that should be included. These aspects of coherence provide a rough
framework for the life by giving it temporal anchors or landmarks (Thompson,
Skowronski, Larsen, & Betz, 1996) and by identifying normative events. The
other two aspects of coherence are forms of meaning-making (thematic and causal
coherence) that provide unique explanations and themes for understanding a life.
They serve as emotionally laden and personally meaningful gist representations of
the autobiography or parts of it. These themes and explanations provide econom-
ical summaries of life periods and their connections, and may also be important
in motivating future actions and perceptions. Each of these types of coherence is
described ahead, providing support for the assertion that the life story is more than
just a collection of single memories of important events.
Types of Coherence
A basic type of order is created in the life story through temporal coherence.
The individual realizes that temporal sequences must be respected in a coherent
life story. Like other narratives, the life story follows a temporal order mimicking
the flow of time. Events that are remembered later are situated in terms of their
temporal relation to aforementioned events (e.g., Fromholt & Larsen, 1991). Thus,
the story follows some sort of temporal chronology, though not always a completely
linear one.
The individual uses internalized cultural norms concerning what is appropri-
ate material for inclusion in a life story (e.g., birth, divorce). We refer to this type of
coherence as the cultural concept of biography. It provides a focus on significant
and normative life course events as these occur across various defined life phases.
Attempts are made to explain deviations from the expected “on-time” life course
trajectory (e.g., Clarke, 1995) of one’s own (sub-) culture.
Life narratives are also organized through thematic coherence. They may
have a theme that continues throughout or emerges as the individual ends the story.
Certain parts of the narrated life may be represented in metaphor, or the whole life
may be subtly or explicitly described in “psychological truths” or “life lessons.”
The individual understands the flow of life’s events by creating overarching themes
or drawing morals (e.g., Lakoff & Turner, 1989; Ruth, Birren, & Polkinghorne,
1996).
Causal coherence may be the most significant type of coherence in the life
story. Events, life periods, and the self are linked in terms of motivations, causes,
or explanations. The speaker describes why certain events occurred and how those
led to what happened next. They may use logic but may also rely on implicit
theories of what motivates people, how emotional events should be coped with,
and how development across the lifespan occurs. That is, when interpreting life, the
individual refers to culturally shared views of personal continuity and development.
In short, we suggest that the life story cannot simply be a collection of retrieved
single memories of important events but has a more integrated form. Individuals
do experience highly vivid memories (Pillemer, 1998), but they also have a sense
of the life lived up until now: This sense is a phenomenal product of the life story
schema.
INTRODUCING THE LIFE STORY SCHEMA
“Indestructible and abiding as the stars, these experiences, though forgotten,

could never be erased. Their series was the story of my life, their starry light the
undying value of my being.” (Hesse, 1963, p. 161)
We propose that the life story schema is part of an individual’s knowledge
structure and the highest level of organization in AM. The life story schema inte-
grates contextual information about life with the history of the self’s past events
and developments. In this section, we discuss the use of the term schema, distin-
guish the life story schema from life narratives, make claims about the stability of
the life story schema, and provide a rationale for how it is formed.
In choosing the term schema, our thinking follows Bartlett’s definition
(Bartlett, 1932, p. 201) of a schema as “an active organization of past reactions
and past experiences” in combination with the view that “roughly, schemata are
like models of the outside world” (Rumelhart, Smolensky, McClelland, & Hinton,
1986, p. 18). Thus, the life story schema is a mental organization of one’s past that
models one’s experience with life (See also Neisser, 1986).
As a conceptual tool, the term schema, though imperfect (Alba & Hasher,
1983; Bartlett, 1932), best suits our purposes. The basic tenets of schema theory
(Alba & Hasher, 1983; Brewer & McNamara, 1984) are generally relevant to
our conceptualization of how the life story is stored and organized. That is, our
conception of the life story schema involves the development of a molar level
structure through interpretation and integration; prior knowledge being used to
assimilate new information; preferential memory for emotionally central themes
or events; reproduction, construction, and reconstruction of retrieved information;
and cultural specificity of content and meaning. In addition, the schema construct
has the benefit of not limiting organization to only a temporal (e.g., script) or a
hierarchical structure (Rumelhart et al., 1986), and allows for the individual being
somewhat (e.g., cultural concept of biography) but not always consciously aware
of the schema’s use (Mandler, 1984). Finally, in using the term schema, we do not
imply a completely static structure but a global organization of largely invariant
structures in long-term memory that is used to produce context-specific temporary
constructs in working memory.
Adopting the notion of schema, we locate the representation of the life story
in the individual. However, the social use of the life story schema appears in life
narratives and partial life narratives (i.e., shared autobiographical stories). It would
be facile to assume that oral or written life narratives are a direct representation
of the life story schema because life narratives are easily obtained for analysis
whereas the life story schema needs to be inferred. The differences, however,
must be noted. The properties of life narratives cannot be assumed to be identical
with mental representation or memory organization (Brewer, 1995) because life
narratives are produced in particular social contexts to serve various situational
and motivational demands (Siegel, 1997).
The life story schema is an organizational structure, not a manifest linguistic
phenomenon. It should conform to principles of mental economy. Each time an
individual engages in autobiographical reasoning or produces a life narrative, he
or she uses the life story schema as a basic template for consideration of my life
and then goes beyond that template by using it for selecting and interpretating
relevant episodes to include in the current life narrative. The life story schema
is used to organize the search so as to inhibit retrieval of the huge amounts of
information one has stored about one’s life in the past. The ancillary episodes and
interpretations that are selected for inclusion at any particular time are guided by
situational norms and will depend on the reason for producing the narrative on
that occasion. After the narrative is completed, the mental representation (the life
story schema) persists, whereas no representation of the specific life narrative just
produced lingers permanently.
It seems efficient for individuals to have a template with which to think about
their whole life, instead of reconstructing the events and meanings of life each
time that they are needed. At the same time, of course, the use of the life story
schema is not the only, or most frequent, way in which information about one’s
past is recalled or organized. Conditions under which the life story schema is most
likely to be efficient, and thus utilized, are provided later.
Given that the life story is represented as a schema and therefore much more
stable than any given utterance, just how stable is it? We propose that the life
story schema is fairly stable across situations in adulthood though parts of it may
be changed gradually through how we repeatedly represent our story to ourselves
and to others (e.g., Hirst & Manier, 1996). In addition, the life story schema
must be updated as life is being lived. Also, remote events may lose or gain
significance over time (Linde, 1993) as they are reinterpreted (Karney & Coombes,
in press) or as their remembered emotional intensity changes over time (Levine,
1997) as one’s retrospective interpretations change to reflect evolving goals and
values (Ross, 1989). Lifespan developmental gains and losses (Baltes, 1987) in
the component systems (memory, language, emotion) may occur and affect the
integrity and updating of the life story schema.
The process by which the life story schema is formed is similar to that of
other conceptual schemas (e.g., Markus, 1977; Mervis & Rosch, 1981). Greenwald
(1980) claims that in intrapsychic evolution, cognitions (in this case, memories and
interpretive linkages) survive by being repeatedly known. Nelson (1993) provides
evidence that single memories persist because we think and talk about them (see
also Pasupathi, Stallworth, & Murdoch, 1998; Rubin, 1998), and that in talking
about memories we begin to start thinking in narrative (Bruner, 1986). Similarly,
the more often memories are retold the more they become integrated into well-
formed stories (Schank & Abelson, 1995). We suggest that the life story schema
is formed by analogous processes, as a residue of repeated speaking, thinking, and
reasoning about the events of one’s past through which events are related to one
another and to the self. Temporal coherence and cultural concept of biography
form a basic template. Individual meaning beyond this template is constructed in a
piecemeal fashion through forging explanatory and thematic coherence: Events and
periods of life become more integrated and abstract with repeated autobiographical
reasoning.
RELATION OF THE LIFE STORY SCHEMA

