A human life has finite time, finite energy, and finite attention, while the number of possible trajectories is effectively infinite. At every moment, alternatives are being killed: other careers, other partners, other versions of the self. If this fact were consciously held in its full magnitude, the result would be chronic vertigo and grief. To avoid this, the psyche does something economical. It converts a sequence of constrained choices into a story about a particular kind of person, and then reinterprets sacrifice as destiny.
The following expands that mechanism in depth.
1. Constraint: the basic problem behind narrativising the self
The starting point is structural scarcity.
Time is finite. Energy is finite. Attention is finite.
Yet each day presents branching alternatives:
- Work or intimacy
- Solitude or social obligation
- Body or intellect
- Money or art
- Family or self expansion
- Security or exploration
Every chosen path implies the silent burial of others. Each decision is not only a selection, it is an execution of competing futures. Most individuals cannot live in constant awareness of how many lives they are not living. The cost of this awareness is high:
- Chronic regret
- Persistent counterfactual rumination
- Envy toward versions of self that will never exist
- Paralysis from over evaluation of options
To avoid these states, the psyche introduces narrative. Narrative provides a frame in which necessity is disguised as essence.
Instead of:
“I am choosing to work long hours and quietly deprioritising my partner,”
the internal self description becomes:
“I am a dedicated, ambitious person doing this for the family.”
The same behavior is recoded. A tradeoff is recast as a virtue. What could have been experienced as neglect is reframed as duty, calling, maturity, or tragic necessity. The person does not simply say, “I work late.” They say, “I am the sort of person who works late for reasons that fit a coherent character.”
Narrativisation performs several functions at once:
- It hides opportunity cost behind character.
- It provides continuity, so that past sacrifices feel justified.
- It protects self respect.
- It enables future decisions to be made within a familiar pattern.
The raw situation is: a branching tree of mutually exclusive lives.
Consciousness is: a fluid capable of moving down many branches.
Identity becomes: a narrow, selective channel the fluid is forced into, then glorified after the fact.
Individuals do not simply pick paths and then describe themselves. They create a character who would obviously choose those paths, then retroactively announce: “This is who I am.”
2. Consciousness as water, identity as channel
Conscious awareness is relatively formless. It can imagine being many kinds of person: solitary ascetic, parent, criminal, artist, executive, lover, sage. At the level of fantasy, there are no walls.
Identity functions as the canal system that gives this fluid some direction.
The metaphor holds in several ways:
- Water by itself can occupy many shapes. Without a container, it spreads and destabilises structures.
- Canal walls do not generate the water but dictate its direction.
- Once water has cut a groove into the earth, it will repeatedly flow there with less resistance.
In psychological terms:
- Repeated behavior creates grooves of habit.
- Repeated justifications harden into character narratives.
- Repeated roles crystallise into stable self images.
When consciousness is not channelled, several phenomena appear:
- Paralysis: the person struggles to commit, since each decision triggers awareness of multiple incompatible futures.
- Fragmentation: different roles are inhabited in different contexts with no overarching story linking them.
- Psychotic drift: experiences and interpretations emerge that cannot be integrated into any coherent frame, leading to a sense of unreality.
Historically, societies solved this problem by providing prebuilt channels. Religion, tradition, class, and family roles functioned as ready made canal systems. An individual did not have to invent an identity from scratch.
They were assigned roles: monk, mother, warrior, merchant, scholar, artisan.
They were embedded in religious identities: Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Jew, and others.
They were positioned in family structures: eldest son, dutiful daughter, clan member.
Doctrine and custom did not only organise behavior. They also arranged the inner life. The channel preceded the water. The individual’s task was to rationalise desires within that given lane. If a person had aggressive impulses, they might interpret them through warrior duty. If a person had care based impulses, they might interpret them through parental or vocational calling.
Modernity erodes these inherited canals. Large scale religious and traditional pathways lose authority. However, the structural problem remains: fluid consciousness must still be channelled to avoid collapse. In the absence of strong external channels, individuals build private ones:
- Career identity: “I am a scientist,” “I am a founder,” “I am in finance.”
- Sexuality identity: “I am this orientation, this style of lover, this relational archetype.”
