CONCEPT
Narrative Coherence
The integration of past, present, and future into a self-story that connects where one has been to where one is going through meaningful linkages — the achievement the reflexive project of the self must continuously produce, and which the AI transition threatens by making the past suddenly non-functional as foundation.
Narrative coherence is what the reflexive project of the self produces when it succeeds. A coherent self-narrative is not merely a collection of biographical facts; it is the meaningful integration of those facts into a story that connects past to present to future through linkages the narrator experiences as her own. When the narrative is coherent, life feels like it makes sense — not in the sense of having a cosmic purpose, but in the sense of continuity, direction, and the experienced authorship of one's own trajectory. The AI transition threatens narrative coherence in a distinctive way: it makes the past suddenly non-functional as foundation for the present, disrupting the temporal integration on which coherence depends.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The concept is implicit throughout Giddens's work on self and identity but is most fully developed in Modernity and Self-Identity (1991). It