Abstract

Narrative theory provides an interesting contribution to the rich philosophical literature on the self and personal identity. This links with psychological and psychiatric themes concerning the self, because many cases of disorder involve some kind of loss or fragmentation of the self. What follows is a philosophical inquiry into these narrative theories, which should have some implications for how we should regard subjects with these disorders. My primary philosophical conclusion is that there is an interesting germ of truth in the narrativist position, where it concerns narrative threads within a person, but that we should resist the generalization from this restricted claim to the implausible position that ..