- Political identity: “I am left, right, centrist, radical.”
- Aesthetic identity: “I am minimalist, maximalist, underground, tasteful, ironic.”
- Lifestyle identity: “I am a traveller, a homebody, a gym person, a nightlife person.”
Each of these functions as a canal. They limit possible selves and make some choices feel natural while others feel alien.
Both extremes are dangerous:
- Without any lane, the fluid overflows, leading to paralysis, emptiness, and breakdown.
- With a lane that is too narrow or artificially imposed, the accumulated pressure of disowned possibilities can crack the channel, producing symptoms, eruptions, or drastic reversals.
Narrativisation of identity is therefore an attempt to stabilise flow. The person generates a story that makes the particular canal feel necessary, morally right, and psychologically bearable.
3. Early psychological formulations of narrativised identity
Classical and early modern psychology repeatedly tried to capture this phenomenon long before contemporary narrative psychology named it directly.
3.1 William James: the “Me” as portfolio of investments
James distinguished between the “I” and the “Me”.
- The “I” is the subject of experience, the knower.
- The “Me” is the object, everything that can be regarded as part of the self.
Within the “Me,” he further distinguished:
- Material self: body, clothes, possessions.
- Social self: recognition, status, roles in the eyes of others.
- Spiritual self: inner faculties, values, convictions.
A crucial insight in James is that the “Me” expands where a person invests and contracts where they withdraw. The areas that receive time, care, and emotional energy become incorporated into the self. The areas that are neglected drift toward irrelevance, even when they are objectively important.
If an individual over invests in career and under invests in partnership, the following reorganisation occurs:
- Career successes and failures feel intensely self relevant.
- The partner becomes psychologically more distant, even if still physically present.
- Emotional reactions are structured around work fluctuations, not relational dynamics.
The same person then develops a self description such as:
- “I am a builder.”
- “I am a provider.”
- “I am a person of responsibility who cannot relax.”
This narrative hides a structural fact that is less flattering: finite energy is being allocated away from intimacy, and that allocation reveals a hierarchy of priorities. The story converts this hierarchy from a contingent configuration into essential character.
The portfolio of investments becomes the portfolio of identity.
3.2 Freud: rationalisation as life scale self narrative
In Freud’s system, the ego sits between the drives and prohibitions. Drives include aggression, libido, envy, and fear. Prohibitions include external rules, internalised norms, and superego demands.
Choices in adult life necessarily involve betraying someone: the partner, the child, the parent, the earlier self, the imagined self. An individual cannot meet all obligations. The ego has to manage this fact.
One mechanism is rationalisation. After making a choice driven by fear, desire, or convenience, the ego generates a respectable explanation that maintains self esteem. Over time, these justifications accumulate into a narrative identity.
Consider an individual who is genuinely threatened by emotional intimacy:
- The raw motive is: “Emotional closeness feels dangerous, work allows avoidance, productivity cloaks vulnerability.”
- The narrativised motive becomes: “Heavy workload is necessary to provide security, this is sacrifice.”
Both descriptions can be simultaneously true at different levels. The person experiences them sequentially: the drive acts, the defence explains.
Freud’s view of the ego as storyteller implies that identity is not merely a record of what has happened. It is also an organised set of defenses that reduce consciousness of how many betrayals and sacrifices have occurred. The “kind of person” story protects against direct exposure to the violence of drive and conflict.
3.3 Adler: fictional finalism
Adler introduced the idea of “fictional finalism”: people organise their life around imagined goals that are not literally true but function as orienting fictions.
Examples:
- “I am going to be someone important.”
- “I am the one who is always there for others.”
- “I am not the kind of person who settles.”
These are not empirical statements. They are narrative poles that give direction to effort. Day to day choices must be consistent with these fictions or the person experiences dissonance.
If an individual’s fiction is “I am a serious, responsible provider,” then:
- Working on weekends feels consistent with being that kind of person.
- Taking a day off for unstructured intimacy can provoke anxiety or guilt, since it threatens the fictional self image.
- Neglecting emotional presence at home does not register as failure. It is interpreted as necessary toughness or sacrifice.
Adler’s framework emphasises that identity is not only the sum of past behavior. It is also a story about the future that retroactively justifies the past. The fiction determines which investments feel legitimate and which feel like deviations.
