Life story coherence and its relation to psychological well-being

Over the past few years, the concept of coherence as it applies to people's storied accounts of their lives has become an increasingly popular topic. However, theories of coherence have been slow to appear, and a comprehensiv e definition of the construct has yet to be presented by researchers. Moreo ver, almost no work has been done relating the concept of coherence to the particular form of the life story. Thus, the aims of the present study were twofold: first, to investigate whether it is possible to construct a relia ble coding scheme for life story coherence, and second, to examine the rela tionships between life story coherence and mental health. The results of th e study indicate that the life story coherence coding system is a reliable measure, and that the coherence construct is therefore amenable to quantita tive analysis. The most important finding of this study was that, as predic ted, life story coherence demonstrated a statistically significant relation ship to psychological well-being. This finding thus lends statistical credi bility to the claims of narrative psychologists, who argue that mental well -being is related to, if not the result of, a well-integrated and coherent life story.