TO AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORY
Our conception of the life story schema is novel, but at the same time con-
sistent with other researchers’ thinking. In this section, we show how the life
story schema construct adds new dimensions to the most prominent model of AM
organization (Conway, 1992; Conway & Pleydell-Pearce, 2000).
In Conway’s framework (Conway, 1992), autobiographical information is not
stored as specific memories but is part of a larger general purpose knowledge base.
Knowledge is hierarchically organized in three levels: general abstract “lifetime
periods” (e.g., when I lived in Berlin); “general events” that are more specific than
lifetime periods and may span months, weeks, or days, or may be repeated similar
events (e.g., times that I have had tea with Alison); and “event specific knowledge”
that is often sensory or affective information, vivid images, or particulars (e.g., I

was wearing the sandals from Crete). At retrieval, we search through the hierarchy
to construct a transitory memory of an event as demanded by the current self-
environment context. In some instances, retrieval is top-down so that lifetime
periods provide direction in the selection of the relevant temporal indices to search
(Conway & Bekerian, 1987; Haque & Conway, 1999).
This view allows for autobiographical memories being unstable because every
time a particular memory is recalled it is constructed according to the current self
and context, and for AM also being constant because each memory is always
embedded within the same hierarchical retrieval structure. Aside from this hierar-
chical temporal organization, Conway and his colleagues (Anderson & Conway,
1997; Conway and Rubin, 1993) argue that life’s events are selectively encoded
and retrieved dependent on current themes (e.g., work, relationships) and goals
of the self. The model has been elaborated (Conway & Pleydell-Pearce, 2000) by
postulating the “self-memory system (SMS).” The authors describe how memories
are encoded and later constructed through the “working self.” This newest version
of the model integrates the self (at least the “working self”), emotion, and moti-
vation, with a cognitive, neuropsychological view of memory. We point out five
conceptual extensions to this view of AM that are made possible by the inclusion
of a higher-order construct, the life story schema.
Identifying the Most Global Level of Autobiographical Memory
Cognitive principles of mental economy and efficiency (Fiske & Taylor, 1991;
Spears & Haslam, 1997; Stroh, 1995), combined with the psychological and so-
cial necessity for the story of one’s life to maintain consistency across repeated
recountings, suggest the storage of a skeletal version of one’s life. Although it is
quite reasonable that individual memories are constructed and reconstructed from
event specific knowledge as needed (Conway, 1992), the organizational structure
for a whole life would be too complex and cover too extended a time frame to be
reconstructed each time it is used. Researchers who study stories (Baumeister &
Newman, 1994) have also argued that the story-form is prevalent in everyday dis-
course. They argue that whereas drawing abstract principles from life experiences
requires strenuous, complex, information-processing, stories have the dual benefit
of being less effortful and closer to the lived experience. The life story schema is
a global representation of the life that allows for a life story that conforms to the
characteristics of a good story: that it is structured, coherent, evaluative, and based
on actual events and transitions (Coleman, 1999).
Although episodic and semantic memory may be governed by separate sys-
tems in the brain (Klein, Chan, & Loftus, 1999), this schematized version of the
life combines semantic (autobiographical facts) and episodic memory (significant
events) together in a summary form.
The life story schema is necessary for establishing one’s life as the most gen-
eral frame (i.e., a level above lifetime periods) for structuring autobiographical
information. However, though the life story schema contains indices to the hierar-
chically lower levels of autobiographical knowledge, it usually does not provide
the most efficient way to search AM. Recollective memories with little relevance
to the overall view of one’s life may be accessed more directly through external
cues or other indices (Bernsten, 1996) unrelated to the life story schema. Most
research points to a flexible use of a variety of levels and indices for retrieving
recollective memories (e.g., Lancaster & Barsalou, 1997; Wagenaar, 1986).
Conway (1992) has argued that during retrieval the point of entry into the
hierarchy of autobiographical knowledge depends on the nature of the available
cues and on the degree of intentionality of remembering. Conway and Bekerian
(1987) have shown that retrieval through activation at the level of lifetime peri-
ods may be more effective (as measured by reaction times) than more elementary
types of memory cues (e.g., semantic cues, general event categories). This research
indicates that one way in which memory may be organized is in terms of a hierar-
chically structured personal history, and that highly abstracted levels of memory
are useful in retrieving more specific episodes (Haque & Conway, 1999). This
use of abstract categories for recalling past information is what we suggest occurs
when the life story schema is used for retrieval.
Indirect evidence for the use of the life story schema is indicated by the fre-
quency distribution of memories from across the lifespan in autobiographical recall
that is elicited by standard word cues, as compared with stimuli that encourage a
wider memory search. Memories from adolescence are much more frequent when
recounting a whole life (e.g., Fromholt, Larsen, & Larsen, 1995) than when single
event memories are cued by words (Jansari & Parkin, 1996). This preference for
adolescent memories is also produced by asking for important events that you
would include in your autobiography (Fitzgerald, 1996), and for vivid (Cohen &
Faulkner, 1988; Fitzgerald, 1988) or most significant memories (de Vries & Watt,
1996). A direct comparison of word-cued recall and the instruction to select few
important memories with the same subjects confirms that the latter instruction
produces more memories from adolescence (Rubin & Schulkind, 1997).
Apparently asking for vivid or important memories implicitly demands com-
parison of memories in the context of one’s whole life, or, to put it differently,
asks for the selection of memories according to their significance for one’s life,
thereby prompting the use of the life story schema (i.e., the frequency of memo-
ries from adolescence when significant memories are recalled is comparable with
when whole life narratives are provided).
Potentially, the life story schema may also be used in source monitoring
(Johnson, Hashtroudi, & Lindsay, 1993) at a very abstract level, that is, in the
experience of recalled life periods or themes as having been part of one’s own life
(vs. another person’s life, or knowledge gained through reading). This view is in
keeping with claims that episodic memory requires a “first order” representation
of actual events, as well as a “second order” representation of events as having

occurred in the past (Klein et al., 1999).
Marking Time: Motivating Goals and Actions
Our contention is that in times of change, especially when fundamental as-

sumptions about self or life are challenged (Janoff-Bulman, 1989), but also in times
of more normative life transitions, individuals rely not only on specific memories,
but focus on their life as a whole. We suggest that the life story schema, particularly
the establishment of temporal coherence, is one way in which individuals maintain
a temporal record of life, and that such a record has motivational consequences.
Pillemer (1998) has laid out several ways in which individuals recall their life
trajectory as having been guided by considerations of the connection between past
and present life periods (i.e., originating events, anchoring events, turning points).
Turning points (Wethington, Cooper, & Homes, 1998) may involve a level of emo-
tional uncertainty that motivates one to look at the past in order to plan one’s future.
Thus, at least when reported retrospectively, individuals claim to temporally take
a life perspective in understanding the events of the past.
Integrating present events with one’s past may be necessary for maintenance
of identity under challenging circumstances (e.g., Taylor, 1983). Part of this main-
tenance of identity involves motivating and planning for one’s future (Melges,
1990; Taylor & Schneider, 1989). For example, individuals who expect a future
event that is discontinuous with their own past also tend to have an extended time
frame for thinking about life, thinking farther ahead into the future (Fingerman &
Perlmutter, 1994).
More normative life phase transitions may also be negotiated partly through
use of the life story schema, particularly viewing one’s current point in the lifespan
in reference to a temporal view of life as a whole. By adulthood, the blending of
past, present, and future is a psychological reality (Ryff, 1991). Lewin (1926)
argued that human functioning has to be understood in terms of a person’s “life
space.” The life space is conceived as having both a physical dimension and a
temporal dimension, extending both into the past and into the future. Bluck and
Staudinger (2000) have shown that individuals’ evaluations of life in the present
are associated with their evaluations of the remembered past and with their views
of the future. Similarly, Shostrom (1968) describes the healthy individual as one
who is “concerned with living fully in the present but uses the past and the future
to make life more meaningful.” (p. 353)
This extended view of time allows the adult not only a sense of self, but a
sense of self across time (Neisser, 1988), that is, a sense of their own life cycle. For
example, Neugarten (1996) has discussed midlife as a time at which individuals are
motivated to see themselves differently due to the fact that there is now more time
passed than time left to live. That is, whereas early childhood may be characterized
as running on a “biological clock,” much of adulthood is governed more, or at least

conjointly, by a “social clock” (Neugarten, Moore, & Lowe, 1965). For example,
in late midlife, one may begin to contemplate the end of the life cycle, and this
may motivate certain actions and choices. A sense of impending endings has been
linked to increased socioemotional selectivity (Carstensen & Turk-Charles, 1998).
Thus the temporal trajectory of one’s life so far may be used to define and motivate
future goals and actions in times of both trauma and normative transition.
Specifying Cultural Differences
It is debatable to what extent the type of individualistic formulation of the life

