Six. Identity: Creating a Personal Story

Until now, I’ve considered the aspects of personality that can be broken down into traits, patterns, and virtues. But to understand someone, we need to know more. Although we can piece together a revealing profile from these components, we can’t complete the picture without information about the guiding principles of the person’s life. To get this information, we need to shift our attention to his or her personal story.

Creating stories is one of the basic functions of the human mind.¹ It is our way of organizing sequences of experiences by inferring cause-and-effect relationships that can help us predict future events. In sizing up people, we use this process to create stories about how they got to be the way they are. Within these stories are our inferences about their motives, where they’re headed, and what we can expect from them. It is our way of converting all the mental snapshots we have taken into mental movies of their lives, with flashbacks of critical episodes and projections about what will happen next. We use the same narrative process to compose stories about ourselves.

Composing stories begins in childhood, and events during that period have their effect on our developing personality. But the stories we are mainly interested in are not simply records of objective biographical details. They are, instead, imaginative interpretations of who we are—interpretations that we begin working on seriously in our early teens. As this process unfolds in young adulthood, it gives rise to our sense of identity with which we steer the course of our lives.

This chapter is about the sense of identity, the subset of personality that psychologist Dan McAdams defines as “the personal myth you construct to define who you are.”² Although traits, patterns, and virtues contribute to the creation of this personal myth, they don’t tell us what it is. To grasp it, we need to learn what makes a person’s life feel unified, purposeful, and meaningful, a view expressed in the form of a self-defining story.

Erik Erikson, whom you met in Chapter 4, first recognized the importance of such self-definition as an essential step in growing up.³ In his view, the adolescent challenge of reconciling goals and interests with social opportunities and expectations is what leads us to construct an initial draft of identity. To meet this challenge, we each develop our own characteristic ways of dealing with the world,⁴ along with an overall sense of who we are. We do this gradually and intuitively, without much conscious thought.

Some people make this process seem easy. By their mid-teens, they have an idea about the kind of person they want to be and the path they intend to follow. This is more readily achieved in traditional societies with limited and well-defined choices. But it also happens in complex modern societies. For example, Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan made clear her interest in becoming a judge while still in high school, and she even posed in a judicial robe for her yearbook.

Others have a harder time deciding who they are. They may find it so difficult to bring their abilities, goals, and ideals in line with social demands that they drop out of school or quit their jobs. In certain cases, this inner struggle continues well into adulthood, a condition that Erikson personally experienced and that he called an identity crisis.⁵ It took him many years to settle on his identity, which he continued to work on for the rest of his life.

Paying attention to a person’s sense of identity is important because it can put you in his or her shoes. Unlike the analytic understanding that comes from making a list of traits and virtues, learning about a person’s view of the past and hopes for the future promotes empathic understanding. Considering the noteworthy events and circumstances in the narrative of someone’s life may encourage you to identify with the struggles she encountered, the failures she experienced, and the strengths she displayed. Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes may also lead you to think about who you might have become if you had been in the same situation, and this will often help you clarify your judgment of her character. To see what I mean, let’s consider a famous story.

Oprah Winfrey Shapes Her Identity

Oprah Winfrey’s Wikipedia page begins with a paragraph of superlatives that describes her as follows:

[A]n American television host, actress, producer, and philanthropist, best known for her self-titled, multi-award-winning talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind in history. She has been ranked the richest African-American of the twentieth century and beyond, the greatest black philanthropist in American history, and was once the world’s only black billionaire. She is also, according to some assessments, the most influential woman in the world.

What makes these achievements all the more remarkable is that they were hardly predictable from her turbulent early life.

Born in 1954 to a teenage mother from a small town in rural Mississippi, Oprah was initially raised by her maternal grandmother and other members of her extended family. But this stability ended when Oprah was six. At first she went to Milwaukee to be with her mother, and then she was sent to Nashville to live with Vernon Winfrey, who, at the time, believed he was her biological father. In 1963, after struggling with Vernon’s strict discipline, Oprah returned to Milwaukee.

This new environment brought sexual activity and abuse.⁶ It started when Oprah’s cousin reportedly raped her when she was nine. By her own admission, Oprah was also sexually promiscuous from an early age. Her younger sister claims that, at 13, Oprah was even selling sex to boys at her house while her mother was at work.⁷ Feeling that she couldn’t control her, Oprah’s mother sent her back to Vernon.

