Ethical and Interpretive Stances in Narrative Work

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 5 looks into the ethical responsibilities scholars have toward the exiled lives they study. The author considers existing principles that guide review boards, and thus the practice of psychological research, in order to show the ways in which narrative approaches challenge those principles. Then, he discusses the ways that an ethical stance is embedded in the act of interpretation, and how any interpretation of exile must reckon with proximity to individual and collective death. Finally, the author considers the ethical choices that mark each phase of research in order to show how narrative approaches broaden what can be represented in the field of psychology.