Paul John Eakin

Eakins - how our lives become stories

How our lives become stories is Eakins investigation in (anno 1999) new theories on personhood.

The plan of this book is comparatively simple. Using autobiographies as examples, I apply recent research in neurology, cognitive science, memory studies, developmental psychology, and related fields to the task of rethinking the nature of self-experience. (xi)

Eakins is a academic investigating autobiographies since the 70's. This is a big plus, because he is show more able to give the reader nice examples. Those examples are little stories themselves, like the descriptions of Steedmans relational identity with her mother disappointed love life (Landscape of a good women, 1986).

On the other hand, Eakins knowledge of autobiographies and his willingness to 'test' theories about personhood are also the weakness of this book. He is only verifying the theories by copy-pasting narratives that confirm. It is propably not Eakins goal too falsify those theories since he beliefs that they are "registers for the self".

I would definitively recommend this book to everybody who is interested in embodied, relational and narrative theories about identity and want an introduction that is grounded in experience. show less