ABSTRACT
This chapter combines investigation as a combination of psychoanalytic, sinological, and social-scientific lines of investigation. It explores the individual processing of experiences from the Cultural Revolution. Through studying interviews, the chapter seeks to establish how traumatic experiences are further dealt with psychically and if or how these aspects express themselves in the participants and in the succeeding generation. It focuses on the extent to which the individual's ways of coping with the past are determined collectively by political discourse: for example, through prescriptive role models of socialistic child-rearing campaigns. The chapter provides a set of guidelines concerning formal and content aspects. The content guidelines were designed to generate life-history interviews that would include certain standard points, while leaving room for spontaneous narration and sudden inspirations. The psychoanalytic assessment was supplemented by analyses from viewpoints of narrative analysis and social science.
