ASSISTED AUTOBIOGRAPH

Y

We all have a story inside of us waiting to be told! Your loved ones and future generations will at some time wish they knew more about your life and the things you’ve learned.

What is the difference between a biography and

an autobiography?

Autobiography

An account of a

person's life written

by that person.

Biography

An account of

someone's life written by someone

else.

ASSISTED AUTOBIOGRAPHY

ASSISTED AUTOBIOGRAPHY

R O M H A R R É

This method was designed by Rom Harre with the psychiatrist De Waele.

WHAT IS AN ASSISTED AUTOBIOGRAPHY?

It is model of analysis and production of life stories, developed by Rom Harré, the model is useful because of its pragmatism and its systematic methods.Harré defines it as one

of three paths to knowledge society. The technique of assisted autobiography

accentuates the analyst's participation in the construction of subject´s account, in this

case the researcher does not reconstruct the story by himself, but does so in collaboration

with the subject.

ETHOGENY

Rom Harré: explains how I account for my behavior in particular situations.

Ethogeny: the study of how I understand my actions with a predictable sequence of acts, called episodes (an event with a beginning & end that all people would agree on).

It helps determine what the episode means and how people understand the acts involved in it.

Assisted autobiography

purpose

This method allows us to identify key situations in each person’s life to gain access to their projects and personal

theories.

Harré’s approach provides the means for understanding why a person moves

from situation to situation.

Assisted Autobiography

Moral carreer

The ideographic Approach

Biography and Diary

Operating Assumptions

Idiographic Approach

Negotiating process

The author

- The Autobiography - The temporal segmentation

-The Distribution - The consensus

- The negotiation - The renovation

of the team

-The thematic segmentation

-The distribution -The consent

narration

-The breaking and the contrast -The negotiation

story

Advantages and Disadvantages

ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES

-The retrospective and longitudinal character of the information collected allows a thorough knowledge of the chronology and the contexts in which occurs the story told.-The need to do several interviews to the case or cases under study allows a higher quality of data.-The strength of the assisted autobiography in the field of study of society is that it puts the emphasis on the goals of social experience, versus objectivism of the experiment, survey and systematic observation.

-Old problem of authenticity document, which refers to the difficulty of verifying the information obtained. You are never sure that the documents are authentic or somehow they are forged. You can solve that problem with the stories crossed or third interviews.-It also has to do with the exact day of the life history and biographical method that occurs when the researcher overestimates the possibilities of the method. When the investigator believes that one or more accounts have all the information needed to reach valid conclusions about a particular social problem.-Other practical difficulties are the time factor, combined with the strong dependence on a few cases in obtaining the main information. The difficulty of finding a person willing to work extra time than the one required, in addition to hit the selection of a single or very few cases.

 

Operating AssumptionsHarré proposes a serie of assumptions or procedural guidelines which lead the process of social investigation.The basic precepts can be summarized in the following manner.

Moral Career

The ideographic Approach

Biography and Diary

MORAL CAREEREvery individual developes a moral career, consequently is the protagonist of a single social story which include: Attitudes and beliefs

that other people have of the protagonist

The attitudes and beliefs of himself that he has formed from interpretation of other people’s beliefs.

Moral Career :Goffma

n

Asylums: Essays on the

Social Situation of Mental

Patients and Other Inmates

To refer to any social trajectory

made for a person in the course of his

life.

• Public space

• Limited region

• Limited range of critical events

Social Institutions which provide the critical events.

Standard moral career• Aventure• Free

construction of institutions

• Systematic structure

On

e b

y o

ne

Not in

larg

e

gro

up

sIdiographic Approach

Both of them narrate vital events of a person’s

life cycle.

DiaryContemporaryIn fieri

BiographyReviv

e event

s A posteriori

NEGOTI

ATING

PROCESS

The new element of Assisted Autobiography is the emphasized participation of the researcher or scientific, in the assisted autobiography the “story” is constructed and the “story life” is reconstructed by the author and the scientific.,they both together.

The author’s intrinsic inability. He is not able to interpret all the

elements.

The scientific contributes with a replica making the author a competent narrator.

The scientif makes contributions that can

only be accepted by the author.

To increase in the participant the knwoledge of his own life

story.

• Negotiation• “ This is the kind of person

I am”.

METHODS AND TECHNIQUES

In this context we can understand the usefulness of resources to the Assited Autobiography , this one has stages and techniques.

a) The TeamThe Assisted Autobiography is basically a team work. First the team must be set up. The team can be more or less sophisticated but, in any case, it must include these three basic elements:

A protagonistPerson who takes responsability trough a contract to cooperate with the project.

Team of expertsTeam of professionals in the social context where the protagonist has developed his professional career. This team includes at least two experts in social analysis (psychiatrists, psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, social workers, educators)

Team leader Responsible for the last analysis

B) THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY

The protagonist prepares an autobiography narration in which he reconstructs the events, stages and develop of his personal store. The more rich and dense be the narration, the consequent analysis will be more favorable. The protagonist arrange, mutilate or enrich the content of the narration without any type of constraint or external imposition.

c) The temporal segmentation

The director of the study divides the narration in a series of phase or chronological moments of the biography. Each of these temporal “cuts” is equivalent a different phase of the life´s protagonist. d) The Distribution

Each team member receives a “cut” or temporal phase of autography of the protagonist and undertake in solitary the task of rebuilding the rest of the biography, using for this, to their knowledge, both of the common sense, as their professional specialty.

e) The consensus

When all elements of the team have reconstructed the biography starts to work on a Single biography consensus among all team members who have made available to the rest their own individual stories. The consensus story is presented to the protagonist.

f) The negotiation

The consent narration is presented to the protagonist (who is unknown to the experts until this point) so that, both-protagonist and experts negotiate one common autobiography narration.

g) The renewal team

It begins a second phase with the selection of a new team of experts in which only the protagonist and the director will be the same. The characteristics of the experts are the same as in the first phase

h) The thematic segmentation

The negotiated narration during the first phase is segmented again, but this time thematically in “cuts” like the job, education, relationships.

i) The distribution

This story, thematically fragmented, it is handed back to the team of experts so that they attempt a reconstruction of the same individual subject.

• Temporal perspective.

• Social Ecology.• Socioeconomics

conditions of life. Macro sociological

frame

• Family and groups.

• Cultural norms of values, norms, roles and expectative.

• Institutional situation.

Phychosociological norms

• Auto-description and interpretation.

• Interest, occupational, activities and free time .

• Purpose , aspirations and conflicts.

Individual characteristic

s: Oneself and

Personality

j) The consent narration The team meets to develop a consensus text in which they condense the items contained in the initial story without stadistics or quantitative analysis, indicating the gaps and absences that will be investigated. (the reasons for such omissions).

The breaking and the contrast

This in an important part in the method of Assisted autobiography because in this stage the investigator shows the consensus of the life history to reconstruct, justify and explain the history according to the protagonist point of view. Therefore, the protagonist correct the mistakes they made by breaking what has been done to get the real meaning of actions.

T h e fi n a l s t o r y

Finally, the director of the research together with his team and the different experts make the conclusion of the different consensus and stories to interpret and give meaning to every episode in the protagonist history.

Thank you for your attention!

We welcome your questions,

suggestions and comments!