ABSTRACT
Biographical methods in social sciences have raised new kinds of issues. In a biographical study a researcher comes very close to his or her informants and thus the feelings and emotions on both sides cannot be neglected. The act of actively listening to another person’s life story is a complex phenomenon that seems to warrant more attention than it has been given so far. Narrative and biographical research has frequently touched on the question of what it means to a person to tell his or her own story. The possibility to tell and re-tell one’s life story seems to help people to perceive their life as more organised, to assign new meanings to experiences and to undergo an emancipatory process (e.g. McEwan, 1997; Polkinghorne, 1988). Another basic assumption is that human beings have a narrative approach to their lives and therefore tell about things that are important to them (Bruner, 1987).