story schema presented here, with its implicit focus on finding meaning or making
sense of life, transcends cultural and historic boundaries. (For cultural views of
self, see Markus & Kitiyama, 1991, and for historical views of life history, see
Decker, 1996.) Recent research shows that the way that individuals consider their
own life satisfaction (Diener, Suh, Lucas, & Smith, 1999), the way they frame
problems and interpretations (Choi, Nisbett, & Norenzayan, 1999), and even the
need for positive self-regard (Heine, Lehman, Markus, & Kitayama, 1999) varies
between cultures. Cross-cultural investigation of how individuals remember (e.g.,
Han, Leichtman, & Wang, 1998) and interpret their own lives is certain to add
greater validity and complexity to our conceptualization.
We have suggested that one way in which coherence is formed in life narra-
tives, and presumably also in the life story schema itself, is through the gradual
acquisition of a cultural concept of biography. That is, the cultural concept of
biography is not only evident in spoken narratives but is used for the mental or-
ganization and evaluation of autobiographical knowledge in the life story schema
as well. Biographical cultural norms define conventional life phases (Conway &
Bekerian, 1987), and age norms for the timing of transitions between life phases
(Heckhausen, 1993) provide a further aid to establish the sequence of life’s events.
Schütze (1984) suggests that awareness of these norms constrains the narrator to
discuss progress through life phases and to explain major deviations.
There is a normative expectation in Western societies that individuals become
able, in adolescence, to provide an individualized biographical account of them-
selves (Erikson, 1950, McAdams, 1990). Indeed, Western society provides institu-
tionalized occasions that require adolescents to think in biographical terms. These
include job and university applications; medical and military procedures requiring
file-making; and career and personal counseling, including the psychotherapeu-
tic elaboration of one’s life (Goffman, 1961). Even if basic memory processes
are similar across cultures, the cultural concept of biography may vary between
cultures, social classes, and genders, both in terms of typical or normative life se-
quences and in what is considered to be a significant life event (e.g., for the cultural
construction of midlife, see Shweder, 1998). Cultural differences in the frequency
and function of AM and reminiscence (Webster, 2000) as well as cultural varia-

tions in the temporal organization of life narratives (TenHouten, 1999) have been
demonstrated. The delineation of various cultures’ concepts of biography may be
a way to understand some of the observed differences.
Life Themes: Linking Lifetime Periods into a Whole Life
The concept of the life story schema integrates Conway’s notion (Conway,
1992) of themes (which we call life domains, e.g., work, relationships) with his
highest temporal level, lifetime periods. Although both of these are individually
important categorizations, they are not sufficient to describe how individuals think
about life over time, because not all life themes are restricted to certain life periods
(e.g., continuing relationships with family members, Birren & Deutchman, 1991).
This temporal–thematic link is not explicit in Conway’s model (Conway, 1992).
Relating themes over time in the life story schema allows for the linkage between
the various lifetime periods that make up an entire life thereby providing individuals
with a subjective sense of their own life span (Heckhausen, Dixon, & Baltes, 1989;
Ryff, 1984). Only when life’s phases are linked together can one make an evaluative
judgment concerning the life already lived, as is seen, for example, in life review
(Butler, 1963) or integrative reminiscence (Watt & Wong, 1991).
Our notion of thematic coherence across the entire life, not just within in-
dividual life domains, associates similar events from across life periods through
autobiographical reasoning. For example, Ruth and colleagues (1996) content-
coded life narratives provided by older adults and found them to fall into thematic
categories such as “life is loving” or “life is struggling.” Implicit thematic simi-
larity can also be assessed by rating life narratives for basic motives such as the
needs for intimacy and power (McAdams, Diamond, Aubin, & Mansfield, 1997;
Singer & Salovey, 1993).
Narrative analyses show that explicit thematic coherence typically appears in
introductory or concluding evaluative statements of life narratives or when com-
menting on turning points (e.g., Schütze, 1981). In making thematic statements,
the individual interprets the entire life in order to give it meaning. One way to ex-
plicitly thematically integrate a life narrative is by reference to a central metaphor
of oneself (Lakoff & Turner, 1989). Another way to provide explicit thematic co-
herence is to describe life in terms of evaluative trajectories, such as “My life has
been a series of ups and downs.” Gergen and Gergen (1988) suggest a stability,
a progressive, and a regressive template as basic types that need to be further
differentiated when applied to actual life narratives. We suggest that, as part of
the life story schema, these life themes are stored in memory (though not always
consciously accessible) and used to retrieve episodes as well as to provide an
evaluative filter through which to encode new information (Csikszentmihalyi &
Beattie, 1979).
Cause and Meaning: Linking Past Events to Forge Continuity
Causal coherence provides the essential structure of narratives of personal

experiences (Labov & Waletsky, 1967; Trabasso, Suh, & Payton, 1995), and of
the life story. By linking events across time, individuals are able to forge mean-
ing through establishing continuity and bridging discontinuities across their life’s
events. Life periods are tied together by constructing explanations of one’s own
developmental trajectory and particular life changes. Without causal coherence,
the life appears to be a collection of unrelated and unmotivated events that just
happened without the individual’s understanding or direction. When explanatory
links are lacking, life appears to have been determined completely by chance and
thus to be meaningless (see Bruner, 1994).
Research on AM at the single event level has demonstrated that memory is or-
ganized by event-clusters that are structured both temporally and causally (Brown
& Schopflocher, 1998). Other studies have demonstrated that the memorabiltiy
of elements of single stories depends on their role for creating causal coherence
(e.g., Trabasso, Secco, & van den Broek, 1984). We add here to Conway’s model
(Conway, 1992) by suggesting that causal autobiographical knowledge is an im-
portant aspect of the hierarchical organization of AM. That is, for reasons of mental
economy, certain central causal links that explain major turning points, transitions
between life periods, or unexpected parts of one’s life trajectory are also stored in
memory.
The tendency to create meaning from life’s events has been characterized
as a motivational need which fulfills individuals’ striving to see purpose in life
in order to set goals, to justify actions and values, to maintain a sense of con-
trol and efficacy, and to bolster self-worth (Baumeister & Newman, 1994). The
ability to create causal coherence in critical events from one’s life story (oper-
ationalized as an evaluative and well-integrated narrative) has been related to
well-being (Baerger & McAdams, 1999). Integrative life review has been related
to life satisfaction and well-being in older adults (Haight, Michel, & Hendrix,
2000).
CONCLUSION: THE LIFE STORY SCHEMA BINDS

MEMORY AND SELF
The outcome of the five extensions just reviewed is that the life story schema
can be seen as an interface between AM and the self. Our postulation of a life
story schema contributes to work on the organization of AM by delineating a
specific schematic structure, and processes of autobiographical reasoning by which
coherence is forged (temporal, cultural, thematic, causal). These bind the current
self with the self and events of the past over a lifetime. The types of coherence
represented in the life story schema maintain the continuity of the self both by
establishing order and connectedness, and by finding reason for the discontinuities,
between life’s events and the present self.
Several researchers have previously postulated a dynamic link between AM
and the self (e.g., Bluck & Levine, 1998; Brewer, 1986). Others have presented
evidence of the specific ways in which the current self may guide, and also bias,
retrieval of individual memories (Greenwald, 1980; Markus, 1980; Ross, 1989).
Moving away from the analysis of bias in memory retrieval, Fitzgerald (1988) has
referred to individuals having a contextualized view of self that is composed more
of remembered stories than of traits or roles. Corroborating this view, personal-
ity traits are mentioned in everyday conversation less frequently than are stories
(De Raad, 1984).
The Self-memory System model (SMS; Conway & Pleydell-Pearce, 2000)
also specifies a close link between AM and the self. In this model, remembering
is driven by the goals of the current or working self. That is, the working self
forms a subset of working memory’s (Baddeley, 1986) control processes. It acts to
promote or inhibit recall consistent with its goals. At the same time, the goals of the
working self are constrained by the past history and experience of the individual
(the individual’s autobiographical knowledge base).
In introducing their model, Conway & Pleydell-Pearce (2000) integrate the
disciplines and subdisciplines within psychology that research the various com-
plexities of AM. We believe that the life story perspective that we take in this paper
complements their more cognitive approach (necessary for identifying processes
at the level of the working self and working memory). Those authors suggest that
how the working self’s goals emerge is an important consideration outside the
scope of their analysis. They suggest, however, that the goals of the working self
may arise from perceived discrepancies between actual, ideal, and ought selves.
From our level of analysis, the life story level, we prefer to frame the in-
teraction between self and memory such that the individual engages not only in
goal-pursuit to reduce self-discrepancies but in meaning-making (Baumeister &
Newman, 1994; Bruner, 1986), both to understand the past and to predict the future.
The introduction of the life story schema embeds the on-line access of individual
memories described by Conway within a larger life context. This macrolevel anal-
ysis of the life story schema describes a qualitatively different binding of self and
AM: the focus is on an extended or diachronic self as compared with a working
self, motivation occurs not only for AM retrieval but also for autobiographical
reasoning, and the everyday validity of the life story in social interactions is made
evident.
Self in “Lifetime” Perspective: Enduring Motivations
The types of coherence that we have introduced as necessary to the life story
schema are ones that relate events not only across life periods or within specific
life domains (relationships, work) but across a lifetime. Through this larger time
frame, the self is understood as having enduring values, obligations, and commit-
ments. These enduring motivations appear as individuals create meaning through
thematic and causal coherence. For example, individuals describe themselves as
having made critical life choices that permanently affected their life path (Moen &
Wethington, 1999) or having experienced crucial events that shaped their values
for years to come (Pillemer, 1998). These life lessons, values, and commitments
to self and others shape how the life story is preserved and how one processes
new events (Erikson, 1968). Individuals seek to maintain a view of themselves as
fulfilling these obligations or living a life that is consonant with the past life story
that they have created. The rootedness of obligations and identifications links the
“ought self” to specific past experiences and thus describes their genesis. Individu-
als engage in autobiographical reasoning to integrate new events, thereby creating
meaning of life’s events and, when necessary, modifying values and commitments
for the future.
In short, having an extended lifetime perspective on one’s life fuels moti-
vation in several ways. The individual can look back over life and explain life’s
trajectory through reference to an enduring motivation or value (e.g., to serve God).
Alternatively, an understanding of one’s current motives may be seen as a natural
extension of the life already lived. (e.g., It wasn’t really a choice. It was the ob-
vious next step.) Finally, the reinterpretation of one’s past may lead to changes in
what one sees as enduring motivations. These changes may then be used to modify
current and future commitments.
Although “meaning-making” and “goal-pursuit” have rather different con-
notations, coming from different traditions, our view is compatible with the very
general goal concept described in the SMS model. What the life story schema
framework contributes is to identify the types of coherence by which individuals
actively utilize information from across life and organize that information to make
meaning (or to formulate goals) in the present. Thus, the way in which the “goals”
of the “working self” are constrained by the past history and experience of the
individual (to use Conway’s terms) are not dependent only on the specific events
of the past, or on certain lifetime periods, but on the way in which individuals
make sense of those experiences and the enduring motivations that results. That is,
the type of causal and thematic coherence generated by individuals to make sense
of their past history within the context of a whole life have motivational conse-
quences that provide constraints (and opportunities) for the current formation of
goals.
Beyond Autobiographical Remembering: Autobiographical Reasoning
Autobiographical remembering has been characterized as motivated by the

