Narrative identity refers to the internalized and temporally structured life story individuals or narrative agents develop over time. Narrative themes emerge as recurring pattern within and across such narrative processes that are believed to reflect broader conceptual meanings embedded in the stories of narrative agents. In this paper, we propose a research efort in the ontological foundations for a specific narrative theme: closure, the degree to which the narrative agent has come to terms with and moved beyond past adversities, as opposed to remaining ifxated on them and past regrets. Providing a robust ontological characterization of closure is important, given its prevalence in highly self-transcendent narratives. We choose to leverage the Basic Formal Ontology and its extensions to model relevant narrative elements that comprise closure. Our eforts led to the development of the Closure Design Pattern, a model of a narrative agent partaking in several processes that represent how they may show signs of closure whilst narrating their life story. By representing closure as a disposition and modeling its relationship other narrative elements, we hope to eventually clarify ambiguities in narrative identity research.
The average human life expectancy has been increasing over time, and more people are expected to
reach “old age” on a global scale. According to the World Health Organization, by 2030, 1 in 6 people
globally will be aged 60 or older. By 2050, the number of people in this age group is expected to rise
from 1.4 billion to 2.1 billion [
Therefore, it is quite relevant to translate these findings into a more universal lexicon so that
other disciplines can benefit from these insights. This is why we are taking an applied ontological
approach to this issue. Applied Ontology uses metaphysical principles and logical theories to form a
shared vocabulary to ensure interoperability between data sets [
Researchers have taken an interest in the narrative identity framework because the approach allows for
capturing and analyzing phenomenological events and experiences occurring through narrations that
provide insight into how narrative agents shape their identities. The framework views human beings as
narrative agents who construct meaning through autobiographical storytelling [
There has been a call for researchers to use narrative identity to determine causal relations between
narrative themes and human flourishing, as well as exploring narrative identity in broader cultural
contexts [
Furthermore, self-transcendence is a quality that has traditionally been assessed through self-report
measures. Given the limitations of self-report measures, such as social desirability bias and lack of
contextual details, researchers are now exploring self-transcendence through the analysis of personal
narratives, providing a more phenomenological understanding of how narrative agents experience
and make meaning of their lives. Present research on self-transcendence within the narrative identity
framework has established several recurring narrative themes that emerge from the narrative of agents
who are highly self-transcendent [
By creating a model of closure, we hope to clarify and refine the psychological construct and its relation
to the overall topic of narrative identity. We are deciding to focus on closure because it is arguably
one of the most important psychological constructs in narrative identity research; it represents the
resolution to one’s narrative. While closure has traditionally been treated as a literary or psychological
endpoint, we propose that it is more productively viewed as a complex process. We believe BFO would
allow us to categorize these elements as occurrents, continuants, and dependent continuants, ofering a
more structured way to understand how closure operates within the ontology of narrative identity. By
representing closure as a process rather than a fixed outcome, we aim to develop a richer conceptual
framework for analyzing narrative themes. This is of importance because researchers need methods
and tools for further exploring the role of broad cultural contexts and how they shape narratives
[
CCO and its extension of BFO allows for a precise characterization of closure and its related and intertwined psychological processes. By representing the Narrative Agent as taking part in processes we take adequate distance from traditional and, as we propose, outdated, interpretation of closure as a psychological endpoint. By representing the agent as taking part of the process of building a narrative, which is then extended to the process of gaining narrative closure, and potentially the extent of facing a disruptor process of said closure, namely, regretful thought, we are able to show the relevant considerations and cognitive actions of narrative agents who narrate their own lives and reach or do not reach closure. By linking each of those processes together with the process part, interpretation process, we are able to show that the agent is going through multiple steps of cognitive activity to potentially reach narrative closure, or on the other chance, fail to reach it by showing regretful sentiment, which is represented as a separate process in our design pattern. The narrative agent is also essentially shown to be linked to the biographical life of the agent, to represent how narrative building is based on recalling the history of one’s past. Like the interpretation process, the agent’s life, characterized as a subclass of an act, gives context to the source of the narrative building of the agent and provides another link between the processes of the design pattern. Together, the interpretation process and the agent’s life act as a web to represent what the other processes are about, and where they are taking place, a narrative being built about one’s life, and processes surrounding closure that are internally achieved. The narrative building process is the act of the agent narrating their own life, and the remaining processes, gain of narrative closure and regretful thought, show the agent’s reaction once building a narrative. For the agent to begin gaining narrative closure, or the disruption of regret, which are both represented through their corresponding dispositions, where the agent has closure or regret. In this example, the narrative agent only bears the regretful sentiment, and not the disposition of narrative closure, to represent how an agent would fail to gain closure because of taking part in the process of having regretful thought. This design pattern is an initial attempt at characterizing the research above but has much potential to be improved.
As outlined above, The BFO is one of the most commonly used ontological frameworks [
Our model for closure is represented via a design pattern, not a full knowledge graph. Design patterns are a concentrated representation of an Ontology, its main purpose is to show the logical structure between its elements. They are also used for the purpose of allowing subject matter experts and relevant audiences to understand what an Ontology and its data is answering without needing to comprehend all its technical parts.
