ABSTRACT
Our research has focused on the life stories constructed by American adults. Every life story account we have observed, be it conveyed to us through interview or open-ended questionnaires, is unique, and therefore the quantitative and qualitative analyses we conduct on these protocols cannot do justice to the idiographic
richness of each individual case. Nonetheless, we have found it scientifically useful to code and interpret life stories in terms of well-defined content themes, and to relate these themes to other aspects of human functioning displayed by our research subjects, such as psychological well-being, social motives, personality traits, occupational roles, and even demographic factors such as age and social class (e.g., McAdams, 1982; McAdams, Hoffman, Mansfield, & Day, 1996). In the current chapter, I describe a recent line of research in this regard that focuses on the themes of contamination and redemption in life stories. Supplemented by a reading of selected sociological and cultural-historical sources on conceptions of selfhood in America, our life-narrative studies point to the salience of a particular kind of narrative identity in contemporary America — what I will call the redemptive self. A key feature of redemptive life stories is the transformation of personal suffering into positive-affective life scenes that serve to redeem and justify one’s life. The redemptive self is not a new personality type, but rather a characteristic narrative of selfhood that can be discerned in the life stories of many American adults today. Its emergence and proliferation recaptures classic themes of American selfhood that can be traced back hundreds of years as well as new features of social life characteristic of postmodernity.
