Abstract
LUCAS participated in our longitudinal study of 8-, 12-, 16-, and 20-year olds, who narrated and re-narrated 4 years later their life stories in a free-standing monologue. He initiates his second life narrative at time 2 by referring to his first life narrative at time 1 or at least to the stories he remembers having told then. He also lets us know that this time he will tell different stories about his life, providing a changed version of his life and providing continuity across developmental change. In this chapter we ask both how adolescents reflect on biographical change and continuity in repeated life narratives, and how stable life narratives are across time by comparing them in exploratory analyses of repeated life narratives of eight adolescents and young adults from a 4-year longitudinal study.
A man who had not seen Herr K. for a long time greeted him with the words: “You haven’t changed at all.” “Oh!” said Herr K., and turned pale.
(From Bertolt Brecht, Stories of Herr Keuner)
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Acknowledgments
We thank the children, adolescents, and young adults for their continued participation in the study. Thanks also go to Verena Diel and Martha Havenith, Elisa Pasch, and Jennifer Schröder who supported the data collection together with and under the guidance of Cybèle de Silveira at time 1 and Alexa Negele at time 2.
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Negele, A., Habermas, T. (2010). Self-Continuity Across Developmental Change in and of Repeated Life Narratives. In: McLean, K., Pasupathi, M. (eds) Narrative Development in Adolescence. Advancing Responsible Adolescent Development. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-89825-4_1
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