Volume 9, No. 1, Art. 1 – January 2008

Biographical Storytelling in the Context of Counseling and Therapy

Heidrun Schulze (Germany)

Abstract: A precondition for any hermeneutic analysis of biographies is that the interview partners generate life history narratives. The same applies to a counseling practice that is sensitized by biographical analysis. On the one hand, clients' narratives of their own experiences provide the counselor with information on their biographical self-constructions and the processes of the sedimentation of the experiences of their life history. On the other hand, such narratives are not only of diagnostic use for the counselor, but also contribute to the clients' self-understanding.

The author works in a psychosocial counseling center for university students. The article describes the transfer and potential of a style of counseling which encourages and is sensitized by biographical narratives in the context of an institution with a specific task.

Key words: biographical narrative way of guiding conversations, biographical analysis, interaction and institution, counseling

This contribution is only available as a full text in the German language. German text

Volume 9, No. 1   Table of Contents

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© 2008 Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research
(ISSN 1438-5627)

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