Schechtman’s Narrative Account of Identity

2 Pages·0.043 MB·English

by  Gillett Grant.

GILLETT / NARRATIVE ACCOUNT OF IDENTITY ■ 23
Schechtman’s
Narrative Account
of Identity
Grant Gillett
KEYWORDS: personal identity, narrative self, memory shame, pride, aspiration, vulnerability, and that
crucial sense of who one is as a person among
others.
I It follows that here we might also find the
HAVE LONG BEEN AN ADMIRER of Schechtman’s
source of the discontents that induce a person to
sensitive and psychologically realistic account
apply to a psychiatrist or counselor for help with
of personal identity. In the present piece, she
the narrative work required to fashion a liveable
addresses the issues surrounding personal identi-
self. If Schechtman is right, the cognitive capaci-
ty through Locke’s view and problems attending
ties contributing to memory and “keeping track
that view and the psychological continuity theo-
of oneself”(in a deep and satisfying way) are to
ries descended from it.
be found in part in the nonconscious domain
She examines the claim that the person is
rather than the thin layer of consciousness and
more extensive than the conscious mind and in-
propositional attitude psychology that enters the
cludes aspects of nonconscious mental activity.
mind of an analytic philosopher or a psychiatrist
Schechtman argues that one must have a self-
uninterested in depth.
conception that includes a trajectory where
I think she is right and that this paper and her
present experience unfolds meaningfully out of
more extensive work on the constitution of self
one’s past replete with implications for what one
represent a fertile point at which psychiatrists
does and how one does it. She locates, in current
and psychotherapists can begin the task of un-
writing on the self, the idea of a perceiver or
derstanding the nature of identity and the chal-
narrator self who tries to make sense out of
lenges involved in finding one that will serve the
herself as a human being with certain thoughts
unfolding project of understanding and forming
and feelings and is sometimes at a loss to do so.
the self. I believe that the resources that individu-
To this potentially very rich starting point we
als need for this task are derived from one’s
need only add the fact that a person draws on
rootedness in culture and human relationships
discursive and narrative skills that have been
where the levels of self that support conscious-
inscribed in her being to do this narrative, edito-
ness can be nurtured according to what Michel
rial, and judicial task and that many of these
Foucault calls the techniques proper to the care
skills have been imbibed with mother’s milk (and
of the self. Schechtman has done us a favor in
father’s voice). From this discursively inscribed
taking the debates surrounding neo-Lockean
set of resources and orientations arise guilt,
© 2005 by The Johns Hopkins University Press
24 ■ PPP / VOL. 12, NO. 1 / MARCH 2005
views of personal identity and outlining a per- of the human psyche as it roams through the
spective on identity and memory that can lead us jungle/jumble of discursive life and tries to nour-
to develop our understanding of the complexity ish itself on what it finds there.