Interpretive Biography, Vol. 17 Book

	Editors' Introduction	5
	Preface	7
	Acknowledgments	12
1.	Assumptions of the Method	13
	The Subject and the Biographical Method	13
	Exemplars	14
	Situating the Method	17
	The Subject in the Text: An Aside	20
	Standards of Autobiographical Truth	23
	Recapitulation	25
2.	A Clarification of Terms	27
	Clarifying Terms	27
	Lives, Persons, Selves, Experiences	28
	Approaches to Autobiography, Life History, and Biography	34
	Life Stories, Self Stories, and Personal Experience Stories	42
	Writing, Difference, and Presence	44
	Conclusions	47
3.	Interpretive Guidelines	49
	Objective, Natural History Approaches	49
	The Classic Approach	50
	Problems with the Classic, Objective Approach: The Jack-Roller	52
	Objective Hermeneutics and Biographical Narratives	54
	Interpretive Strategies	56
	Interpretive Formats	58
	The Biographical Illusion	61
	Making Experience Come Out Right	62
	Group Storytelling	63
	Making Sense of an Individual's Life I: Sartre and Flaubert	64
	Making Sense of an Individual's Life II: Alcoholics	66
	The Progressive-Regressive Method	67
	Conclusions	68
4.	Selves, Stories, and Experiences	69
	Capturing and Studying Lived Experience	69
	The Epiphany	70
	Forms of the Epiphany	71
	The Cultural Locus of Stories	73
	Limits of the Story	74
	Process, Structure, and Stories	75
	True and False Stories?	75
	The Self-Narrative	78
	Obituaries	78
5.	In Conclusion: Representing Lives	81
	References	85
	About the Author	95