Abstract

This study concerns the methods we use to understand people from the stories they tell. It claims implicit or explicit in these methods are certain assumptions about and conceptions of inquiry, language and narrative. It shows that the very assumptions and words we choose create and shape the use we make of stories and the understanding of people we reach. It demonstrates the importance different assumptions and vocabularies play in shaping our understanding in a comparative investigation of an empirical and a dialogic approach to narrative analysis. This investigation makes explicit and examines some of the empirical and dialogic approaches we use in daily clinical practice to understand people. It uses both these approaches to analyze the same sample of stories. These stories were spontaneously told by two eleven-year-old children in psychotherapeutic treatment at urban outpatient clinics during a therapy session. These approaches are found to lead to distinctively different understandings of the patients, but also to share some common ground