Narrare sé e gli-altri-in-noi

Abstract

How much of our individuality is there in the personal autobiographical memory and in the process of identity elaboration? This research aims at investigating whether our memories and the narratives we tell about ourselves  are truly individual, or are inherently created by and within the whole of social relations we feel to belong to. In the current study we analyze midwives and expectant mothers’ video-recorded clinical encounters showing the processes where (a) participants differentiate the individual sense of self and the collective meaning of self using specific linguistic markers; (b) autobiographical memories convey the self-other relationships, that are crucial in the re-elaboration of the self and in highlightening the extent to the other is a part of ourself. This paper relies on the identity-in-interaction view traced back to the Vygotskij’s and Bakhtin’s theories about the dialogical, interactional and social nature of the self.