ABSTRACT
In summary of our views so far, the development of autobiographical memory is founded on the highly subtle coordination of biological, psychological, social and cultural processes. In the introduction, we already emphasized that it would be a basic mistake to consider autobiographical memory only as something individual, only as a personal ability. On the contrary, autobiographical memory is the functional element that guarantees both the synchronization of the individual with his or her social environment, and the confidence, for the individual and others, that in spite of all the time that has passed and all the physical and psychological changes across the entire life span, each person remains the same “I” and “me”. In societies that are constantly increasing the degree of differentiation among their different parts and members, and that also demand patterns of behavior that are becoming longer and more complex, the level of the demands placed on us and our performance continually increases as well. The autobiographical subject is held responsible for fulfilling these requirements and keeping up the performance over time, because he or she is seen as a form of relay station for psychosocial synchronization. This explains why, throughout history, the phases allowed for education, training and development have been growing in duration. At the same time, however, as anyone can see in the numbers of stress-related disorders and diseases today, the vulnerability of individual persons increases just as well, in face of the many and varied expectations that their own autobiographies have to keep up with and also integrate successfully into their lives. There are myriads of demands for living up to different social roles in life such as in one’s occupation or in several occupations over time, in relationships with others, or even in different relationships one after the other in a sequence as parent, amateur athlete, friend, a patient, etc., and when the roles become all the more varied and complicated, the autobiographical self becomes all the more fragile at the same time that it is expected to integrate all these different roles more and more efficiently, across the whole life span.
