Abstract

A critical analysis of the nature and function of narrative was explored through a number of selected disciplines with a contextual background of psychology. The parameters of the nature of narrative was generated and identified through progenitors of notions contributing to narrative, the problem of distinguishing story from non-story, the possible biological basis for narrative, the prerequisites for doing narrative and the attendant problems of each of these areas. The concepts, elements, and properties of narrative explicated from the disciplines of theology, history, anthropology, law, illness, evolution, economics, and narrative therapy were compared, contrasted, and presented for future use in research. The elements of narrative found were categorized as structure, form or genre, processes, context and content. A sub-theme of how and what stories reveal or conceal based on the slippage between experience and expression, constraints of memory, vocabulary, language, or the stories, particularly the dominant stories allowed in one's cultural library, and self-deception revealed in dreams, slips of the tongue, or puns was noted