Transformative Self

The Transformative Self explores three of life's perennial questions: How do we make sense of our lives? What is a good life? How do we create one? In this comprehensive volume, developmental psychologist Jack J. Bauer responds to those three questions by integrating three main areas of study-narrative identity, the good life, and personal growth-to present an innovative model of humane flourishing and human development. The Transformative Self synthesizes an extensive range of scholarship, from scientific research in psychology to work in philosophy, literature, history, cultural studies, and more. The result is a cohesive framework for understanding how personal and cultural stories shape our development and how, through those stories, we might cultivate the growth of happiness, love, and wisdom for the self and others.

This is a breathtaking and courageous book—perhaps the most original work in personality psychology in the 21st century. Building on developmental psychology, philosophy, and literature, it explores an enduring dimension of human nature—the search for growth in the pursuit of both happiness and wisdom. Not since Maslow has a psychologist so effectively portrayed the inner lives of individuals who organize their life stories around the search for self-understanding. Simultaneously scientifically rigorous and deeply felt, this magnum opus is invaluable to any reader interested in how we strive for and make meaning in our lives., Jack Bauer's conception of human lives is both scholarly and deeply humane. His central subject is growth—the manifold ways human beings can grow good lives and create good life stories that affirm the growth of happiness, love, and wisdom. Drawing deftly from philosophy, literary studies, history, and cutting-edge psychological research, Bauer builds a generous and thought—provoking theory, articulating a vision that grows in intricacy and beauty, step-by-step, chapter-by-chapter, over the life course of this extraordinarily insightful book., Jack Bauer's magisterial book of a life-time addresses the probing and ever-timely question of what constitutes a good life. Injecting a glimmer of optimism into today's troubled and uncertain times, Bauer argues that we all have the capacity to craft a narrative of personal growth that unlocks the door to happiness and wisdom.

Jack J. Bauer, PhD, is Professor of Psychology and past Raymond A. Roesch, S.M., Endowed Chair in the Social Sciences at the University of Dayton. His research on the topics of this book has appeared in leading journals in the fields of personality and developmental psychology. He is co-editor of the book Transcending Self-Interest: Psychological Explorations of the Quiet Ego. He has been co-editor of the Journal of Happiness Studies, associateeditor of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and editor of a local newspaper in northern Michigan.