Research

Overview

My research focuses on the interface between adult identity development and psychological well-being. Broadly conceived, my research interests revolve around the reciprocal and dynamic relationships between identity development and psychological functioning. I am especially interested in the most productive ways people make sense of the difficult things that happen to them and how that personal meaning facilitates changes in well-being. In other words, I am interested in how the process of making sense of negative experiences influences important life outcomes, including physical and mental health, personality maturity, and the process and outcome of psychotherapy treatment.

I am currently working on several research projects that all focus on related issues of identity development and psychological functioning.

You can find a list of my scholarly publications here.

You can find a list of media coverage of my research here.

You can find a list of some of my professional presentations here.

You can find a list of my non-academic publications here.

New Work

Towards a Theory of Embodied Identity: The Our Selves, Our Bodies Project (with an emphasis on identity among people with acquired disabilities)

Grounded in a series of in-depth case studies, I am in the early stages of developing a theory of embodied identity. The theory grapples with the psychological consequences of body-identity asynchrony and seeks to determine the conditions under which an individual deems one – their body or their identity – to be more essential or more malleable than the other. The theory will both elucidate the inflexibilities in different configurations of physical selfhood and explain opportunities for navigating the inevitable challenges of bodily change. This project is grounded in the psychology of narrative identity, but reaches far beyond it, to literatures in disability studies, queer studies, and others. My primary focus thus far has been on listening rigorously to the life stories of people who acquire major physical disabilities in adulthood.

Identity Theft: Who Tells Your Story?

I am in the earliest stages of a project focused on the question: who tells your story? As children, we are all characters in a story that is mostly narrated for us (usually by our parents or caregivers). In adolescence and emerging adulthood, we become the narrator of our own life story. But what happens when we lose authorial control over our story? Illnesses or injuries may cast us as protagonists in a story that feels as though it is being narrated by our body. People who become media obsessions may feel they are being narrated against their will. Innocent convicts may fight to overcome narratives of guilt. Child celebrities may have their lives narrated for them long after they become adults. These examples surface fundamental issues about our own authorial agency, our ability to change our narratives, and the meaning of truth in our life stories.

Past Work

Narrative Identity as the Foundation for Future Adaptation

Two recent studies (Adler et al., 2015) focused on narrative meaning-making as a foundation for future psychological well-being. These two studies, in collaboration with Dan P. McAdams (Chair and Professor of Psychology and Professor of Human Development) and Tom Oltmanns (Edgar James Swift Professor of Psychology in Arts and Sciences and Professor of Psychiatry at Washington University in St. Louis), examined individual differences in narrative identity as a predictor of variability in individual trajectories of mental health over several years. In one of the two studies this relationship was examined in a select sample of mid-life adults who received major physical illness diagnoses. Both studies suggested that different ways of narrating one's life have significantly different impacts on the trajectory of one's mental health, both under normal conditions and in the wake of a major negative life experience.

The Nature of Narrative Coherence: Empirical Answers

Narrative coherence, the structural configuration of personal stories, has been referred to as the foundational element of narrative identity. Indeed, if a story isn’t told coherently, it is hard to examine many of the other narrative characteristics that are the focus of the literature on narrative identity. There is a proliferation of theory about the nature of narrative coherence, but surprisingly little empirical data about this topic. In collaboration with Theo Waters of NYU, I am working on a project that will subject a large set of narratives to coding using several widely-used coding systems for operationalizing narrative coherence and subject the results to a principle components analysis in order to determine the latent structure of narrative coherence.

Talking About The Talking Cure: Making Sense of Psychotherapy

In seeking to understand the ways in which the process of responding to life's challenges fuels identity development, I have conducted a series of studies focused on people’s reconstructions of their experiences in psychotherapy, with special attention to those narratives that accompany optimal functioning. Psychotherapy provides an opportunity to study the evolution of identity over a significant change experience while simultaneously investigating the process of clinical improvement. As a result, I have conducted a range of studies focused on understanding the ways in which the therapeutic experience is narrated and incorporated into identity. One major thread of this work began with two cross-sectional studies (one qualitative and one quantitative) focused on the therapy narratives of people who had recently completed treatment. This pair of studies (published in Narrative Inquiry and Psychotherapy Research) helped identify key elements of people's therapy stories that relate to mental health and lay the groundwork for a major longitudinal investigation of identity development over the course of psychotherapy. The two research questions that framed this study were: (1) How do clients' personal narratives change over the course of therapy? and (2) How do these narrative changes relate to symptom changes (i.e., which comes first, feeling better or telling a new story)? The study (published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in February, 2012) is the largest investigation of clients' narratives over the course of treatment, with over 500 narratives having been collected and studied. Analyses combined the thematic coding of narratives with growth curve modeling techniques. A substantially different re-analysis of the data (in press at the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology) revealed meaningful spikes in both mental health and clients' narratives.

I have also worked in collaboration with Hal E. Hershfield of the Stern School of Management at New York University to examine the role of describing mixed emotions (simultaneously experiencing positive and negative feelings) in one's therapy narratives as a vehicle for predicting positive therapeutic outcome. That study was published in April, 2012 in the journal Public Library of Science (PLoS ONE).

Making Sense of Troubled Lives: The Life Stories of People with Borderline Personality Disorder

I recently completed a study in collaboration with Tom Oltmanns (Edgar James Swift Professor of Psychology in Arts and Sciences and Professor of Psychiatry at Washington University in St. Louis) focused on identifying the unique ways people diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) make sense of their lives (published in the Journal of Personality Disorders in 2012). BPD is one of the most debilitating psychiatric disorders, characterized by extreme emotional lability and relationship dysfunction. The task of creating a successful sense of self may be especially challenging for individuals suffering with BPD. In this study we are working to identify the key thematic characteristics that differentiate the life stories of people with BPD from their non-BPD peers.

Other Research

In addition to the active studies described above, I have published papers on adult development, epistemology and identity, the teaching of psychology, and psychological responses following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. You can find the relevant publications on the Publications page of this website.