Who am I? It is difficult for me to recognise myself in a photo taken when I was 5 and to identify with the thoughts I had when I was 16. But I can do that because I have a ‘sense of self’ which includes beliefs about myself that address two basic questions: which person I am and what type of person I am. The first question can be answered by reference to my life history (e.g., when I was born, who my parents are, what my job is) and the second question concerns my personality and dispositions (e.g., whether I am loyal, whether I am good at playing volleyball, whether I like Russian literature).

How do I keep all the relevant information about myself together to attain a sense of self? Well, I do what humans do best, tell stories. Self-narratives are the means by which I establish continuity between my past, present, and future experiences and impose some coherence on my disparate traits and features. I am not alone in doing this: we all create stories that make sense of the experiences we remember and connect our life events in some meaningful way using the literary devices stories have, plots helping us see how some events follow from other events and twists acknowledging surprising developments that have a big effect on the course of our lives.