Narrative Coherence of Turning Point Memories: Associations With Psychological Well-Being, Identity Functioning, and Personality Disorder Symptoms

Abstract

Individuals develop a narrative identity through constructing and internalizing an evolving life story composed of significant autobiographical memories. The ability to narrate these memories in a coherent manner has been related to well-being, identity functioning, and personality pathology. Previous studies have particularly focused on coherence of life story narratives, overlooking coherence of single event memories that make up the life story. The present study addressed this gap by examining associations between narrative coherence of single turning point memories and psychological well-being, identity functioning, and personality disorder (PD) symptoms among 333 Belgian emerging adults (72.1% female; Mage = 22.56, SD = 3.13, age range = 18–30). In addition, the present study tested whether narrative coherence could predict unique variance in PD symptoms above and beyond identity and interpersonal functioning, both considered key components of personality pathology. The findings showed that narrative coherence was not significantly related to psychological well-being, but yielded significant negative associations with disturbed identity functioning and antisocial PD symptoms. Furthermore, narrative coherence predicted unique variance in antisocial PD symptoms above and beyond identity functioning, but did not predict unique variance in borderline and antisocial PD symptoms above and beyond both identity and interpersonal functioning. Collectively, these findings suggest that narrative incoherence within single event memories might be characteristic for disturbed identity functioning and antisocial personality pathology.

Narrative identity characteristics and personality pathology: An exploration of associations from a dimensional and categorical perspective in a clinical sample of youth.

“…Additionally, a lack of narrative coherence was related to poor mentalization and attachment insecurity (Lind, Vanwoerden, et al, 2020). Furthermore, lower levels of narrative coherence were related to ASPD features in a community young adult sample, and with more childhood adversity in adult patients with BPD (Bendstrup et al, 2021;Vanderveren et al, 2021). However, in a university student sample coherence appeared to be negatively related to some maladaptive personality trait facets but not BPD characteristics (Sajjadi et al, 2022).…”

“…First, affective theme refers to the emotional valence of the narrative (McLean et al, 2020). Community youth with categorical BPD or antisocial personality disorders (ASPD) characteristics seem to narrate about situations with a more negative affective valence than youth without these characteristics (Vanderveren et al, 2021). Moreover, adult patients with BPD appear to narrate about life events more negatively than adults without this classification (Botsford & Renneberg, 2020; Lind, Vanwoerden, et al, 2020).…”

The registration continuum in personality disorder studies: Theory, rationale, and template.

“…In any study, any process of reducing raw data into observations for statistical analysis should be registered, preferably with the code for these transformations; these steps are given in Row 5 of Table 1. These may entail reducing psychophysiological activity (De Pascalis et al, 2019, in psychopathy), generating sequences of behavior (Testori et al, 2019, in psychopathy), transcribing speech or interview samples (AlaviHejazi et al, 2017, in histrionic personality disorder), summarizing vocal characteristics (Low et al, 2020, across psychopathologies), coding facial expressions or reactions (Gadea et al, 2015, in dependent personality), or schemes for analyzing qualitative data (Vanderveren et al, 2021, in borderline and antisocial personality disorders). For each of these, citing preexisting guidelines may be sufficient to register these procedures transparently.…”

The Registration Continuum in Personality Disorder Studies: Theory, Rationale, and Template

“…In any study, any process of reducing raw data into sets of observations for statistical analysis should be registered, preferably with the code used to accomplish these transformations. Among other aspects, these may entail summarizing psychophysiological activity (De Pascalis et al, 2019 in psychopathy), generating sequences of behavior (Testori et al, 2019 in psychopathy), transcribing speech or interview samples (AlaviHejazi et al, 2017 in histrionic personality disorder), summarizing vocal characteristics (Low et al, 2020 across psychopathologies), coding facial expressions or reactions (Gadea et al, 2015 in dependent personality), or schemes for analyzing qualitative data (Vanderveren et al, 2021 in borderline and antisocial personality disorders). For each of these, citing pre-existing guidelines may be sufficient to register these procedures transparently.…”