http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/1346696

Criteria for the life history : with analyses of six notable documents

The element for which we are perennially seeking in the social sciences is a significant concept of the person to set off against our valuable formal descriptions of social life. This lack has served as an irritant leading to the elaboration of many schemes of social psychology and of much speculative thought about the individual. A more realistic effort emerging in many social science branches at about the same time has been the use of the life-history document as a method of filling the gap. In recent years increasing attention has been paid to life-history methods and many claimants for the attention of the scientific public have come forward. The value of the attempts so far has been to center attention on the life of the individual as an event worth the attention of social scientists; many useful though partial views have been developed. Despite the effort expended so far, the life history remains a much suspected tool of research and no comfortable certainty exists as to what an adequate life history document will eventually look like. This does not end the problem because in a number of fields the scientific worker is brought up against the necessity of making some kind of sense of material on the individual life. The life history is in reality a common task of a considerable number of fields. At the present time it plays a role in the teaching and research of sociology, psychology and psychiatry. By no means least of all, the social worker is concerned with the technique of taking and analyzing life-history materials, for she has pressed upon her every day the empirical necessities which make good judgment imperative. It is hoped that the criteria will be useful to all of these groups of workers. This book is intended to reduce confusion in the life-history field and to offer a blend structure of principles from the fields of cultural studies and clinical psychology. No innovations are attempted except those involved in re-thinking the problem of the life history from both of these standpoints. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2005 APA, all rights reserved).

Open All Close All