It could have been too late. Shortly after Oprah arrived at Vernon’s, in time to enroll in the first integrated class at East Nashville High School, it became apparent that she was pregnant. In February 1969, having just turned 15, Oprah delivered a baby boy.

So far, this all sounds like the familiar story of a poor child born out of wedlock who replicates her mother’s struggles. But in Oprah’s case the baby, who was born prematurely, died about a month later. As Vernon told her, “God has chosen to take this baby, and so I think God is giving you a second chance.”⁸ It was, like the pregnancy itself, one of those fateful events that can shape the course of a life. To Oprah, it meant putting everything behind her and behaving as if it had never happened.

Oprah could move on so easily because she had already rejected the possibility of settling for the role of unwed teenage mother. At 15, she had big plans for herself and wouldn’t let anything stand in her way. Furthermore, the future she envisioned—to be a famous entertainer—would be based on the talents and personality traits that already made her an engaging performer as a little girl.

Those talents and traits were obvious from the time Oprah was three, when she wowed her congregation by reciting Bible stories in church. And, as she tells it, her decision to go on stage had already crystallized when she was ten, while watching Diana Ross’s enthusiastic reception on The Ed Sullivan Show. To Oprah, who considers that the moment when her identity began to gel, the success of the glamorous African-American singer convinced her that she, too, could become a star. Even though she went through an adolescent period of wildness, she continued to believe that she was destined to be famous, and she kept her eye on that prize.

After the birth of her baby, the wildness subsided and she grabbed her second chance. This was also a time when affirmative action was beginning, and Oprah’s integrated high school brought new opportunities, including classes in speech and drama that prepared her to win oratory contests. While still in high school, she also got a part-time broadcasting job at Nashville’s African-American radio station. Instead of descending into the dead-end role of unwed teenage mother, the 17-year-old Oprah was envied by her classmates and already was becoming larger than life.

More success followed. Her radio performances soon led to a job at a local television station, and, at age 20, Oprah became Nashville’s first black female TV personality. A few years later she was hired to anchor the evening news in Baltimore. Then, after some setbacks, the seasoned 29-year-old moved on to Chicago to build what soon became the nationally syndicated Oprah Winfrey Show.

While professional achievements continued, Oprah’s personal life was not very satisfying. Throughout her twenties, she had stormy relationships with men who didn’t stay with her. She also struggled with her weight, which had ballooned to 233 pounds when she arrived in Chicago. But instead of trying to hide her own problems, Oprah learned that she could turn some of them to her advantage.

The most famous example came in a 1985 show about childhood sexual abuse in which a tearful Oprah unexpectedly revealed that she, too, had been raped as a child. Rather than being pitied as a helpless victim, she was pleased to find herself admired as a symbol of resilience and a fearless spokesperson for the rights of women. Her obesity was also transformed from something shameful to a challenge that she could share with her viewers, many of whom had a similar problem.

The public’s sympathy for Oprah’s struggles stimulated her to reshape her personal myth. Instead of just aiming to be a glamorous star like Diana Ross, she became a champion of self-acceptance and recovery. Over the years, Oprah even started to think of her role as a service to a higher cause. As she herself put it, “I am the instrument of God .... My show is my ministry.”⁹ This spiritual aspect took many forms as her stardom increased.

Identity As a Story

Oprah’s story makes good reading because she became so successful. But it also illustrates the general factors that influence the way the rest of us form mental pictures of who we are. Each case involves a constellation of traits and talents that reflect, in part, the genes we happen to have been born with. Each case involves influential life circumstances, such as gender, family, social class, nationality, culture, ethnicity, religion, and ongoing world events. Each case involves chance events, opportunities, and encounters that we react to and become deeply affected by. In each case the interplay of these factors is sorted and integrated to generate the characteristic ways we deal with our world. In each case these coalesce into an internal sense of principles and goals. And even though they are mainly formulated without much conscious thought, each of us sums up our version of the result in the form of a story.¹⁰

In Oprah’s case, the story she developed is one of talent overcoming deprivation, abuse, racial prejudice, and teenage mistakes; of ambition leading to opportunities; of hard work leading to professional advancement; and of the gradual realization that her own self-acceptance can teach and inspire others. To fill in the details, she tells us that she knew from an early age that she could be a star; that even though she faltered because of mistreatment and personal failings, she didn’t let this stop her; and that, in the end, she is serving God’s purpose as well as her own.