In our design pattern below, instances are represented in purple rectangles, while classes are represented in green rectangles. Using protege version 5.6.5, we were able to access key terminology and the massive bank of information that lies within CCO. Using the Mermaid flavor of Markdown, we have been able to create a visual representation of how closure and its related concepts can be characterized through ontologies in a way that helps to disambiguate various relevant elements. For example, between coping and closure, or the diference between closure and regret, as per the definition of coping we have chosen to use.
Since the Closure Design Pattern we have built is sourced from CCO Version 2.0 [
The Design Pattern portrays the agent as the bearer of these dispositions that are realized from the corresponding processes and shows that the agent can experience these processes with diferent outcomes of dispositions realized in the agent. The Closure Design Pattern shows that the agent was partaking in the process of ‘Narrative Building’, which leads to the disposition of ‘Narrative Closure, but before the disposition of ‘Narrative Closure’ is gained by the Agent, that process is disrupted. Having the Agent represented as partaking in the process of ‘Narrative Building’, we also show them partaking in the subsequent disruptor process of ‘Regret’, which realizes the disposition of ‘Regretful Sentiment’ (thus preventing the realization of the disposition of ‘Narrative Closure’), and stems from the process/efect of ‘Interval of Regret Emergence’. To clarify, the Agent may partake in both processes of ‘Narrative Building’ and ‘Regret’ because the former represents the narration of one’s life, while the later is a representation of what can be a coexisting process because it represents someone inhabiting regretful thought, which can easily exist during the narration of one’s life. Alternatively, the dispositions of ‘Narrative Closure’ and ‘Regretful Sentiment’ cannot coexist, because the later disposition inherently implies that the former disposition has not been realized, so to say there is no full closure with there being regret. The Interval of Regret Emergence is uniquely delineated in green, despite being an instance as the shape implies, we decided to make it green as a visual stimulant for observers, to show how the disposition of regret essentially spawns from the narration of some period in time of the past where the agent wishes things went diferently, and is demarcated as a process to show how the narration about this period of time can be recognized in an agent as coping as we have here, or could alternatively be recognized as narrative agent, which our example agent does not bear. Narrative Building, Gain Narrative Closure, and Regretful Thought are all processes we have characterized by behaviors, which is a subclass of acts, which for our purposes is some kind of process with some kind of internal stimulus to start things. There is an exception with Interval of Regret Emergence described as an efect, which is a process started by another process. This is an accurate description, but to be transparent we could easily have called that behavior or just a general process, or as the MFO would have it, a mental process. See table below for working definitions of italicized terms in this section. 1
We leveraged the Basic Formal Ontology and its extensions to model relevant narrative elements that comprise the narrative theme closure. Our eforts led to the development of the Closure Design Pattern which displays a model of a narrative agent partaking in several processes that represent how said agent may demonstrate signs of closure whilst narrating their life story. During our model construction we made precise eforts to build, the historic context, and cognitive interpretation that all narrative agents would partake in this process. We think that our model successfully lays the foundation for modeling the narrative theme closure as we choose to frame the theme as a disposition to clearly indicate its relations to other narrative elements. While we suggest the design pattern efectively models closure, 1The table below has been formatted to clarify unfamiliar terms, which were drawn from past literature on the Narrative Identity Framework and combined with CCO terminology to develop the closure design pattern shown in Figure 1
A narrative theme that emerges from the narratives of self-transcendent
individuals. Closure signifies the degree to which the narrative agent has
come to terms with and moved beyond past regrets, as opposed to remaining
fixated on them [
The act of gaining closure. Closure is gained when the narrative agent
does not express regretful sentiment, or recognizes regretful sentiment but
narrates with a tone of acceptance, indicating that the regretful sentiment
does not cloud their present judgment [
A combination of cognitive and behavioral techniques that a narrative agent
may use in an attempt to overcome an overwhelming or stressful situation,
with the goal of minimizing emotional strain [
An event that may produce regretful sentiment depending on how the narrative agent narrates and perceives the event.
Referring to the disposition of feeling regret, realized in the agent through the aforementioned Gain of Narrative Closure.
The name of the process which disrupts the gain of narrative closure; a characterization of the process in an individual that realizes the disposition of regretful sentiment.
Interval of Regret Emer- The process of a Narrative Agent recalling a Regretful Event, which may gence realize the disposition of a Regretful Sentiment within that agent. Interpretation Process
The process describing the Narrative Agent’s mental reaction and outcome of taking part in other processes such as Gain of Narrative Closure and
Regretful Thought. we also acknowledge that further refinement is needed, and our work is not an exhaustive account of closure or narrative identity. Our future endeavors include expanding to model more narrative elements of narrative identity in hopes of creating an overall ontology of narrative identity.
The authors wish to give thanks to the following people: Hollen Reischer for her mentorship and guidance concerning narrative identity. John Beverley for his mentorship and guidance concerning applied ontology, and Gregory Defranco for his insightful comments in the early drafting of this paper.
During the preparation of this work, the author(s) used ChatGPT to check grammar and spelling, paraphrase and reword. The author(s) reviewed and edited the content as needed and take full responsibility for the publication’s content.