Research Aricle Ment Health Fam Med (2017) 13: 625-636 2017 Mental Health and Family Medicine Ltd Identity and Autobiographical Narratives: Towards an integrated concept of personal history in psychiatry A Novac University of California, Irvine, 400 Newport Center Drive, Suite 309, Newport Beach, CA 92660 M Cheng Tutle Harvard Medical School, 55 Fruit Street, Boston, MA 02114 R Bota University of California, Irvine, 101 City Drive Orange Ca, CA 92868 J Brown Yau Compassionate Care ALS, Boston, MA 1335 Bounty Way, Laguna Beach, CA BJ Blinder University of California, Irvine 400 Newport Center Drive, Suite 706 Newport Beach, CA 92660 Introducion An ever-increasing emphasis on individualized medicine over the past decades has been relected in a rising interest in autobiographical memory and personal history in psychiatry. Recent pieces published in The New York Times[1] and The New Yorker [2] have brought public attention to the signiicance of personal narratives, both in an individual’s identity and in promoting resiliency, factors of high priority for psychiatry. In this paper we are reviewing the multidisciplinary literature on autobiography, its relationship to implicit memory, and the neurobiology of self. We will then discuss the impact on the ield of psychiatry. ABSTRACT A converging, multidisciplinary literature on the signiicance of autobiography, personal history and the self in psychiatry and neuroscience has emerged. With the growing emphasis on “individualized medicine,” the authors are making a case for the in-depth study of personal narratives and individual scripts, as research subjects of interest, towards an “individualized” psychiatric treatment approach. The authors are proposing the term Identity Narrative (IdN) to deine an emotional and cognitive framework that serves as an implicit memory scafolding for the gradual development of complex autobiographical narratives. Along with the autobiographical narrative, IdN constitutes autobiographical memory, which continues to mold itself throughout life and deines an individual’s identity and the self. A person’s IdN is built of implicit scripts and key points which draw content from external narratives (human history) and personal experiences. IdN parallels lifelong growth and development; it is of special importance in psychological treatment and healing; and it is embedded in a larger biological substrate of social ailiations. The authors propose the “implicit re-routing hypothesis of IdN” by which life events of: (a) sudden insight and awareness; (b) high emotional valence and (c) high frequency of repetition; (d) prolonged duration are likely to become re-routed into a person’s implicit memory and thus become part of the IdN. Clinical implications are discussed. Keywords: identity narrative, autobiographical memory, implicit memory, implicit scripts, key points, default mode, communication (language) beltway, biology of social ailiations, implicit re-routing hypothesis. Human history starts with telling of stories. In some languages the word for the discipline of history and the word for story are interchangeable [“Geschichte” (Ger.), “L’histoire” (Fr.)]. Tales, fables, creation myths and cosmogonic myths are present in all cultures to provide a narrative for the origin of the world [3]. On an individual level, the telling of stories is among the irst activities between mother and child. The irst stories, together with the irst experiences in life, create proto- narratives-- the beginning of a life story. From then on, humans develop an elaborate autobiography, a personal narrative that contributes to the emergence of the Self. In this contribution, we refer to the term Self as used in the current neuroscience literature [4-7].