ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an integrative statement about mind, politics, and stories by outlining three fundamental premises and three functions of narrative, as well as a broad and inclusive methodological statement about how narrative might be empirically interrogated at multiple levels of analysis. It seeks to provide a further anchor for scholars engaged in the interdisciplinary quest to link politics and the mind through rigorous theorizing and empirical inquiry. The chapter posits three premises of the political psychology of narrative and three psycho-political functions of narrative, expanding upon my argument for the centrality of narrative in both political and psychological life. To summarize the premises of a narrative approach to linking politics and mind, it is useful to articulate the psycho-political functions of narrative. In other words, a narrative approach recognizes the narrativist him- or herself and the analysis he or she produces as part of the cycle of social stasis and change.
