Applicants to training courses in professional psychology are routinely required to submit an autobiography or life story as part of the selection process. What we are curious about is when several autobiographies, despite each presenting their own idiosyncratic identity, share commonalities. Nine autobiographies of successful applicants to a training course in professional psychology were analysed using an experience centred approach to narrative analysis. Specific influence of audience effect, development of a narrative identity, and genre were focused on in the analysis. We conclude that narratives represent a specific form of the Bildungsroman as a coming-of-age into the profession of psychology and propose that autobiography as part of the selection process can be utilised effectively as a precursor to the training of professional psychologists.
AndrewsM.SclaterS. D.SquireC.TamboukouM. (2004). Narrative research. In SealeC.GoboG.GubriumJ. F.SilvermanD. (Eds.), Qualitative research practice (pp. 109–124). London, England: Sage
2.
BoesT. (2006). Modernist studies and the Bildungsroman: A historical survey of critical trends. Literature Compass, 3, 230–243. doi: 10.1111/j.1741–4113.2006.00303.x
3.
BohnA.BerntsenD. (2008). Life story development in childhood: The development of life story abilities and the acquisition of cultural life scripts from late middle childhood to adolescence. Developmental Psychology, 44, 1135–1147. doi: 10.1037/0012–1649.44.4.1135
4.
BrimerJ. (2001). Self-making and world-making. In BrockmeirJ.CarbaughD. (Eds.), Narrative and identity: Studies in autobiography, self and culture (pp. 25–37). Amsterdam, the Netherlands: John Benjamins Publishing Company
5.
BuckleyJ. H. (1974). Season of youth: The Bildungsroman from Dickens to Golding.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
6.
CrossleyM. L. (2000a). Narrative psychology, trauma and the study of self/identity. Theory & Psychology, 10, 527–546. doi: 10.1177/0959354300104005
7.
CrossleyM. L. (2000b). Introducing narrative psychology: Self trauma and the construction of meaning.Buckingham, England: Open University Press
8.
FreemanM. P. (1993). Rewriting the Self: History, memory, narrative.London, England: Routledge
9.
JonesA. H. (1996). Images of physicians in literature: Medical. Bildungsromans. The Lancet, 348(9029), 734–736. doi:10.1016/S0140–6736(96)07315–1
10.
MaynardJ. R. (2002). The Bildungsroman.. In BrantlingerP.ThesingW. B. (Eds.), A companion to the Victorian novel (pp. 279–301). Maiden, MA: Blackwell
11.
McAdamsD. P. (2001). The psychology of life stories. Review of General Psychology, 5, 100–122. doi: 10.1037/1089–2680.5.2.100
12.
McAdamsD. P.JosselsonR.LieblichA. (2006). Identity and story: Creating self in narrative.Washington, DC: American Psychological Association
13.
MurrayM. (2003). Narrative psychology and narrative analysis. In CamicP. M.RhodesJ. E.YardleyL. (Eds.), Qualitative research in psychology: Expanding perspectives in methodology and design, (pp. 95–112). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association
14.
RaggattP. T. F. (2006). Multiplicity and conflict in the dialogical self: A life-narrative approach. In AdamsD. P.JosselsonR.LieblichA. (Eds.), Identity and story: Creating self in narrative (pp. 15–37). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association
15.
RiessmanC. K.SpeedyJ. (2007). Narrative inquiry in the psychotherapy professions. In ClandininJean D. (Ed.), Handbook of narrative inquiry: Mapping a methodology (pp. 426–456). California: Sage
16.
RicoeurP. (1985). Time and narrative: Volume 2 (McLaughlinK.PellauerD., Trans.). Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press. (Original work published 1984)
17.
SmithE. W. L. (2000). Toward the meaning of “the person of the therapist”. In BrothersB. J. (Ed.), The Personhood of the Therapist (pp. 43–49). New York, NY: Haworth Press
18.
SquireC. (2003). Can an HIV-positive woman find true lave? Romance in the stories of women living with HIV. Feminism & Psychology, 12, 73–100. doi: 10.1177/0959353503013001009
19.
SquireC. (2008). Experience-centred and culturally-oriented approaches to narrative. In AndrewsM.SquireC.TamboukouM. (Eds.), Doing Narrative Research (pp. 41–63). London, England: Sage
20.
BlancheTerre M.DurrheimK.PainterD. (2006). Research in practice.Cape Town, RSA: University of Cape Town Press
