Abstract

Psychological health and adaptation depend on the capacity to be open and flexible, and see the world from multiple perspectives. Humans need a series of self-narratives to deal with social challenges and scripts that guide them in adaptive decisions in the relational world. These scripts need to include how to deal with a conflict, how to court a potential romantic partner, how to respond to a colleague who is pressing with requests we would prefer to avoid, and so forth. According to proponents of Dialogical Self Theory (DST; Hermans & Dimaggio, 2004; Hermans & Hermans-Konopka, 2010; Hermans & Gieser, 2011; Hermans et al., 1992; Lysaker & Lysaker, 2002), the self is made up of a series of I-positions, as a society of mind (Mead, 1934), which interact and continuously negotiate the course of action to be undertaken and the meaning to ascribe to events.