The idea that communication with significant others shapes who we are is not new. A Russian psychologist named Lev Vygotsky wrote in the 1920s that thought is internalized dialogue. How we come to talk to ourselves is shaped by how others have talked with us. Those who study narrative as a central feature of how we come to define ourselves hold a similar view: we construct the narrative of our lives based on the nature of the interactions we have had with others. The child psychiatrist Daniel Stern, drawing on research on infant development, beautifully described how interactions between
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