Beyond Past and Present: Meaning Making, Narrative Self and Future-Orientation

Jerome Bruner’s contribution to understanding human psychological functioning is manifold. In this commentary I focus on his suggestion that human action is always purposeful and directed towards imagined goals, and interrogate the contributions made by Salvatore and Fasulo in light of this idea. I develop further the ideas discussed in these papers to propose a conceptualisation of future-orientedness of human meaning-making, and discuss how narrating as a process of creating and enacting possibilities for the future could be understood. In my commentary I emphasize that human meaning making is not only about making sense of things that have already happened, but also about imagining a future where self and self’s relation to others could be otherwise. I suggest that conceptual models of meaning making need to move beyond a mere focus on past and present and instead consider the process of becoming in relation to and together with others.