Who Do You Think You Are? What Is Your Personal Myth? |
Our inner world is abuzz with thoughts, visual and auditory memories, fantasies, dreams, recollections, urges, ruminations, and desires. From these fleeting and incoherent phenomena, which are only partially conscious, we form our idea of self: who we are and what characterizes us as individuals. We impose order on these random mental ephemera. We try to create a coherent narrative sequence.
A personal mythology is a mental narrative structure that gives meaning to our past, guides the present, and directs the future. We construct personal myths by organizing and condensing memories into a story that transforms the disparate bits into a logical sequence that helps us see ourselves as intelligible and knowable, as if we were characters in our own novel.
An addiction counselor might recognize she comes from a long line of alcoholics and consciously choose to break the pattern and use her personal myth to encourage sobriety in her clients. The child of immigrants might have a personal myth about the legacy of displacement that has made him determined to protect American democracy. Cultural icons Jennifer Lopez, Dolly Parton, Oprah Winfrey, and Steve Jobs share a rags-to-riches personal myth. Through determination and luck, these figures overcame impoverished backgrounds to become some of the wealthiest and most successful businesspeople on the planet.
In his Substack essay, psychologist Dan Ackerfeld describes the process of constructing a personal myth:
“Narrative identity is ‘a person’s internalized and evolving life story, integrating the reconstructed........