goals of the working self (Conway & Pleydell-Pearce, 2000). In taking the larger
lifetime perspective necessitated by the life story approach, our focus is not so
much on individual memory retrieval as on autobiographical reasoning.
Individuals create self-continuity through integrating significant or emotional

events into their ongoing life story in a manner that maintains stability but that also
makes meaningful sense of new and sometimes unexpected life events and their
consequences (Arciero & Guidano, 2000). Two constructs related to autobiograph-
ical reasoning, integrative reminiscing (Watt & Wong, 1991) or identity-related
reminiscing (Webster, 1993) and the search for meaning (e.g., Silver, Boon, &
Stones, 1983), have been found to increase during or following major life events
(Lehman et al., 1993; Lieberman & Falk, 1971; Quackenbush & Barnett, 1995)
and traumatic experiences (Bulman & Wortman, 1977; Taylor, 1983). Individuals
sometimes attempt to integrate events and create self-continuity through autobio-
graphical reasoning, specifically reinterpreting the life story (Kenyon & Randall,
1997; Linville, 1985; Thompson & Janigan, 1988) through reconstructing accounts
of past emotions (Levine, 1997; Levine & Bluck, 1997), events (e.g., Bahrick,
1998), or attitudes (Conway & Ross, 1984).
As mentioned earlier, a variety of life situations such as normative life transi-
tions and nonnormative life events may challenge individuals to maintain a sense
of self-continuity. Through autobiographical reasoning, individuals attempt to in-
tegrate past and present events into a coherent and meaningful (Taylor, 1983)
representation of their life. Sometimes even individuals who have lived through
the most extremely traumatic experience, the holocaust, are able to tell a coherent
life story in which their past coping efforts are integrated into a view of themselves
as agentic (Suedfeld, Krell, Wiebe, & Steel, 1997). Another example concerns in-
dividuals whose self-continuity is threatened through illness. Bloom (1997) has
reported on challenges to self-continuity faced by gay men living with HIV. Of-
ten having lost many of their social contacts, individuals may turn to community
groups with whom they can share, and thereby integrate, their present everyday
experience with existing stories of their own past.
The inability to experience one’s life as continuous (“temporal disintegra-
tion”) has been related to identity diffusion (Erikson, 1968), self-estrangement
(Melges, 1990), and borderline personality disorder (Kernberg, 1975). Reintegrat-
ing the life story is so central to insight-oriented therapeutic approaches that it has
been suggested that increased coherence and completeness in life narratives be used
as a measure of treatment success (Cohler, 1991). Our view of self over a lifetime
as represented in the life story schema allows consideration not only of how the
self is active in individual memory retrieval but also in autobiographical reasoning.
Self and Social Validity of the Life Story
Neisser (1988) has referred to the extended self, the memory of oneself in
the past, as one of five kinds of self-knowledge. The life story schema may be
regarded as a type of organized, historical, self-knowledge. In this way, of all the
levels of AM, the life story schema is the one that is most unavoidably linked
to the self. Single memories, general events, or even whole lifetime periods may
be interpreted as atypical and therefore as uninformative about the current self

whereas the life story schema’s implications for the self cannot be discounted.
One’s life story, though it is shaped by autobiographical reasoning, serves as a
valid, largely permanent, undeniable record of self-history.
Consequentially, the life story is used as a valid form of self-description when
introducing oneself to others. In modern societies, individuals are expected to be
able to provide a history of their life and to be accountable to others for their
own past (Bieri, 1986; Smith & Watson, 1996). The life story schema serves in
the development and maintenance of social relationships. When faced with the
standard phrase, “tell me a little about yourself ” we often introduce ourselves
to others not by telling them about a specific personal episode, or by listing our
trait-like attributes, but by giving them a short chronology of our life to date (i.e.,
where we were born, where and how we grew up, what schools we attended or jobs
we had).
When creating a more intimate relationship, life stories are shared to an even
greater extent. This may include a discussion of sociocultural and familial back-
ground, the general trajectory that life has taken to date, and the significant events
that have left a particular imprint on commitments and world views. Thus, in a
more intimate social exchange, individuals may not only talk about events but also
provide the reasons and meanings for the life they have lived. Giving vivid ac-
counts of significant life events makes the narrative more believable, and increases
intimacy with, and empathy from the listener (Pillemer, 1998). These facets, all
part of the life story schema, are exchanged to establish a shared background and
to get to know one another more intimately (Boden & Bielby, 1983). In judging
and evaluating others, their life events or particular life periods may be important.
Even more so, however, the way in which the speaker makes sense of those events,
and how he or she connects past events to the current life, provides a graphic
portrait of the self to the listener.
In short, the representation of a dynamic but coherent life story in the life
story schema is a crucial aspect of the self. It provides an interface for self and
memory over a lifetime, establishes self-continuity, and offers a valid means by
which individuals can evaluate one another in everyday social interactions.
FUTURE DIRECTIONS
In this final section, we summarize by restating our proposals concerning the

life story schema. We provide extensions of these ideas by outlining some of their
implications for future research.
Not Just Single Memories
We began by noting that though individual autobiographical memories are an

important part of one’s record of the past, the way in which individuals connect
and make meaning across these events is what constitutes their life story. Certainly
life stories contain important specific events that add richness and credibility to
the story. One avenue for further research is to identify the functions of specific
memories, as Pillemer (1998) has done, and to compare and contrast those with
functions that the life story plays. This distinction would also help to differentiate
the reminiscence construct, which currently includes memory for both single events
and longer life segments (see Webster, 1993, for the functions of reminiscence). In
what sorts of situations, under what emotional conditions, and for what purposes
do individuals recruit specific memories, and when do they think back over their
life story actively connecting events and searching for themes? Ideas concerning
the functions of individual personal memories and the life story schema are shown
in Table I.
Another avenue is to specify the development of the ability to string together
single events coherently. In discussing how individuals connect the events of their
lives into a life story, instead of just a disconnected series of events, we intro-
duced four types of coherence: temporal coherence, cultural concept of biography,
thematic coherence, and causal coherence. Further research may demonstrate that
the types of coherence identified as important in single memories from the life
story (e.g., see Baerger & McAdams, 1999) are also necessary for creating global
coherence across a whole life.
Our types of coherence fall into cold and hot cognitions. Temporal and cul-
tural concept factors are more structural and knowledge-based whereas explanatory
and thematic coherence are motivationally-charged, adding idiosyncratic, subjec-
tive meaning to the life story. These different categories of reasoning may have
different developmental trajectories and play quite different roles in the construc-
tion of a life story. We have begun some research to investigate the kinds of
social–cognitive abilities and motivational demands that are necessary for indi-
viduals to engage in each of our four types of reasoning about life. One aim is
to identify how these types of autobiographical reasoning develop in childhood
Table I. Examples of the Functions of Recollective Memories and of the Life Story Schema
Function Recollective memories Life story schema
Self Reviewing particular memories Reviewing life’s events and past

