The Narrative Self in Autobiographical Accounts of Illness

Abstract

The paper analyzes autobiographical accounts of the experience of chronic illness and its treatment to develop a sociological theory of the self. It is suggested that ‘self’ is not a biologistic or psychologistic thing. Rather self is autobiographical narrative – hence the narrative self. It is argued that four elements constitute such narrative selves in autobiographical discourse: evaluative relationships between events in time; cosmology; power relationships; and conceptualisation of self as object.