3.4 Jung: persona and shadow as lane and its residue
Jung separated:
- Persona: the social mask, the role cluster underneath which the individual engages the world.
- Shadow: the disowned traits, impulses, and potentials that do not fit the persona.
- Self: the deeper organising totality, usually unconscious.
The chosen lane in life is, in large part, a persona configuration. It is the channel socially recognised and socially rewarded.
Everything that does not fit that lane accumulates in the shadow. Over time:
- A person who narrativises themselves as a selfless provider may repress selfishness, dependency, erotic curiosity, and resentment.
- A person who narrativises themselves as a nurturing caretaker may repress ambition, aggression, and sexual autonomy.
The stronger the person clings to the persona as “who I really am,” the more force accumulates in the shadow. Jungian thought therefore adds a cost to narrativisation: the unlived lives do not disappear, they become internal figures, complexes, and symptoms.
The lane chosen is not neutral. It shapes what the psyche must exclude.
4. Religious structures as pre modern identity lanes
Before secular individualism, religious systems functioned as large scale identity allocation mechanisms. They reduced possible lives to a manageable set of sanctioned roles.
Vocation and calling in Christianity
The Christian idea of “calling” frames life path as divinely assigned. To be a monk, mother, merchant, or scholar is not presented as one option among infinite possibilities. It is framed as obedience to an external will.
This arrangement performs several functions:
- Multiple possible selves are pre killed in advance under the category of “not called.”
- Sacrifices are reinterpreted as obedience rather than random loss.
- The individual does not have to actively choose from infinite lifestyles.
The cost is obvious: many potential identities are never explored. The benefit is psychic containment.
Dharma in Hindu thought
Dharma can be understood as duty according to role, station, and stage of life. The Bhagavad Gita presents a famous case: Arjuna, a warrior, is morally conflicted about fighting relatives and teachers. Krishna does not resolve this by expanding Arjuna’s choices. Instead, he insists that Arjuna’s lane as a warrior supersedes his personal turmoil.
Here again, the multiplicity of possible identities is compressed into one lane: warrior dharma. Choices outside that lane are framed not as missed opportunities, but as derelictions of duty.
Buddhist renunciation
Monastic renunciation reduces the number of identity hooks.
- Food is restricted.
- Sexual expression is abandoned.
- Status markers are minimised.
- Property is limited.
This does not merely serve ethical ideals. It stabilises the mind by reducing available roles. There is no career jungle, no romantic marketplace, no consumer identity. The individual is, in practice, a renunciant. The number of possible selves is severely curtailed.
Islamic submission and intention
In Islamic thought, submission and niyyah (intention) frame actions within a tight interpretive grid. There is a narrow path of permissible behaviors and inner states. Choices outside that path are not neutral experiments. They are errors, deviations, or sins.
In all these cases, the multiplicity of available lives is narrowed into sanctioned lanes. The individual inherits a narrative that justifies tradeoffs. Domains that are not invested in are conceptualised as “not my duty,” not as neglected possibilities. The psychic work of narrativisation is externalised into doctrine.
5. Modern secular versions: career, romance, and ideology as identity
With diminished religious authority, similar structuring mechanisms migrate into secular fields.
5.1 Career as exoneration and excuse
Modern labour markets encourage individuals to adopt careers as core identities. “I am in medicine,” “I am in law,” “I am in tech.” This provides both status and containment.
An individual who invests heavily in career while partner or family life stagnates often relies on several narrative forms:
- Duty narrative: “This builds a future for everyone.”
- Necessity narrative: “The industry demands it, there is no alternative.”
- Competence narrative: “This is my zone of excellence, I would be wasted elsewhere.”
Underlying structure:
- Time and energy are disproportionately allocated to work.
- Partner, children, and self reflection receive less.
- Emotional intimacy becomes secondary.
These narratives function as exonerations and masks. They make the economic layer tolerable at the mythic level. Without them, the person would have to acknowledge that work is preferred over other responsibilities.
5.2 Romantic scripts and gendered lanes
In intimate life, individuals adopt scripts that justify particular patterns of investment.
