Bridging development and disturbance: A translational approach to the study of identity.

Across the subdisciplines of personality and clinical psychology, identity has been a psychological construct of wide-reaching importance in understanding both normative processes of human development as well as psychopathology. However, despite its wide-reaching importance, differences in the conceptualization and measurement of identity across these subdisciplines have contributed to more fragmentation, rather than unification, in our understanding of this central principle. In the present study, we sought to unify the measurement of identity across these subdisciplines through examining the extent to which personality and clinical measures of identity converge, as well as the predictive validity of identity measures across layers of personality functioning, employing a unique design for a dynamic assessment of identity.

The Signs and Significance of Personality Coherence in Personal Stories and Strivings.

The concept of personality coherence refers to the extent of psychological unity and wholeness embodied within each individual. In the present research, we examined the extent to which the narrative, functional, and organismic conceptualizations of personality coherence interrelate, as well as their associations with psychological abilities and personal adjustment. College students ( N = 391) narrated accounts of three personal memories; listed five personal strivings that they subsequently compared and evaluated; completed performance measures of their intelligence, wisdom, and creativity; and rated their hedonic and eudaimonic well-being.