in order to preserve or improve development to find continuity and
current mood explain discontinuity
Social Telling others about past events in Telling others one’s life story as a means of
order to entertain, or to present introducing oneself to others
oneself in a particular light
Directive Recalling a past event or performance Identifying patterns or consequences across
that is useful to guiding one’s a series of life events in order to make
behavior in the present or life choices or plans for the future
immediate future
Note. Functions of recollective memories based on Cohen (1998) and Pillemer (1992).
and adolescence and thus to identify when the life story first emerges (Habermas
& Bluck, 2000).
The Life Story Schema
Having discussed the role of individual autobiographical memories and how

they are connected by autobiographical reasoning, we introduced the life story
schema. It is unclear whether it is possible to design definitive research on whether
such a schema exists and if so, what it contains. Two research approaches seem
profitable. When individuals repeatedly tell a story about a single event they tend
to use a “kernel story” (Norrick, 1998, p. 1). Also, when telling single autobio-
graphical stories there are parts that remain stable while new information is added
(Bluck, Levine, & Laulhere, 1999).
When people repeatedly tell a life narrative are there some parts that always
remain stable? Is this an indicator of the schema? One methodological option
here is to collect individuals’ life narratives in a variety of situations and to a
variety of audiences (different motivational constraints), and over time. These
narratives could then be analyzed to identify relatively stable components (events,
explanations, themes). Stability in itself is not evidence for a global structure, but
supports it. Lack of at least a basic template that remains the same across repeated
tellings in a variety of conditions would falsify the life schema construct, maybe
pointing to the existence of multiple, interacting life story schemas (D. B. Pillemer,
personal communication, March 9, 1999). Differentiating stable from situation-
specific aspects of the life story schema (as has been done with the self schema,
Freund & Smith, 1999) is a necessary step in identifying its core elements.
Cross-cultural research could also be helpful in identifying the structure and
contents of the life story schema. For example, at the sociostructural level, one
influence on the elaboration of a life story schema should be the degree to which
social positions and career paths are flexible, offer individual options, and require
individuals to function in diverse roles and social contexts. Thus, collecting nar-
ratives from individuals in a variety of societies and cultures would provide the
opportunity to examine potential universals and variations of the life story that are
consonant with environmental demands.
We connected the life story schema construct to related knowledge structures
in AM. Current models of autobiographical remembering, particularly that of
Conway and his colleagues (Conway, 1992; Conway & Pleydell-Pearce, 2000)
identify the role of lifetime periods and life themes in searching AM. Recent
empirical work (Haque & Conway, 1999) supports the view that memory may be
accessed at a very global level and then iteratively searched in order to generate
and construct remembered events. The most global representation in this model
is currently the lifetime period, which is part of the self-memory system. Future
research might identify how individuals know to access certain lifetime periods in
order to retrieve specific memories, and if this involves first activating the whole
life, that is, the life story schema.
Binding Autobiographical Memory and the Self
We also related the life story schema to the self, concluding that the life story
schema provides an interface between the current self and the history of the self. If
the life story schema is related to, but not commensurate with, the self then what
self-related information remains somewhat permanently in the life story schema?
Some research suggests that we remember stories that we tell to others, and that
we feel we have an interested audience for (Pasupathi, Stallworth, & Murdoch,
1998). The extent to which our social network provides us with interested listeners
may affect the extent to which we elaborate our life story, and which parts of
it become central to us. McAdams (1998) has written that there are parts of the
life story for which we have no audience, and that these aspects of our lives are
not narrativized and thus are not as central to us. This is a social constructivist
perspective. Alternatively, some clinical psychologists might suggest that it is
just these types of events for which we have no audience (due to shame or guilt
about the events) that are central to the life story and negatively related to well-
being (Williams, Stiles, & Shapiro, 1999). Another avenue for further research
is to understand the interplay between the self and social dynamics that provide
opportunities and constraints on the fashioning of the life story. Can we maintain
a personal life story schema that is not reflective of the life story that we tell to
others?
Individual differences and personality influences on what is included in the life
story schema, and how it is elaborated also offer ground for future research. These
may include having a cognitive style that focuses on the past and not on the future or
on knowledge (Sehulster, 1996), having a general interest in creative biographical
activities (Zinnecker, 1985), having personality traits that have been linked to
the frequency of reminiscing such as introversion, neuroticism, and openness to
experience (Sperbeck, Whitbourne, & Hoyer, 1986; Webster, 1993), or having a
well-defined self-concept and well-developed imagery abilities (Conway, Csank,
Blake, Holm, & Fillion, 2000).
Summary
Our approach has been to give consideration to the autobiographical aspect of

