Abstract
Self-narratives about a family were collected through semi-structured interviews with 31 healthy elderly individuals. For nine participants who provided a narrative about intergenerational transmission or intergenerational buffers, the narrative structure was characterized, and their ordering of intergenerational relationships was analyzed. Three types of narrative were identified: approved intergenerational transmission, partially approved intergenerational transmission, and partially approved intergenerational buffers. The self-narrative about intergenerational transmission had a contrasting structure, in which one admires the next generation which inherited a positive legacy and denies the one who did not. This indicates that recognition of transmission gave order to one's self-experience. The self-narrative about intergenerational buffers contrasted the suffering of the previous generation and next generation which did not inherit a negative legacy, and displayed the construction of meaning about the relationship with the previous generation and transmission of a negative legacy to the next generation. This self-narrative has both an active feature of reconstruction of meaning about an unfortunate childhood, and a passive feature of abruptly discovered negative transmission.
