Incorporating narrative identity into structural approaches to personality and psychopathology

Structural models that connect personality and psychopathology have tended to adopt a somewhat narrow view of personality, focused on dispositional traits. In this paper, we lay the groundwork for incorporating narrative identity into future research on the structure of personality and psychopathology. Narrative identity is a well-mapped domain of personality, one with demonstrated incremental validity in the association with and prediction of psychological well-being. In this paper, we provide a brief overview of the construct of narrative identity, situate it within the broader endeavor of integrating basic personality science with the science of psychopathology, particularly involving personality pathology, and describe an agenda for future research on this vital and largely overlooked topic.