Common identities include:
- The loyal partner: remains even in a dead relationship under the story “I am not a quitter.”
- The free spirit: cycles partners under the story “I cannot be caged.”
- The caregiver: sacrifices growth with “My role is to support.”
- The dominant one: controls emotionally under “I must be the strong one.”
Each script legitimises a specific pattern of tradeoffs:
- Staying in destructive situations becomes a virtue under loyalty.
- Avoiding depth becomes a virtue under freedom.
- Self abandonment becomes a virtue under care.
- Emotional rigidity becomes a virtue under strength.
The sequence is consistent:
- Behavior repeats.
- Discomfort or dissonance appears.
- A story emerges that converts the pattern into essential character.
6. Cognitive dissonance: the adhesive of narrative
Cognitive dissonance theory describes what happens when there is a gap between self image and behavior.
- A person sees themselves as caring yet neglects close others.
- A person sees themselves as rational yet behaves impulsively.
- A person sees themselves as ethical yet acts in self interested ways.
Dissonance creates psychological tension. Three strategies are available:
- Change behavior to match self image.
- Change self image to fit behavior.
- Change the story connecting behavior and self image.
The third option is usually cheapest. The individual retains the flattering self image and the current behavior, but inserts an interpretive bridge:
- “Yes, there is little time spent at home, but providing financially is a form of love.”
- “Yes, there is emotional distance, but the other party is too demanding.”
- “Yes, there is heavy substance use, but it fuels creativity.”
Over time, these bridges solidify. They are no longer experienced as justifications, but as descriptive truths. Narrativisation is therefore a dissonance reduction technology. It smooths contradictions between conduct and ideals.
Through this mechanism, constrained patterns of investment are rebranded as expressions of a stable character. The individual avoids the conclusion that they are preferring some people and domains and abandoning others.
7. The self as investment pattern plus explanatory myth
Combining James and narrative psychology, identity can be expressed in one concise formula:
The self equals the pattern of repeated investments plus the story used to portray this pattern as inevitable or virtuous.
Two layers are involved.
7.1 Economic layer
This is where time, attention, money, and emotional energy actually go. It is observable:
- Hours at work versus hours in relational presence.
- Effort invested in self education versus leisure.
- Attention directed toward children versus screens.
- Emotional energy spent on internal reflection versus external performance.
The economic layer does not lie. It exposes priorities.
7.2 Mythic layer
This is the narrative sphere. It answers:
- Who is this person believed to be.
- Why the current distribution is supposed to make sense.
- Which sacrifices appear noble instead of avoidant.
- Which pleasures appear deserved instead of compulsive.
In the earlier example:
- Work receives heavy investment.
- Partner receives minimal emotional availability.
Economic reality: work is the central priority, the partner is secondary.
Possible mythic overlays:
- “Time scarcity now secures our joint future.”
- “The other person values stability, this provides it.”
- “Temperament is fixed, love is shown through providing.”
Myth and reality are not mutually exclusive. There can be real care within avoidance. However, from the standpoint of structural analysis, narratives primarily function to soften the recognition that some lives and some needs are consistently chosen over others.
8. The risk of non narrativisation: fragmentation and breakdown
What would happen if an individual did not use narrative at all, and instead confronted raw distribution of choices without interpretive cushioning.
They would have to:
- Perceive all the lives they are not living.
- Register every neglected person and abandoned role.
- Feel repeatedly the death of each unrealised self.
Sustained awareness of this generates overwhelming affect:
- Grief at the loss of unrealised futures.
- Guilt toward those deprioritised.
- Rage at the constraints of circumstance.
- Envy toward imagined or actual others.
Some clinical pictures illustrate failed narrativisation. When an individual cannot weave experience into any coherent story, the world becomes disjointed.
- Bleuler coined “schizophrenia” in part to capture fragmentation of thought and emotion, where associations no longer form stable patterns.
- Later theories of borderline personality speak of “identity diffusion”, where there is no continuous sense of self across contexts, only shifting states.
In less extreme forms, individuals without cohesive narratives report:
- Depersonalisation: feeling unreal or detached from self.
- Chronic emptiness: no stable preferences or commitments.
- Radical instability in values and goals.