Is this really Oprah’s story? How much is she making up? What is she leaving out? The same questions can be asked of each of us. And the reason we find it hard to answer them is that we all have been greatly influenced by events and encounters whose impact we may be unaware of, including many that were accidental.¹¹ Even when we made deliberate decisions about work or relationships, they may have affected us in ways that we don’t really understand. As our identity formed, important memories were unconsciously modified to conform to the internal self-image we were creating, and the past was shaped to make a more coherent story. Here is how Erikson described the development of an identity by creating a personal story:

To be adult means, among other things, to see one’s own life in continuous perspective, both in retrospect and in prospect. By accepting some definition of who he is, usually on the basis of a function in an economy, a place in the sequence of generations, and a status in the structure of society, the adult is able to selectively reconstruct his past in such a way that, step by step, it seems to have planned him, or better, he seems to have planned it. In this sense, psychologically we do choose our parents, our family history, and the history of our kings, heroes, and gods. By making them our own, we maneuver ourselves into the inner position of proprietors, of creators.”¹²

In Oprah’s case, her relatives have questioned some of her selective reconstructions. For example, a cousin has challenged her memory of an extremely deprived childhood: “She’s not straight with the truth. Never has been .... You should’ve seen the clothes and dolls and toys and little books that Aunt Hat brought home for her ... the ribbons and ruffled pinafores.”¹³ Members of her family have also disputed Oprah’s description of childhood sexual abuse.¹⁴ But no one would deny that she experienced hardships as a little girl who was shuttled between parents in different cities. Nor would they deny the difficulties she faced while pregnant at 14 and dealing with the premature birth and then death of her baby boy. So even though there’s some uncertainty about the details, her story can still be properly told as one of recovery from adversity and as a triumph of talent, hard work, and determination. And even though what we know about Oprah’s story is surely incomplete, mulling it over helps us understand her better.

Benjamin Franklin also made liberal use of selective reconstructions. As Walter Isaacson pointed out in discussing Franklin’s inventions, “the most interesting thing that Franklin invented, and continually reinvented, was himself. America’s first great publicist ... he carefully crafted his own persona, portrayed it in public, and polished it for posterity.”¹⁵ Nevertheless, the story Franklin told in his Autobiography still gives us a good idea of what he was really like.

Erikson wasn’t put off by such inventiveness. Instead, he believed that inventive interpretations are essential to building a coherent identity. This is particularly important in adolescence, when we may be attracted to ideas and attitudes that differ greatly from those we were raised with and find ourselves struggling to reconcile them. To bring change and continuity together, we seek out friends and environments that support what we want to become, while consciously and unconsciously inventing a story that explains this new synthesis to ourselves.¹⁶

The story becomes more detailed over a lifetime as we meet new challenges, and Erikson emphasized three that present themselves after we complete a first draft of identity.¹⁷ He called the challenge of young adulthood “intimacy versus isolation,” which can be met by developing close friendships and an enduring romantic relationship. He called the challenge of middle adulthood “generativity versus self-absorption,” which can be met by parenting, mentorship, and altruistic contributions to the community. He called the challenge of late adulthood “integrity versus despair,” which can be met by finding a way to look back at one’s whole life story with understanding and satisfaction.

To Erikson, it seemed natural to think of these challenges in chronological sequence. But he also recognized that we keep working on all of them throughout our lives. Intimacy is not confined to young adulthood, generative contributions to the welfare of others may begin before middle age, and satisfaction with the integrated self we have become does not need to be postponed until we are in a nursing home. So even though it can be useful to break down a person’s story into developmental chapters, we must also recognize that their contents overlap. Thoughtfully editing all parts of a story—and the identity that it represents—is necessary not only for making plans for the future, but also for adapting to the present and accepting the past.

Complicated though this process is, we are all continuously guided by our evolving sense of our own identity and by our inferences about the identity of the people we are engaged with. And we make these inferences by looking at the past and the future through stories.

Steve Jobs Tells Three Stories

We don’t just create stories internally to keep us aware of who we are. We also tell them to others to project our identity. As we get to know someone, we listen to that person’s stories and tell our own. Sharing stories helps us to get to know each other in ways that are not apparent from simply observing behavior.

A good example of the informativeness of personal stories comes from a commencement address by Steve Jobs. Delivered at Stanford in 2005, it described three pivotal life episodes and the lessons he learned from them.¹⁸

The first story Jobs told was about his own college experience. A promising student, he started at Reed College, a small liberal arts school, when he was 17. But “after six months,” Jobs said, “I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would work out okay.”

