WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION
Around 4-5 years of age the child’s awareness of inner life is taking the form of self-identity, i.e., the child begins to experience herself as a person, to define herself as a certain kind of person, and to trace her own continuous identity of person across time and space. This diachronic dimension of self-consciousness, viz. the possibility of tracing a unity that persists through time in our inner life, evolves as children attain a level of linguistic-narrative capacity which enables them to organize their own experiences in a chronological biography of self. This personal timeline that defines a continuous self through time is what A. Damasio terms «autobiographical self», and which others define «narrative self» (see, e.g., D.P. McAdams).
More precisely, the construct of autobiographical self/narrative identity can be defined as the ability to take a subjective perspective on specific events experienced at particular time points linked together on a personal timeline. Such a capacity may begin to emerge by the end of the preschool years but may not be fully consolidated until adolescence and early adulthood.
The aim of the workshop is to critically re-examine the main concepts and theories concerning the nature, ontogeny, and pathologies of the construct of autobiographical self/narrative identity, and in such a way to provide researchers from different areas with an interdisciplinary forum for exploring this many-sided subject.

Speakers: Gian Luca Barbieri, Erica Cosentino, Francesco Ferretti, Massimo Marraffa, Dolore Rollo

Minimal bibliography
G. L. Barbieri, Tra testo e inconscio. Strategie della parola nella costruzione dell’identità, Angeli, Milano 2007.
E. Cosentino, Il tempo della mente. Linguaggio, evoluzione e identità personale, Quodlibet, Macerata 2008.
A. Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens. Body, Emotion and the Making of Consciousness, Heinemann, London 1999.
F. Ferretti & E. Cosentino, Time, language and flexibility of mind. The role of mental time travel in linguistic comprehension and production, in «Philosophical Psychology», 2011, iFirst.
R. Fivush, The development of autobiographical memory, in «Annual Review of Psychology», 62, 2011, pp. 559-582.
D. P. McAdams & B. D. Olson, Personality development: Continuity and change over the life course, in «Annual Review of Psychology», 61, 2010, pp. 517-542.
D. Rollo (ed.), Narrazione e sviluppo psicologico, Carocci, Roma 2007.