Dear
Diana,
I
guess that you know that Gabriele Rosenthal from Germany who really founded
the method has used this method with survivors of the Holocaust. She writes
about the healing effects of storytelling and the dangers involved. Notably I recall that she published something
along these lines in Qualitative Inquiry a few years ago, maybe three or four.
Apart from this, I wonder what your supervisor may consider to be a 'more
formal and less memory provoking method'. It seems to me that if you are to
investigate suicide attempt, qualitativiely or quantitatively, you must
employ the social and psychological constructs of memory, and the narrator (or
the subject in some research paradigms) must construct somehow a storyline about
this, and present a version of the story somehow - through a narration - a story
about themselves, by themselves, from themselves, or through a (in my opinion)
much more reduced and less meaningful mechanistic process of ticking boxes
through a questionnaire, (semi)structured
interview or something similar. In my opinion, and on the basis of
my experience the former offers an opportunity for people to make sense of their
experience as they construct their stories, and the latter increases the chance
of emotional, social and psychological disconnect and therefore potential
damage. Additionally, the foundations of
qualitative research have fundamental epistomological and ontological
assumptions about the connection between experience, language and consciousness,
and to suggest that this can be articulated through a 'superficially'
prompted account of experience - traumatic or otherwise - somehow seems to me to
be wanting to dilute these very foundations.
I am sure that you will encounter issues like this when seeking ethical
approval - just seems funny to me that anyone can imagine that there is a
superficial way to give an account of something like a suicide attempt - I am a
bit perplexed about this! Additionally you
may wish to (if you already haven't) delve into some of the feminist
methodological literature for some useful and intellectually robust
discussion about these types of
issues.
Good luck with the thesis, and with your
supervisor. I hope that the forum gives you a good grounding for deciding your
own position on this, and for fighting your case should uyou decide to go ahead
with your choice of BNIM.
Best
wishes,
Debra
Dr Debra Hopkins
Research Fellow
Dept of Sociology,
Anthropology and Applied Social Science
Room S012 Adam Smith
Building
University of Glasgow
Bute Gardens
Glasgow G128RT
Tel 0141
3304517
Dear
BNIM course mates,
The
interviews I will do for my PhD project will be held with women who a- at some
point in their lives- made a suicide attempt.
After
completing the BNIM course and my explanation of it, my supervisor worries if
BNIM, in which interviewees are asked to bring back and relive memories- is
suitable for those who have been through a traumatic experience (such as a
suicide attempt).
Her main worry is that when an
interviewee is asked to tell and reminisce about the incidence of the suicide
attempt, there may be chance that this procedure will bring about distress
that may lead to a possible additional suicide attempt after the interview is
finished. She wondered if a more formal, less memory- provoking and
“superficial” style of interviewing is more adequate for trauma interviewing.
Does
any of you have used BNIM on those who have been through a trauma? And what
are your thoughts and experiences on this
?
Kind
regards
Diana
van Bergen
PhD
Student
Vrije
Universiteit
Dept.
Social Cultural Sciences
De
Boelelaan 1081
1081
HV Amsterdam
The
Netherlands
phone:
0031 20 5986790
