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From: Kip Jones
Sent: 16 June 2005 13:59
To: 'Tom Wengraf'
Subject: RE: questions of BNIM method

Some thoughts from my thesis on the emailed questions (Jones, K. 2001 Narratives of Identity and the Informal Care Role):
 
The possibility that psychoanalytical 'jargon' and inferences came up frequently and consistently may be more a result of the history we share (or for some team members, have become acclimated to) and its popular culture, than anything about a specific theoretical stance or particular position on the stories themselves.  The fact that many of these ...stories were embedded within an emplotment of childhood distress speaks more to the nature of narrative than to any adherence to strict psychoanalytical grounding, by either of the groups of people who engaged in the analyses or this writer.  In fact, the analyses were conducted within the framework of the psychosocial and are not reducible to simple psychology, but rather considered as "complex responses to events and people in the social world, both past and present" (Hollway & Jefferson 2000: 24).  ...

 It helps to recall that the turn to narrative has also included a natural return to and a revisionist take on the psychoanalytical, its literature and its narrative approach and this is well reported (see Hollway & Jefferson 2000; McAdams et al 1997, for examples).  Hollway and Jefferson (2000: 78) reminded us that psychoanalysis is, after all, an art and not a science.  Further, Rustin remarked that psychoanalysis was unusual among the social sciences "in rejecting the opposition between scientific and imaginative methods, between typification and the investigation of the particular" (Rustin in Chamberlayne et al 2000: 37).   Gergen alerted us to the concept that, in our attempts to generate intelligibility, we must inevitably draw from preceding traditions.  This is accomplished by integration of preceding intelligibilities and realignment of existing ones and their practices (Gergen 2001: 430).  ...

 It comes as no surprise, then, when reading stories about and by people and with a brief to taking an analytical viewpoint that the language of psychoanalytical discourse comes to the forefront.  The point to be made through the analyses presented in this work and their glissements into a 'psycho speak' of a particular variety is that this "integration of preceding intelligibilities" is accomplished by allowing the investigators to remain transparent and active participants in the story making.  Not exercises in truth or falsehood, these investigations were polyvocal attempts at interfacing with cultural/relational/linguistic accounts of the real.  They are, therefore, interpretations and not truths in the positivistic sense.  On the other hand, did we, "in our attempts at some sort a truth (Verisimo) stumble onto a synthesis after all, a moment of revelation that truly is wrenched by the individual in his/her self-knowing and revealed to us" (Jones 2000: [22])?  ...

 A leap to disbelief may ultimately be more problematic than any overemphasis on a psychological explanation, in whatever theoretical guise, in this research's conclusions.  The fact that these were the messages that interview participants wished to convey to another human being speaks to their natural abilities to communicate within a dialogic world, who they are and how those messages were received and interpreted.  Conversely, only to notice what the interviewee is saying, in a way helping them to accentuate consistency and suppress contradiction in their stories through the analytical process, would overlook or ignore a lot of the evidence scattered around in the data -inconsistencies, contradictions, changes of tone and other textual interruptions (Hollway & Jefferson 2000: 57; Jones 2001).   This is why the reflecting team approach to data analysis is so productive in bringing to our attention both detail and contradictions-bringing different points-of-view to the data whilst still allowing the interviewee his/her voice.

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 The Biographic Narrative Interpretive Method has much to say, in fact, about the formal interpretive process (see Wengraf 2001; Jones 2004). Still, it is important to emphasize that interpretation on the part of the researcher begins early, even within the interview.  During the initial encounter, the researcher is often making and dealing with subconscious observations whilst maintaining a position of active listener.  Through the procedure of note taking in the first subsession of the interview, the researcher begins a process of interpretation, making choices about which areas of the story should be explored further in the second subsession. Subconscious thoughts are brought into the interpretive process through such note taking; post-interview debriefing (with oneself or others) follows the interview sessions and is inherently interpretive.  Later, when the interviewer (preferably) types the transcript of the interview, further reflection and notation takes place. Further hearings of the tape recorded interview produce additional insights and interpretations which are diaried by the researcher as well.   When constructing the Lived Life and selecting passages of the Told Story for team analysis, again, the interpretative skills of the researcher come into play. 

 Forthcoming:International Sociological Association Research Committee on Biography and Society RC38 Newsletter, Summer 2005