the term autobiographical memory by taking a lifetime perspective on memory for
personal events. This requires a consideration of which life events are included in
one’s life story and how those events are strung together over an entire life. The aim
of our paper was to introduce a new construct, the life story schema. This construct
expands current thinking about AM to include not only retrieval and reconstruction
of particular episodes (autobiographical remembering) but also how individuals
represent, interpret, feel, and think about whole life periods and finally their entire
life story (autobiographical reasoning). The life story schema draws on important
memories of life events, but goes beyond that by linking events temporally and
interpretively into a story of one’s life. In doing so, it binds self and memory:
This schematic representation of one’s life events over time connects the present
self with the personal and unique history and changing contexts of the individual.
The life story schema provides an individualized, flexible history of the self that
preserves self-continuity across roles and motivates future actions and goals.
As a heuristic, the life story schema offers directions for several programs
of research that examine the relations between the social–cognitive, emotional,
and motivational processes involved in thinking about life. As a psychological
construct, the life story schema enables humans to move beyond the current con-
ception of self, and beyond the recall of particular episodes, thereby integrating
the present moment with the life already lived.
REFERENCES
Alba, J. W., & Hasher, L. (1983). Is memory schematic? Psychological Bulletin, 93, 203–231.
Anderson, S. J., & Conway, M. A. (1997). Representations of autobiographical memories. In M. A.
Conway (Ed.), Cognitive models of memory (pp. 217–246). Hove, England: Taylor and Francis.
Arciero, G., & Guidano, V. F. (2000). Experience, explanation, and the quest for coherence. In R. A.
Neimeyer & J. D. Raskin (Eds.), Constructions of disorder. Washington, DC: APA.
Baddeley, A. D. (1986). Working memory. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Baerger, D. R., & McAdams, D. P. (1999). Life story coherence and its relation to psychological
well-being. Narrative Inquiry, 9, 69–96.
Bahrick, H. P. (1998). Loss and distortion of autobiographical memory. In C. P. Thompson, D. J.
Herrman, D. Bruce, J. D. Read, D. G. Payne, & M. P. Toglia (Eds.), Autobiographical memory:
Theoretical and applied perspectives (pp. 69–78). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Baltes, P. B. (1987). Theoretical propositions of life-span developmental psychology: On the dynamics
between growth and decline. Developmental Psychology, 23, 611–626.
Bartlett, F. C. (1932). Remembering: A study in experimental and social psychology. London:
Cambridge University Press.
Baumeister, R. F., & Newman, L. S. (1994). How stories make sense of personal experiences: Motives
that shape autobiographical narratives. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 20, 676–690.
Bernsten, D. (1996). Involuntary autobiographical memories. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 10, 435–
454.
Bieri, P. (1986). Zeiterfahrung und Personalität [The experience of time and personhood]. In H. Burger
(Ed.), Zeit, Mensch und Natur (pp. 261–281). Berlin, Germany: Arno Spitz.
Birren, J. E., & Deutchman, D. (1991). Guiding autobiography groups for older adults: Exploring the
fabric of life. London: John Hopkins University Press.
Bloom, F. R. (1997). Searching for meaning in everyday life: Gay men negotiating selves in the HIV
spectrum. Ethos, 25, 454–479.
Bluck, S., & Levine, L. J. (1998). Reminiscence as autobiographical memory: A catalyst for reminis-
cence theory development. Ageing and Society, 18, 185–208.
Bluck, S., Levine, L. J., & Laulhere, T. M. (1999). Autobiographical remembering and hypermnesia:
A comparison of older and younger adults. Psychology and Aging, 14, 671–682.
Bluck, S., & Li, K. Z. H. (in press). Predicting memory completeness and accuracy: The role of emotion
and exposure in repeated autobiographical recall. Applied Cognitive Psychology.
Bluck, S., & Staudinger, U. M. (2000). Looking back and looking ahead: The role of the past and future
in present life evaluations. Manuscript submitted for publication.
Boden, D., & Bielby, D. (1983). The past as a resource: A conversational analysis of elderly talk.
Human Development, 26, 308–319.
Brewer, W. F. (1986). What is autobiographical memory? In D. C. Rubin (Ed.), Autobiographical
memory (pp. 25–49). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Brewer, W. F. (1995). To assert that all human knowledge and memory is represented in terms of stories
is certainly wrong. In J. R. S. Wyer (Ed.), Knowledge and memory: The real story (pp. 109–120).
Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Brewer, W. F., & McNamara, G. V. (1984). The nature and function of schemas. In R. S. Wyer & T. S.
Srull (Eds.), Handbook of social cognition (Vol. 1). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Bronfenbrenner, U., & Ceci, S. J. (1994). Nature nurture reconceptualized in developmental perspective:
A bioecological model. Psychological Review, 10, 568–586.
Brown, N. R., & Schopflocher, D. (1998). Event cueing, event clusters, and the temporal distribution
of autobiographical memories. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 12, 305–319.
Bruner, J. S. (1986). Actual minds, possible worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Bruner, J. S. (1994). The ‘remembered’ self. In U. Neisser & R. Fivush (Eds.), The remembering self:
Construction and accuracy in the self-narrative (Emory symposia in cognition 6, pp. 41–54). New
York: Cambridge University Press.
Bulman, R. J., & Wortman, C. B. (1977). Attributions of blame and coping in the “real world”: Severe
accident victims react to their lot. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35, 351–363.
Butler, R. N. (1963). The life review: An interpretation of reminiscence in old age. Psychiatry, Journal
for the Study of Interpersonal Processes, 26, 65–76.
Carstensen, L. L., & Turk-Charles, S. (1998). Emotion in the second half of life. Current Directions in
Psychological Science, 7, 144–149.
Choi, I., Nisbett, R. E., & Norenzayan, A. (1999). Causal attribution across cultures: Variation and
universality. Psychological Bulletin, 125, 47–63.
Christianson, S. A., & Safer, M. A. (1996). Emotional events and emotions in autobiographical memo-
ries. In D. C. Rubin (Ed.), Remembering our past: Studies in autobiographical memory (pp. 218–
243). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Clarke, D. D. (1995). Life scripts: Implicit representations of life-course patterns. Journal of Social
Behavior and Personality, 10, 871–884.
Cohen, G. (1998). The effects of aging on autobiographical memory. In C. P. Thompson, D. J. Hermann,
D. Bruce, J. D. Read, D. G. Payne, & M. P. Toglia (Eds.), Autobiographical memory: Theoretical
and applied perspectives (pp. 105–123). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Cohen, G., & Faulkner, D. (1988). Life span changes in autobiographical memory. In M. M. Gruneberg,
P. E. Morris, & R. N. Sykes (Eds.), Practical aspects of memory: Current research and issues
(Vol. 1, pp. 277–282). Chichester, England: Wiley.
Cohler, B. J. (1991). The life story and the study of resilience and response to adversity. Journal of
Narrative and Life History, 1, 169–200.
Coleman, P. G. (1999). Creating a life story: The task of reconciliation. The Gerontologist, 39, 133–139.
Conway, M. A. (1992). A structural model of autobiographical memory. In M. A. Conway, D. C.
Rubin, H. Spinnler, & W. A. Wagenaar (Eds.), Theoretical perspectives on autobiographical
memory (pp. 167–192). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic.
Conway, M. A., Anderson, S. J., Larsen, S. F., Donnelly, C. M., McDaniel, M. A., McClelland, A. G. R.,
Rawles, R. E., & Logie, R. H. (1994). The formation of flashbulb memories. Memory & Cognition,
22, 326–343.
Conway, M. A., & Bekerian, D. A. (1987). Organization in autobiographical memory. Memory &
Cognition, 15, 119–135.
Conway, M., Csank, P. A. R., Blake, C. K., Holm, S. L., & F. Fillion (2000). The development of the
Autobiographical Memory Scale. Manuscript in preparation.
Conway, M. A., & Holmes, A. (2000). Psychosocial stages and the availability of autobiographical
memories. Manuscript submitted for publication.
Conway, M. A., & Pleydell-Pearce, C. W. (2000). The construction of autobiographical memories in
the self-memory system. Psychological Review, 107, 261–288.
Conway, M., & Ross, M. (1984). Getting what you want by revising what you had. Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, 47, 738–748.
Conway, M. A., & Rubin, D. C. (1993). The structure of autobiographical memory. In A. E. Collins,
S. E. Gathercole, M. A. Conway, & P. E. M. Morris (Eds.), Theories of memory (pp. 103–137).
Hove, England: Erlbaum.
Csikszentmihalyi, M., & Beattie, O. V. (1979). Life themes: A theoretical and empirical exploration
of their origins and effects. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 19, 45–63.
Decker, R. (1996). Childhood in Dutch autobiographies: Changing memory strategies. Paedogogica
Historica, supplementary series, 65–76.
De Raad, B. (1984). Person-talk in everyday situations. In H. Bonarius, G. Van Heck, & N. Smid (Eds.),
Personality psychology in Europe: Theoretical and empirical developments (pp. 31–44). Lisse,
The Netherlands: Swets & Zeitlinger.
de Vries, B., & Watt, D. (1996). A lifetime of events: Age and gender variations in the life story.
International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 42, 81–102.
Diener, E., Suh, E. M., Lucas, R. E., & Smith, H. (1999). Subjective well-being: Three decades of
progress. Psychological Bulletin, 125, 276–302.
Erikson, E. H. (1950). Childhood and society (1st ed.). New York: Norton.
Erikson, E. H. (1968). Identity, youth and crisis. New York: Norton.
Fingerman, K. L., & Perlmutter, M. (1994). Future time perspective and life events across adulthood.
The Journal of General Psychology, 122, 95–111.
Fiske, S., & Taylor, S. E. (1991). Social cognition (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Fitzgerald, J. M. (1988). Vivid memories and the reminiscence phenomenon: The role of a self narrative.
Human Development, 31, 261–273.
Fitzgerald, J. M. (1996). Intersecting meanings of reminiscence in adult development and aging. In
D. C. Rubin (Ed.), Remembering our past: Studies in autobiographical memory (pp. 360–383).
Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Fivush, R., Haden, C., & Adam, S. (1995). Structure and coherence of preschoolers’ personal narratives
over time: Implications for childhood amnesia. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 60,
32–56.
Freund, A. M., & Smith, J. (1999). Methodological comment: Temporal stability of older person’s
spontaneous self-definition. Experimental Aging Research, 25, 95–107.
Fromholt, P., & Larsen, S. F. (1991). Autobiographical memory in normal aging and primary degener-
ative dementia. Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences, 46, 85–91.
Fromholt, P., Larsen, P., & Larsen, S. F. (1995). Effects of late-onset depression and recovery on
autobiographic memory. Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences, 50, 74–81.
Gergen, K., & Gergen, M. (1988). Narrative and the self as relationship. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances
in experimental social psychology (Vol. 21, pp. 17–55). New York: Academic Press.
Goffman, E. (1961). Asylums. New York: Doubleday.
Graesser, A. C., Mills, K. K., & Zwaan, R. A. (1997). Discourse comprehension. Annual Review of
Psychology, 48, 163–187.
Graummann, C. F. (1986). Memorabilia, mementos, memoranda: Toward an ecology of memory. In
F. Klix & H. Hagenndorf (Eds.), Human memory and cognitive abilities (pp. 63–69). Amsterdam,
The Netherlands: Elsevier.
Greenwald, A. (1980). The totalitarian ego: Fabrication and revision of personal history. American
Psychologist, 35, 603–618.
Habermas, T., & Bluck, S. (2000). Getting a life: The emergence of the life story in adolescence.
Psychological Bulletin, 126, 748–769.
Habermas, T., & Paha, C. (2000). Coherence in life narratives across adolescence. Manuscript sub-
mitted for publication.
Haight, B. K., Michel, Y., & Hendrix, S. (2000). The extended effects of the life review in nursing
home residents. International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 50, 151–168.
Han, J. J., Leichtman, M. D., & Wang, Q. (1998). Autobiographical memory in Korean, Chinese, and
American children. Developmental Psychology, 34, 701–713.
Haque, S., & Conway, M. A. (1999). Sampling the process of autobiographical memory construction.
Manuscript submitted for publication.
Heckhausen, J. (1993). Developmental expectations for the self and most other people: Age grading
in three functions of social comparison. Developmental Psychology, 29, 539–548.
Heckhausen, J., Dixon, R. A., & Baltes, P. B. (1989). Gains and losses in development throughout
adulthood as perceived by different adult age groups. Developmental Psychology, 25, 109–121.
Heine, S. J., Lehman, D. R., Markus, H. R., & Kitayama, S. (1999). Is there a universal need for positive
self-regard? Psychological Review, 106, 766–794.
Hesse, H. (1963). Steppenwolf. New York: Holt, Thinehart, & Winston.
Hirst, W., & Manier, D. (1996). Remembering as communication: A family recounts its past. In
D. Rubin (Ed.), Remembering our past: Studies in autobiographical memory (pp. 271–290).
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Janoff-Bulman, R. (1989). Assumptive worlds and the stress of traumatic events: Applications of the
schema construct. Social Cognition, 7, 113–136.
Jansari, A., & Parkin, A. J. (1996). Things that go bump in your life: Explaining the reminiscence
bump in autobiographical memory. Psychology and Aging, 11, 85–91.
Johnson, M. K., Hashtroudi, S., & Lindsay, D. S. (1993). Source monitoring. Psychological Bulletin,
114, 3–28.
Karney, B., & Coombes, R. H. (2000). Memory bias in long-term close relationships: Consistency or
improvement? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26, 959–970.
Kenyon, G. M., & Randall, W. L. (1997). Restorying our lives: Personal growth through autobiograph-
ical reflection. Westport, CT: Praeger.
Kenyon, G. M., & Randall, W. L. (1999). Introduction: Narrative gerontology. Journal of Aging Studies,
13, 1–5.
Kernberg, O. F. (1975). Borderline conditions and pathological narcissism. New York: Aronson.
Klein, S. B., Chan, R. L., & Loftus, J. (1999). Independence of episodic and semantic knowledge: The
case from autism. Social Cognition, 17, 413–436.
Labov, W., & Waletzky, J. (1967). Narrative analysis: Oral versions of personal experience. In I. Helm
(Ed.), Essays on the verbal and visual arts. Proceedings of the 1966 Annual Spring Meeting of
the American Ethnological Society (pp. 12–44). Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.
Lakoff, G., & Turner, M. (1989). More than cool reason. A field guide to poetic metaphor. Chicago,
IL: University of Chicago Press.
Lancaster, J. S., & Barsalou, L. W. (1997). Multiple organisations of events in memory. Memory, 5,
569–599.
Larsen, S. A. (1992). Potential flashbulbs: Memories of ordinary news as the baseline. In E. Winograd
& U. Neisser (Eds.), Affect and accuracy in recall (pp. 32–64). New York: Cambridge University
Press.
Lehman, D. R., Delongis, A., Davis, C. G., Wortman, C. B., Bluck, S., Mandel, D., & Ellard, J. H.
(1993). Negative and positive changes following bereavement and their relations with adjustment.
Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 12, 90–112.
Levine, L. J. (1997). Reconstructing memory for emotions. Journal of Experimental Psychology:
General, 126, 165–177.
Levine, L. J., & Bluck, S. (1997). Experienced and remembered emotional intensity in older adults.
Psychology and Aging, 12, 514–523.
Lewin, K. (1926). Untersuchungen zur Handlungs- und Affektpsychologie: I. Vorbemerkyngen über
die psychischen Kräfte und Energien und über die Struktur der Seele. Psychologische Forschung,
7, 294–329.
Lieberman, M. A., & Falk, J. (1971). The remembered past as a source of data for research on the life
cycle. Human Development, 14, 132–141.
Linde, C. (1993). Life stories. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Linville, P. W. (1985). Self-complexity and affective extremity: Don’t put all of your eggs in one
cognitive basket. Social Cognition, 3, 94–120.
Mandler, J. M. (1984). Stories, scripts, and scenes: Aspects of schema theory. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Markus, H. (1977). Self-schemata and processing information about the self. Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, 35, 63–78.
Markus, H. (1980). The self in thought and memory. In D. M. Wegner & R. R. Vallacher (Eds.), The
self in social psychology (pp. 102–130). New York: Oxford University Press.
Markus, H., & Kitiyama, S. (1991). Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and
motivation. Psychological Review, 98, 224–253.
McAdams, D. P. (1990). Unity and purpose in human lives: The emergence of identity as a life story.
In A. I. Rabin, R. A. Zucker, R. A. Emmons, & S. Frank (Eds), Studying persons and lives.
New York: Springer.
McAdams, D. P. (1998). The role of defense in the life story. Journal of Personality, 66, 1125–1146.
McAdams, D. P., Diamond, A., Aubin, E. D., & Mansfield, E. (1997). Stories of commitment: The
psychosocial construction of generative lives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72,
678–694.
Melges, F. T. (1990). Identity and temporal perspective. In R. A. Block (Ed.), Cognitive models of
psychological time (pp. 255–267). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Mervis, C. B., & Rosch, E. (1981). Categorization of natural objects. Annual Review of Psychology,
32, 89–115.
Moen, P., & Wethington, E. (1999). Midlife development in a life course context. In S. L. Willis
& J. D. Reid (Eds.), Life in the middle: Psychological and social development in middle age
(pp. 3–23). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
Neisser, U. (1986). Nested structure in autobiographical memory. In D. C. Rubin (Ed.), Autobiograph-
ical memory (pp. 71–81). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Neisser, U. (1988). Five kinds of self-knowledge. Philosophical Psychology, 1, 35–59.
Nelson, K. (1993). Explaining the emergence of autobiographical memory in early childhood. In A. F.
Collins, S. E. Gathercole, M. A. Conway, & P. E. Morris (Eds.), Theories of memory (pp. 355–385).
London: Erlbaum.
Neugarten, B. L. (1996). Continuities and discontinuities of psychological issues into adult life. In
D. A. Neugarten (Ed.), The meanings of age: Selected papers of Bernice L. Neugarten (pp. 88–
95). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Neugarten, B. L., Moore, J. W., & Lowe, J. C. (1965). Age norms, age constraints, and adult social-
ization. American Journal of Sociology, 70, 229–236.
Norrick, N. R. (1998) Retelling stories in spontaneous conversation. Discourse Processes, 25, 75–
97.
Pasupathi, M., Stallworth, L. M., & Murdoch, K. (1998). How what we tell becomes what we know:
Listener effects on speakers’ long-term memory for events. Discourse Processes, 26, 1–25.
Pillemer, D. B. (1992). Remembering personal circumstances: A functional analysis. In E. Winograd
& U. Neisser (Eds.), Affect and accuracy in recall: Studies of “flashbulb” memories (Emory
symposia in cognition 4, pp. 236–264). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Pillemer, D. B. (1998). Momentous events, vivid memories: How unforgettable moments help us un-
derstand the meaning of our lives. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Quackenbush, S. W., & Barnett, M. A. (1995). Correlates of reminiscence activity among elderly
individuals. International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 41, 169–181.
Ross, M. (1989). Relation of implicit theories to the construction of personal histories. Psychological
Review, 96, 341–357.
Rubin, D. C. (1998). Beginnings of a theory of autobiographical remembering. In C. P. Thompson, D. J.
Herrmann, D. Bruce, J. D. Read, D. G. Payne, & M. P. Toglia (Eds.), Autobiographical memory:
Theoretical and applied perspectives (pp. 47–68). Mahwa, NJ: Erlbaum.
Rubin, D. C., & Schulkind, M. D. (1997). Distribution of important and word-cued autobiographical
memories in 20-, 35-, and 70-year-old adults. Psychology and Aging, 12, 524–535.
Rumelhart, D. E., Smolensky, P., McClelland, J. L., & Hinton, G. E. (1986). Schemata and sequential
thought processes in PDP models. In J. L. McClelland, D. E. Rumelhart, & The POP Research
Group (Eds.), Parallel distributed processing: Explorations in the microstructure of cognition
(Vol. 2, pp. 7–57). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Ruth, J. E., Birren, J. E., & Polkinghorne, D. E. (1996). The projects of life reflected in autobiographies
of old-age. Ageing and Society, 16, 677–699.
Ryff, C. D. (1984). Personality development from the inside: The subjective experience of change
in adulthood and aging. In P. B. Baltes and O. G. Brim, Jr. (Eds.), Life-span development and
behavior (Vol. 6, pp. 243–279). New York: Academic Press.
Ryff, C. D. (1991). Possible selves in adulthood and old age: A tale of shifting horizons. Psychology
and Aging, 6, 286–295.
Schank, R. C., & Abelson, R. P. (1995). Knowledge and memory: The real story. In R. S. Wyer (Ed.),
Advances in social cognition (Vol. 8, pp. 1–86). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Schütze, F. (1981). Prozeßstrukturen des Lebenslaufs [Process-structures of the life course]. In
J. Matthes, A. Pfeifenberger, & M. Stosberg (Eds.), Biographie in handlungswissenschaftlicher
Perspektive (pp. 67–129). Nürnberg, Germany: Verlag der Nürnberger Forschungsvere-
inigung.
Schütze, F. (1984). Kognitive Figuren des autobiographischen Stegreiferzählens [Cognitive structures