There is a reason even dishonest narratives are retained. Any story is sometimes preferable to none, because narrative itself is a stabilising technology. It integrates losses, justifies choices, and assigns meanings.
9. Shadow of the unused lanes: the return of the repressed
Each chosen lane implies rejected alternatives. These do not vanish. They sink below conscious identity and transform into shadow material.
In Jungian terms, the “unlived life” becomes an internal complex. It may manifest as:
- Sudden fantasies that contradict conscious values.
- Over idealisation of people who represent disowned traits.
- Symptoms, compulsions, or projects that seem alien to the stated identity.
Examples:
- An individual who defines themselves as rational, unemotional, and work focused may periodically erupt in irrational rage or fall intensely for someone embodying play and spontaneity.
- A person who defines themselves as selfless caregiver may fantasise about escape, abandonment of all dependents, or radical independence, then feel shame about these impulses.
The more rigid the persona and the more aggressively alternative lanes are denounced, the more likely the shadow will return in disruptive ways. Narrativisation stabilises, but also colonises inner terrain. Potentials that might have developed are annexed as “not me” and return as disturbance.
Midlife crises, sudden vocational shifts, affairs, breakdowns, or spiritual upheavals are often expressions of shadow material attempting to claim some space in the psychic economy.
10. Meta narratives in the digital age: micro lanes and algorithmic identity
Contemporary conditions intensify the structural problem.
Social media and global information flows expose individuals to:
- Thousands of lifestyles and identity performances.
- Endless comparison with curated selves.
- Multiple ideological frameworks.
- Niche communities and subcultures.
Labour markets demand:
- Flexible reskilling.
- Portfolio careers.
- Personal branding.
Relationships are less constrained by tradition and more shaped by individual preference and aesthetic.
The water of consciousness now perceives many more possible channels than before, while traditional large scale canals weaken. To cope, individuals adopt micro narratives:
- “I am a startup founder.”
- “I am a spiritual traveller.”
- “I am a soft life person.”
- “I am a sigma male.”
- “I am a creative polymath who does not fit boxes.”
Each of these labels does two jobs:
- Organises choices: what to wear, post, buy, who to date, how to work.
- Provides excuses: failures to commit or to stabilise are reframed as features of the archetype, not as conflicts.
For example:
- “Commitment failed because the wanderer archetype cannot be domesticated.”
- “Anxiety is reframed as visionary alienation from ordinary people.”
The structure is analogous to the earlier provider narrative. Only now, rather than drawing on family roles or religious duty, individuals draw on internet archetypes and identity markets. Algorithms reinforce these choices by feeding content that matches the selected narrative, deepening the canal.
11. Technical restatement of the core mechanism
The process can be summarised structurally.
- The psyche confronts an excess of possible relationships, projects, and selves.
- Scarcity of time, energy, and attention forces selective investment.
- Selective investment yields winners and losers: some people and domains receive commitment, others are consistently abandoned.
- The resulting pattern generates guilt, envy, and internal conflict.
- To metabolise this, the subject constructs a narrative identity that:
- Portrays the chosen investments as expressions of an essential self.
- Recasts the non chosen paths as fate, incompatibility, impracticality, or moral unsuitability.
Thus:
- Choosing work over a homebound partner is interpreted as devotion to duty, not fear of intimacy.
- Choosing spiritual practice over material success is interpreted as purity, not avoidance of competition.
- Choosing children over self actualisation is interpreted as selfless love, not fear of personal expansion.
- Choosing art over stability is interpreted as authenticity, not inability to cope with ordinary responsibilities.
The key point: investments reveal actual priorities. Stories hide this revelation from conscious scrutiny.
12. The diagnostic question
A blunt diagnostic approach does not ask for self descriptions. Verbal identity is easily curated. Instead it operates in two steps:
- Examine where hours, attention, and emotional energy actually go over months and years.
- Examine the narrative explanations used to describe and justify this distribution.
The first step yields the canal map: which domains are irrigated, which are arid.
The second step reveals the mythic overlay: which tradeoffs are glorified, which are minimised or denied.
Identity, under this lens, is not a set of adjectives. It is a recurrent pattern of sacrificial allocations plus the stories that make those sacrifices bearable.