Marya Schechtman is a contemporary analytic philosopher at the University of Illinois at Chicago whose work centers on personal identity and the self. She is best known for developing the Narrative Self-Constitution View, which holds that persons constitute their identities by organizing their experiences into a coherent autobiographical narrative. Her work bridges metaphysical questions about personal identity with practical concerns in ethics and medicine.
Developed the Narrative Self-Constitution View of personal identity
Authored The Constitution of Selves (1996), a foundational text in narrative approaches to personal identity
Authored Staying Alive: Personal Identity, Practical Concerns, and the Unity of a Life (2014)
Critiqued psychological continuity theories by distinguishing the reidentification question from the characterization question
Applied personal identity theory to practical and bioethical contexts