of personal narratives]. In M. Kohli & G. Robert (Eds.), Biographie und soziale Wirklichkeit
(pp. 78–118). Stuttgart, Germany: Metzler.
Sehulster, J. R. (1996). In my era: Evidence for the perception of a special period of the past. Memory,
4, 145–158.
Shostrom, E. L. (1968). Time as an integrating factor. In C. Buhler & F. Massarik (Eds.), The course
of human life (pp. 351–383). New York: Springer.
Shweder, R. A. (Ed.). (1998). Welcome to middle age (and other cultural fictions). Chicago: University
of Chicago Press.
Siegel, D. J. (1997). An overview of cognitive processes, childhood memory, and trauma. In C.
Prozan (Ed.), Construction and reconstruction of memory (pp. 39–67). Northvale, NJ: Jason
Aronson.
Silver, R. L., Boon, C., & Stones, M. H. (1983). Searching for meaning in misfortune: Making sense
of incest. Journal of Social Issues, 39, 81–102.
Singer, J. A. (1990). Affective responses to autobiographical memories and their relationship to long-
term goals. Journal of Personality, 58, 535–563.
Singer, J. A., & Salovey, P. (1993). The remembered self. Emotion and memory in personality. New York:
Free Press.
Smith, S., & Watson, J. (1996). Getting a life: The everyday uses of autobiography. Minneapolis, MN:
University of Minnesota Press.
Spears, R., & Haslam, A. S. (1997). Stereotyping and the burden of cognitive load. In R. Spears, P. J.
Oakes, N. Ellemers, & S. A. Haslam (Eds.), The social psychology of stereotyping and group life
(pp. 171–207). Oxford, England: Blackwell.
Sperbeck, D. J., Whitbourne, S. K., & Hoyer, W. J. (1986). Age and openness to experience in autobi-
ographical memory. Experimental Aging Research, 12, 169–172.
Staudinger, U. M. (1999). Social cognition and a psychological approach to an art of life. In
F. Blanchard-Fields, & T. Hess (Eds.), Social cognition, adult development and aging (pp. 343–
375). New York: Academic Press.
Stroh, P. K. (1995). Voters as pragmatic cognitive misers: The accuracy-effort trade-off in the candidate
evaluation process. In M. Lodge & D. M. McGraw (Eds.), Political judgment: Structure and
process (pp. 207–228). Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Suedfeld, P., Krell, R., Wiebe, R. E., & Steel, G. D. (1997). Coping strategies in the narratives of
Holocaust survivors. Anxiety, Stress and Coping, 10, 153–179.
Taylor, S. E. (1983). Adjustment to threatening events: A theory of cognitive adaptation. American
Psychologist, 30, 1161–1173.
Taylor, S., & Schneider, S. K. (1989). Coping and the simulation of events. Social Cognition, 7,
174–194.
TenHouten, W. D. (1999). Text and temporality: Patterned-cyclical and ordinary-linear forms of time-
consciousness inferred from a corpus of Australian Aboriginal and Euro-Australian life-historical
interviews. Symbolic Interaction, 22, 121–137.
Thompson, S. C., & Janigan, A. S. (1988). Life schemes: A framework for understanding the search
for meaning. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 7, 260–280.
Thompson, C., Skowronski, J. J., Larsen, S. F., & Betz, A. L. (1996). Autobiographical memory:
Remembering what and remembering when. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Trabasso, T., Secco, T., & van den Broek, P. (1984). Causal cohesion and story cohesion. In H. Mandl,
N. L. Stein, & T. Trabasso (Eds.), Learning and comprehension of text (pp. 83–111). Hillsdale,
NJ: Erlbaum.
Trabasso, T., Suh, S., & Payton, P. (1995). Explanatory coherence in understanding and talking about
events. In A. Gernsbacher & T. Givon (Eds.). Coherence in spontaneous text (pp. 189–214).
Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Benjamins.
Wagenaar, W. A. (1986). My memory: A study of autobiographical memory over six years. Cognitive
Psychology, 18, 225–252.
Watt, L. M., & Wong, T. P. (1991). The taxonomy of reminiscence and therapeutic implications. Journal
of Gerontological Social Work, 16, 37–57.
Webster, J. D. (1993). Construction and validation of the Reminiscence Functions Scale. Journal of
Gerontology: Psychological Sciences, 48, 256–262.
Webster, J. D. (2000). Reminiscence functions in adulthood: Age, ethnic, and family correlates. In J. D.
Webster and B. K. Haight (Eds.), Critical advances in reminiscence: From theory to application.
Manuscript in preparation.
Wethington, E., Cooper, H., & Homes, C. (1998). Turning points in midlife. In I. Gotlib and B. Wheaton
(Eds.), Stress and adversity across the life course: Trajectories and turning points. New York:
Cambridge University Press.
White, R. T. (1989). Recall of autobiographical events. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 3, 127–135.
Williams, J. M. G., Stiles, W. B., & Shapiro, D. A. (1999). Cognitive mechanisms in the avoidance
of painful and dangerous thoughts: Elaborating the assimilation model. Cognitive Therapy &
Research, 23, 285–306.
Zinnecker, J. (1985). Literarische und ästhetische Praxen in Jugendkultur und Jugendbiographie [Lit-
erary and aesthetic practices in youth culture and youth biography]. In A. Fischer, W. Fuchs,
& J. Zinnecker (Eds.), Jugendliche und Erwachsene 1985: Generationen im Vergleich (Vol. 2,
pp. 143–348). Opladen, Germany: Leske & Budrich.

