Positive and Negative Childhood and Adolescent Identity Memories Stemming from One’s Country and Culture-of-origin: A Comparative Narrative Analysis

The initial cognitive ability to coordinate experience into a hierarchically organized, multi-episode narrative occurs in
youth, beginning a narrative record of ego identity development that continues throughout the life span (Habermas and Bluck
in Psychological Bulletin 126:748–769, 2000; Habermas and de Silveira in Developmental Psychology 44:707–721, 2008). The following case studies explore how two high-functioning women integrate potentially conflicting bicultural identity
expectations in adulthood by causally connecting identity memories stemming in youth from their country and culture-of-origin
to their current life values and structures. It is hypothesized that the co-constructivist nature of meaning-making, described
by Erikson (Insight and responsibility. Norton, New York, 1964; Identity and the life cycle. W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1980) as the ego, personal and socio-organismic features of ego synthesis, includes inter-related factors of personal and cultural
others which affect both individual and future generational bicultural identity integration.