Identität von Personen

This book offers a new explanation of biographical self-understanding that starts from psychic foundations. People ascribe, among other things, personal characteristics to themselves by setting their life history before their eyes and interpreting it. Individual ideas, social norms, and expectations influence the construction of stories through which people define what they are or what they want. But what does it exactly mean to have a biographical self-understanding? To answer this question, the author employs an integrative approach that examines people’s mental properties and abilities with regard to their function for biographical self-understanding.