Narrative and ConsciousnessLiterature, Psychology and the Brain

Abstract

We define our conscious experience by constructing narratives about ourselves and the people with whom we interact. Narrative pervades our lives--conscious experience is not merely linked to the number and variety of personal stories we construct with each other within a cultural frame, but is subsumed by them. The claim, however, that narrative constructions are essential to conscious experience is not useful or informative unless we can also begin to provide a distinct, organized, and empirically consistent explanation for narrative in relation to consciousness. Understanding the role of narrative in determining individual and collective consciousness has been elusive from within traditional academic frameworks. This volume argues that addressing so broad and complex a problem requires an examination from outside our insular disciplinary framework. Such an open examination would be informed by the inquiries and approaches of multiple disciplines. Recognition of the different approaches to examining personal stories will allow for the coordination of how narrative seems (its phenomenology), with what mental labor it does (its psychology), and how it is realized (its neurobiology). Only by overcoming the boundaries erected by multiple theoretical and discursive traditions can we begin to comprehend the nature and function of narrative in consciousness. Narrative and Consciousness brings together essays by exceptional scholars and scientists in the disciplines of literary theory, psychology, and neuroscience to examine how stories are constructed, how stories structure lived experience, and how stories are rooted in material reality (the human body). The specific topics addressed include narrative in the development of conscious awareness; autobiographical narrative, fiction and the construction of self; trauma and narrative disruptions; narrative, memory and identity; and the physiological and neural substrate of narrative. It is the editors' hope that the multidisciplinary nature of this collection will challenge the reader to move beyond disciplinary confines and toward a coherent interdisciplinary dialogue.DOWNLOAD http://tiny.cc/7RxEoP https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/Narrative-and-Consciousness-Literature-Psychology-and-the-Brain/id448397860

In the Beginning: The Role of Myth in Relating Religion, Brain Science, and Mental Well‐being

“…More recent research has been conducted on the relation between myth and consciousness, including self‐understanding (Fireman et al. [2003]; Walker ), theory of mind (Mar ; Hutto and Kirchhoff ), and the relation between narrative and bodily based chemical reactions (Zak ; Zimmerman ). These topics border the relational topic to which we will next turn: myth and mental well‐being.…”

“…The scientists reviewed above provide the suggestion that the brain itself is, if not hardwired for myth, at least capable of myth processing, and perhaps even of utilizing myths as a facile and primary mode of functioning. More recent research has been conducted on the relation between myth and consciousness, including self-understanding (Fireman et al [2003]2012; Walker 2012), theory of mind (Mar 2011;Hutto and Kirchhoff 2015), and the relation between narrative and bodily based chemical reactions (Zak 2015;Zimmerman 2017). These topics border the relational topic to which we will next turn: myth and mental well-being.…”

Some Challenges for Narrative Accounts of Value

“…9 For a description of the growing importance of narrative within psychology, see McAdams (2001). 10 See, for example, Anderson (1993), Singer (2004), Velleman (2003, and the articles collected in Fireman et al (2003). 11 For an overview of the literature on narrative and power relations within sociology, see Clegg (1993).…”

Democratic Information Communities

“…For people to prosper together in relatively peaceful, prosperous communities, they have to understand themselves to be part of a group sharing some degree of common interest and destiny. Such self-understanding arises from acts of communication that give us ideas, symbols, facts, and perspectives that, through conscious and unconscious processes, we weave into narratives that help us understand who we are and our relationship to other people (Fireman, McVay, and Flanigan 2003). Media and public institutions as well as individual community members engage in this process of self-understanding, together creating a sort of collective, shared system of meaning that is always in flux as new voices and new experiences enter the information flow.…”