How to project oneself without positive and integrated memories? Exploration of self-defining memories and future projections in bipolar disorder

Bipolar disorder (BD) is a disabling disorder with functional impact on everyday life. Recent studies suggest that autobiographical memory impairment may contribute to the maintenance of psychopathology, leading to enduring altered self-construct. Moreover, past personal experiences also support the ability to project oneself into the future to pre-experience an event, this capacity can be modified by psychiatric disorders. Self-defining memories and future projections by accessing highly significant events that are vivid and focused on central goals or enduring concerns can both provide a better understanding of the impact of disorders on self perception and on the ability to project oneself into the future. Therefore we proposed to explore self-defining memories and future projections in BD patients (n = 25) compared to control participants (n = 25). BD patients' self-defining events were associated with more tension, life-threatening events, and negative emotion. BD patients also reported less integrated past but not less integrated future self-defining events. And their future projections were more closely related to leisure, and associated with positive emotions, compared to controls. For both groups, the future projections were less specific, integrated, and tense than the memories. These results question the self-coherence of patients' identity and should be confirmed to propose appropriate interventions to project oneself adaptively into the future and contribute to a better outcome.