The Redemptive Self
Stories Americans Live By - Revised and Expanded Edition
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $64.99
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- $64.99
Publisher Description
How do we as Americans define our identities? How do our stories represent who we are-our successes, our failures, our past, our future? Stories of redemption are some of the most powerful ways to express American identity and all that it can entail, from pain and anguish to joy and fulfillment. Psychologist Dan P. McAdams examines how these narratives, in which the hero is delivered from suffering to an enhanced status or state, represent a new psychology of American identity, and in turn, how they translate to understanding our own lives.
In this revised and expanded edition of The Redemptive Self, McAdams shows how redemptive stories promote psychological health and civic engagement among contemporary American adults. He reveals how different kinds of redemptive stories compete for favor in American society, as presented in a dramatic case study comparing the life stories constructed by Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. McAdams provides new insight on race and religion in American narratives, offers a creative blend of psychological research and historical analysis, and explains how the redemptive self is a positive psychological resource for living a worthy American life. From the spiritual testimonials of the Puritans and the celebrated autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, to the harrowing stories of escaped slaves and the modern tales in Hollywood movies, we are surrounded by transformative stories that can inform how we make sense of our American identity.
But is the redemptive life story always a good thing, and can anyone achieve it? While affirming the significance of redemptive life stories, McAdams also offers a cultural critique. Through no fault of their own, many Americans cannot achieve this revered story of deliverance. Instead, their lives are rife with contaminated plots, vicious cycles of disappointment, and endless pitfalls. Moreover, there may be a negative side to these beloved stories of redemption-they demonstrate a curiously American form of arrogance, self-righteousness, and naiveté that all bad things can be transformed. In this revised and expanded edition of the his award-winning book, McAdams encourages us to critically examine our own life stories-the good, the bad, the ups, the downs-in order to inform how we can benefit from them and shape a better future American identity.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Making extensive use of his clinical studies, McAdams examines the stories of highly generative Americans-people with strong commitments to the well being of their country, community and family. A narrative psychologist, McAdams is not concerned with diagnosing his subjects or deciding whether the events they describe actually happened. His purpose, instead, is to understand why his subjects tell the kinds of stories they do, which makes the book feel more like social history or literary criticism than clinical psychology. "It is to the best-adjusted, most fully functioning, and most productive and caring adults...that I have turned to to discern some of what is most characteristic and problematic in American culture." McAdams draws on a vast range of sources to provide the context for this effort: Puritan confessions, slave narratives, Horatio Alger success stories, 20th-century self-help classics, developmental psychology, the lives of Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln and Oprah Winfrey, as well as back issues of People magazine. Although the first half of the book, where McAdams argues for the existence of his redemptive paradigm, is repetitive, the second half is a delight, particularly his chapters on race and on nongenerative life stories. Sociologists and psychologists will undoubtedly find this book appealing, but McAdams makes complex topics accessible to the nonspecialist, so the book will likely interest anyone looking to learn more about American culture or McAdams's obscure branch of psychology.