The Life Story Schema Bluck2000 PDF

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Life Story Schema Bluck2000 PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

P1: FVK/FGL/LZX P2: FTK

Motivation and Emotion, Vol. 24, No. 2, 2000

The Life Story Schema1

122 Bluck and Habermas

Increasingly, researchers are at least implicitly adopting this perspective. For

The Life Story Schema 123

of autobiographical memory and narrative is at a stage where setting forth this

WHY NOT JUST SINGLE MEMORIES OF IMPORTANT EVENTS?

To understand how an individual’s view of a whole life is mentally repre-

124 Bluck and Habermas

The Life Story Schema 125

INTRODUCING THE LIFE STORY SCHEMA

“Indestructible and abiding as the stars, these experiences, though forgotten,

126 Bluck and Habermas

The Life Story Schema 127

RELATION OF THE LIFE STORY SCHEMA

128 Bluck and Habermas

that is often sensory or affective information, vivid images, or particulars (e.g., I

Identifying the Most Global Level of Autobiographical Memory

The Life Story Schema 129

130 Bluck and Habermas

of actual events, as well as a “second order” representation of events as having

Marking Time: Motivating Goals and Actions

Our contention is that in times of change, especially when fundamental as-

The Life Story Schema 131

as running on a “biological clock,” much of adulthood is governed more, or at least

Specifying Cultural Differences

It is debatable to what extent the type of individualistic formulation of the life

132 Bluck and Habermas

and function of AM and reminiscence (Webster, 2000) as well as cultural varia-

Life Themes: Linking Lifetime Periods into a Whole Life

The Life Story Schema 133

Cause and Meaning: Linking Past Events to Forge Continuity

Causal coherence provides the essential structure of narratives of personal

CONCLUSION: THE LIFE STORY SCHEMA BINDS

134 Bluck and Habermas

Self in “Lifetime” Perspective: Enduring Motivations

The Life Story Schema 135

Beyond Autobiographical Remembering: Autobiographical Reasoning

Autobiographical remembering has been characterized as motivated by the

136 Bluck and Habermas

Individuals create self-continuity through integrating significant or emotional

Self and Social Validity of the Life Story

The Life Story Schema 137

be interpreted as atypical and therefore as uninformative about the current self

In this final section, we summarize by restating our proposals concerning the

Not Just Single Memories

We began by noting that though individual autobiographical memories are an

138 Bluck and Habermas

Self Reviewing particular memories Reviewing life’s events and past

The Life Story Schema 139

The Life Story Schema

Having discussed the role of individual autobiographical memories and how

140 Bluck and Habermas

Binding Autobiographical Memory and the Self

Our approach has been to give consideration to the autobiographical aspect of

The Life Story Schema 141

142 Bluck and Habermas

The Life Story Schema 143

144 Bluck and Habermas

The Life Story Schema 145

146 Bluck and Habermas

Schütze, F. (1984). Kognitive Figuren des autobiographischen Stegreiferzählens [Cognitive structures