This book brings a surprisingly wide range of intellectual disciplines to bear on the self-narrative and the self. The same ecological/cognitive approach that successfully organized Ulric Neisser's earlier volume on The Perceived Self now relates ideas from the experimental, developmental, and clinical study of memory to insights from post-modernism and literature. Although autobiographical remembering is an essential way of giving meaning to our lives, the memories we construct are never fully consistent and often simply wrong. In the first chapter, Neisser considers the so-called 'false memory syndrome' in this context; other contributors discuss the effects of amnesia, the development of remembering in childhood, the social construction of memory and its alleged self-servingness, and the contrast between literary and psychological models of the self. Jerome Bruner, Peggy Miller, Alan Baddeley, Kenneth Gergen and Daniel Albright are among the contributors to this unusual synthesis.

"...brings a wide range of disciplines to bear on the self-narrative and the self...relates ideas from the experimental, developmental, and clinical study of memory to insights from postmodernism and literature."
--International Journal of Psychology

"All the chapters are interesting; many are absorbing and provocative. It is a treat to read a book when its arguments are presented with such zest and clarity."
--John A. Robinson, Contemporary Psychology

"...an admirable book on the self-narrative...truly covers the relationship between memory and self. One of its major strengths is the fact that the contributors do not, necessarily, always agree with each other about this relationship. Such opinion and counteropinion is refreshing and allows informed readers to reach their own conclusions about the processes involved and the ramifications of self-narrative...an interesting and informative treatise on self-narrative...recommended for graduate students and researchers/faculty."
--R.E. Osborne, Choice

"This book presents a clear focus on a topic of great importance to researchers and clinicians. It should point the way to further research and theory development....This work is a valuable contribution."
Harris Chaiklin, Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease