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Recently, a number of studies have drawn attention to the narrative fabric of autobiographical identity construction. In this process, time plays a pivotal role, both as a structure and object of construction. In telling our lives, we deal not only with the classical time modalities of past, present, and future, but also with the different temporal orders of natural, cultural, and individual processes. We find all forms of linguistic constructions of time, such as tense systems, tropes, anachronies, and the use of specific narrative genres. In this paper, I shall argue that in the process of autobiographical identity construction a particular synthesis of cultural and individual orders of time takes place. The result is autobiographical time, the time of one's life. For this synthesis the form of narrative is not only the most adequate form, it is the only form in which this most complex mode of human time construction can exist at all. Discussing various case studies, I shall distinguish six different narrative models of autobiographical time: the linear, circular, cyclical, spiral, static, and fragmentary model. To study how people make use of these models in their autobiographical narratives is to investigate how we become immersed into the fabric of culture and, at the same time, express our unique individuality.

11 autobiographical sketches by soc sci'ts are presented. In "A. P. Elkin: Dean of Australian Anthropologists," Elkin describes his field work, professional career, publications, & res interests, noting, the official recognition he received in the 1960's. "Celso Furtado: Adventures of a Brazilian Economist," shows how his childhood world, dominated by tyranny & violence, induced him to study soc org, planning & econ's, & led him to connect soc structure & the notion of a decision center under a historical perspective. "Otto Klineberg: Reflections of an International Psychologist of Canadian Origin," stresses the influence of a bilingual & bi-cultural atmosphere which led him to a concern with intergroup relations & the study of relations between nations, culminating in his work for UNESCO & the Internat'l Center for the Study of Intergroup Relations. "Rene Konig: Sketches by a Cosmopolitan German Sociologist," traces how through his own life experience he arrived at an understanding of a multiplicity of cultural forms & how he aimed to combine the teaching of sociol with res through his editorship of the Kolner Zeitschrift fur Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie & other publications. "A. R. Luria: The Long Road of a Soviet Psychologist," explains his efforts to promote the application of psychol'al methods to the study of the functional org of the brain & recent concern with the influence of soc activity & soc org upon the basic patterns of human thought. "T. H. Marshall: A British Sociological Career," stresses internat'l aspects of sociol & the need for synthesis in the soc sci'ts. "Ali A. Mazrui: The Making of an African Political Scientist," shows in a sketch of his "yrs as a Sch 'dropout' " how he discovered soc processes in operation Africa. "Wilbert E. Moore: An Interim Report on the Calling and Career of an American Sociologist," describes the character of his career as influenced by the opportunities to exchange ideas with scholars from many countries & rejects the recent notion that sociol is in crisis. "M. N. Spinivas: Itineraries of an Indian Social Anthropologist," traces his emergence as a soc sci'ts from the specific context of Indian culture & his conversion to functionalism under the influence of E. R. Radcliffe-Brown. "Jan Szczepanski: Tribulations of a Polish Sociologist," describes his background as a forced unskilled industr worker in Hitler's totalitarian state, & his efforts to reconstruct sociol in post-WWII Poland & to promote internat'l understanding among sociol'ts. "John Vaizey: Emergence of a British Economist," relates his socialist orientation & work at various instit'al settings to his insights into soc processes, concern with soc justice, & a deep pessimism re whether a rational soc sci can be developed. M. Maxfield.

In this contribution I discuss the link existing between autobiographical memory and autobiographical narrative and, in this context, the concept of coherence. Starting from the Bruner's seminal concept of autobiographical self, I firstly analyze how autobiographical memories and autobiographical narrative influence each other and, somehow, mirror reciprocally and then I present some results of my previous studies using a methodology consisting in "narrating-transcribing-reading-narrating." The results show that self narratives can have positive effects on the narrators if they are provided with a tool to reflect on their memories. Moreover these results show that autobiography in its double sides — that of memory and that of narrative — is a process of continuous construction but also that this construction is deeply linked to social interactions.

Jutta Brückner's autobiographical essay traces her own development from early attempts to write the text of her "female subjectivity" in the language of prose to her discovery of how much more suited the medium of film was for establishing an immediate relationship to her material. Arguing that autobiography is a desire, not an accomplishment, she locates the beginning of that desire in the mother, whose images have to be reconstructed in order to free the self. The dialectic of history and biography, loss of language and loss of body, is played out in the struggle between mother and daughter in the films of the body-less author. Losses that cannot be recovered via the written word can be shown in the images of film. In trying to locate the place that women can actually occupy in the cultural scripting of history and identity, Brückner traces two lines of autobiographic approach: a semiotic one in which the daughter separates from the body of the mother and a symbolic one that concentrates on the language and culture defining the autobiographical line of the father. (PH)