The initial cognitive ability to coordinate experience into a hierarchically organized, multi-episode narrative occurs in youth, beginning a narrative record of ego identity development that continues throughout the life span (Habermas and Bluck in Psychological Bulletin 126:748-769, 2000; Habermas and de Silveira in Developmental Psychology 44:707-721, 2008). The following case studies explore how two high-functioning women integrate potentially conflicting bicultural identity expectations in adulthood by causally connecting identity memories stemming in youth from their country and culture-of-origin to their current life values and structures. It is hypothesized that the coconstructivist nature of meaning-making, described by Erikson (Insight and responsibility. Norton, New York, 1964; Identity and the life cycle. W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1980) as the ego, personal and socio-organismic features of ego synthesis, includes interrelated factors of personal and cultural others which affect both individual and future generational bicultural identity integration.
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