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Life Story Interview
A life story is the story a person chooses to tell about the life he or she has lived as completely and honestly as possible, what that person remembers of it, and what he or she wants others to know of it, usually as a result of a guided interview by another; it is a fairly complete narrating of one’s entire experience of life as a whole, highlighting the most important aspects. A life story is the narrative essence of what has happened to a person. It can cover the time from birth to the present, or before and beyond. It includes the important events, experiences, and feelings of a lifetime.
Life story, life history, and oral history can be different terms for the same thing. The difference between them is often emphasis and scope. Although a life history or an oral history often focuses on a specific aspect of a person’s life, such as work life or a special role played in some part of the life of a community, a life story interview has as its primary and sole focus a person’s entire life experience. A life story brings order and meaning to the life being told, for both the teller and the listener. It is a way to better understand the past and the present, as well as a way to leave a personal legacy for the future. A life story gives us the vantage point of seeing how one person experiences and subjectively understands his or her own life over time. It enables us to see and identify the threads that connect one part of one’s life to another, from childhood to adulthood.
Historical and Disciplinary Context
Stories, in traditional communities of the past, played a central role in the lives of the people. The stories we tell of our lives today are guided by the same vast catalog of enduring elements, such as archetypes and motifs, that are common to all human beings. These expressions of ageless experiences take a range of forms in different times and settings and come together to create a pattern of life, with many repetitions, that becomes the basis for the plot of the story of a life. Our life stories follow such a pattern or blueprint and represent, each in its own way, a balance between the opposing forces of life. It is within this ageless and universal context that we can best begin to understand the importance and power of the life story interview and how it is fundamental to our very nature. Our life stories, just as myths did in an earlier time, can serve the classic functions of bringing us into accord with ourselves, others, the mystery of life, and the universe around us.
Researchers in many academic disciplines have been interviewing others for their life stories, or for some aspect of their lives, for longer than we recognize. The life story interview has evolved from the oral history, life history, and other ETHNOGRAPHIC and field approaches. As a QUALITATIVE research method for looking at life as a whole and as a way of carrying out an in-depth study of individual lives, the life story interview stands alone. It has a range of interdisciplinary applications for understanding single lives in detail and how the individual plays various roles in society.
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