Jobs was not, however, the ordinary dropout. Having freed himself from curricular requirements, he decided to get educated on his own terms. So he stayed at Reed for another few semesters, sleeping on the floor in friends’ rooms, turning in discarded Coke bottles to get money for food, and dropping in on classes that looked interesting. Among them was a course in calligraphy that he loved so much that he later insisted on including multiple typefaces in the fonts of the Macintosh computer. From this he drew two lessons: “Much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on,” and “You have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something—your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.”

The second story jumps over the starting of Apple with Steve Wozniak when Jobs was 20, to a low point ten years later, when he was fired by John Sculley, the man he had recruited to be its CEO. Humiliated at first, Jobs went on to new greatness at Pixar and subsequently realized that “getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods in my life.” After a 12-year hiatus, Jobs returned to a faltering Apple to preside over its spectacular rebirth.

The third story is about another low point. Diagnosed with a form of pancreatic cancer, Jobs had it surgically removed in 2004. But again he saw a lesson. Instead of slowing him down, this near-death experience reaffirmed that “your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life .... And, most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.”

These three stories tell us a lot about Steve Jobs and the way he sees himself. From the age of 17, he had the confidence, resourcefulness, self-discipline, and ambition to follow his curiosity and do things his way. When faced with a crisis at 30, he relied on these qualities to bounce back. When confronted with cancer, he relied on them again.

At the close of his speech, Jobs summed up the essence of his identity, as reflected in the three stories. He said it could be described in four words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish,” a motto from The Whole Earth Catalog. The intense motivation and curiosity that this motto implies are, to Jobs, what he is all about. And he recommended this way of seeing oneself to the new Stanford graduates.

There are, however, other ways of seeing Steve Jobs. Although his own narrative is informative, learning others’ stories about him can add a lot. In “The Trouble with Steve Jobs,” Peter Elkind, an editor of Fortune, sums up some of those stories.¹⁹

Among the troublesome features Elkind identified in the stories he collected, many can be attributed to Jobs’s low Agreeableness, which is not rare among top business leaders. From what Elkind learned, Jobs “oozes smug superiority” (arrogance), “periodically reduces subordinates to tears” (heartlessness), “fires employees in angry tantrums” (combativeness), and “is notoriously secretive” (suspiciousness and deception). Elkind also found signs of all three patterns of low Agreeableness: narcissistic, as revealed by smugness and an insistence on making his own rules; paranoid, as revealed by a level of secretiveness that even his Silicon Valley colleagues consider extreme; and antisocial, as suggested by reports that “he parks his Mercedes in handicapped spaces” and that he condoned backdating of stock options.

Another troublesome feature that Elkind identified is perfectionism, the dark side of Jobs’s exceptional competence. This dark side led John Sculley to call him “a zealot, his vision so pure that he couldn’t accommodate that vision to the imperfections of the world” and to fire him in 1985. This dark side also may trigger his low Agreeableness and lead him to call subordinates “shitheads” and “bozos” if they don’t meet his exceptional standards.

But to Jobs, the troublesome characteristics I’ve mentioned might just be inconvenient by-products of staying hungry and foolish. If you asked him why he isn’t nicer to people, he might say that he’d like to be but that it would get in the way of the true excellence he is striving for. If you asked him why he doesn’t lighten up a little and stop being such a control freak, he might explain that it’s all too easy to slide into mediocrity and that he’s simply not willing to lower his standards. Then he might go on to tell you that the ultimate justification for this way of being is apparent not just in the beauty and elegance of his products, but also in their social value and commercial success.

When viewed in this way, it is reasonable to conclude that much of Jobs’s personal myth is truly represented in his three stories. Of course, he might tell us other important stories as well, including those about his adoption and search for his biological parents; his youthful immersion in Buddhism and experimentation with LSD; the way he dealt with the birth of his first child out of wedlock when he was 23; and his relationship with his wife and their children—and each one deserves attention if you want to put yourself in Jobs’s shoes. But work appears to dominate Jobs’s life, and “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish” is his way of explaining his approach to it.

Guiding principles that can be summarized so succinctly are not unusual. Dan McAdams, who has devoted his career to studying people’s life stories,²⁰ finds that such principles become increasingly coherent as we settle into middle adulthood. Although some flexibility remains, to allow for adaptation to changing circumstances, inconsistencies tend to be reconciled as our stories mature. The essence of our personal myths can then be enunciated in a few simple phrases that we tell ourselves—and others—about who we are.