The narrative construction of identity in young adopted: The case Beno | A construção narrativa da identidade em jovens adotados: O caso Beno

Abstract

The adolescence is the moment when arises the need to construct an identity that allows the person a productive relationship with the world (Erikson, 1968; Habermas & Bluck, 2000; McAdams, 2001). McAdams refers to the process of identity construction as the development of a sense of unity and purpose given the demands of the world and society. It is a process in which young people reorganize and reconstruct their life story to produce a coherent autobiographical narrative. This work investigates, through a case study, the construction of a life narrative in a young adult that have been adopted in childhood. The aim of the study is searching for the narrative construction of the identity in an adopted person. We want to know how the motive of the adoption appears in the narrative of a life story and its function on the construction of the narrative self. We have been interviewing a man in 22 years old with the Life Story Elicitation Interview Protocol (Gonçalves, Henriques, & Vieira, 2010). The interview was submitted to a structure process and content descriptive analysis, based on the systems of Gonçalves and col. (Gonçalves, Henriques, Alves, & Soares, 2002; Gonçalves, Henriques, & Cardoso, 2006; Gonçalves, Henriques, Alves, & Rocha, 2006; Gonçalves, Henriques, Soares, & Monteiro, 2006) on the tridimensional system of global coherence of life narratives (Habermas & Diel, 2005; Habermas & de Silveira, 2008; Habermas, Ehlert-Lerche, de Silveira, 2009) and in the analysis of the multiplicity of imagoes, characters and voices of the narrative speech (Hermans, 2008; Hermans & Kampen, 1993; McAdams, 1993).