“i wish he hadn’t told me that”: methodological and ethical issues in social trauma and...

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Qualitative Health Research

DOI: 10.1177/1049732303255997 2003; 13; 1145 Qual Health Res

Julia Chaitin Research

"I Wish he hadn't Told Me that": Methodological and Ethical Issues in Social Trauma and Conflict

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10.1177/1049732303255997QUALITATIVE HEALTH RESEARCH / October 2003Chaitin / SOCIAL TRAUMA AND CONFLICT RESEARCH

Keynote Address:Fourth Advances in Qualitative Methods Conference

“I Wish He Hadn’t Told Me That”:Methodological and Ethical Issues inSocial Trauma and Conflict Research

Julia Chaitin

Undertaking research on individuals who have experienced social traumas, such as being avictim or perpetrator of genocides and wars, presents difficult decisions for qualitative re-searchers. Deciding how to deal with these issues becomes more problematic when the re-searcher is a member of the society in conflict. To do this work, and to work collaborativelywith researchers from the other side, sensitive ways to collect data have to be chosen. Inter-pretations of the materials can be no less difficult: Analyses often lead to information andunderstandings that may be difficult for the researcher to deal with from ethical, moral, andpersonal standpoints, especially when he or she is a member of the society and culture understudy. In this keynote address, the author explores methodological and ethical issues con-nected to these topics. She brings examples from her work on the Palestinian-Israeli conflictand focuses on use of the life story methodology.

Keywords: methodological issues; ethical issues; conflict research; Palestinian-Israeliconflict; life story methodology

Three years ago, I sat in a room with 23 other women. Of these, 21 were womenwho had lived, or were still living, in the war-torn and conflict-ridden societies

of Northern Ireland, South Africa, Croatia, and Israel and the Palestinian Authority.We were three facilitators: a Palestinian refugee who lives in Bethlehem, in the Pal-estinian Authority, a Palestinian woman who is an Israeli citizen, and me—anIsraeli Jew. The goal of our project was to bring women together who live in warzones to learn from them about their experiences and how they live with the pain,hardships, and violence. We were to analyze the material afterward, seeing whatcould be learned from this intensive 3-day seminar.

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AUTHOR’S NOTE: This keynote address was presented at the Fourth Advances in Qualitative MethodsConference, Banff, Alberta, Canada, May 2-5, 2003.

QUALITATIVE HEALTH RESEARCH, Vol. 13 No. 8, October 2003 1145-1154DOI: 10.1177/1049732303255997© 2003 Sage Publications



I sat in the room as an “objective” facilitator and researcher—it was my job tomake sure that each woman got the chance to tell her story and that all would betreated with respect. It was my job to listen and to try to contain all of those stories ofpain without feeling the need to talk about my own experiences in our war-tornregion. It was my job to have good working relations with my colleagues—twoPalestinians—who, I knew, held the belief that I and other Jewish Israeli women,both in the group and outside of it, had stolen the land from their parents and grand-parents. I sat in the room and carried out my role as facilitator/researcher with greatdifficulty.

Let’s skip forward 3 years to another research experience. Two months ago, Iphoned a man named Rafi, the youngest son of Flora. Flora had immigrated to Israelwhen she was 16 years old, leaving her parents in Poland. Flora never saw themagain, as they were all killed in the Holocaust. Earlier, I had videotaped an interviewwith Flora for a joint Palestinian-Israeli study, which we call “The Refugee Project.”In this study, Palestinian researchers are interviewing Palestinians who have beenrefugees since 1948 and we Israelis are interviewing Jewish Israelis who were refu-gees either from the Holocaust or Northern Africa and Asia, who immigratedto Israel, and who eventually established rural and communal communities—moshavim and kibbutzim—where Palestinian villages once stood. Because we areinterested in the stories of the second generation as well, we have begun interview-ing some of the grown children of these former refugees.

When Flora asked Rafi if he would be interested in being interviewed, he saidthat he would be glad to—his family past is very important to him. So she gave mehis phone number, and I called him on Friday, his day off from work. As I beganexplaining the project, Rafi’s voice became filled with anger: “Whoa! Stop rightthere! I didn’t know that this had anything to do with Palestinians. I don’t want to beinvolved.” When I asked him if he would tell me why, he continued, clearly veryemotional and clearly very angry with me:

They are a despicable enemy! [his words] All they want to do is kill us and throw usinto the sea. What makes a nice girl like you do such a thing! I am surprised at you. Ididn’t ask you before, but you must belong to one of the left-wing parties . . . amI right? You should be ashamed of yourself!

I thanked him for his time, and we ended the conversation. Throughout the call,I remained an extremely polite and respectful researcher. Rafi’s angry words, how-ever, continued to reverberate in my head for many days after; and I wasn’t havingsuch polite and respectful thoughts about Rafi . . . It had been a long time since I hadbeen accosted with such hate. I couldn’t remember ever getting such a reaction froma potential interviewee for any of my studies.

Carrying out qualitative research in conflict-ridden contexts, in which peoplehave experienced much social trauma in their lives, is a difficult task. The taskbecomes even more difficult when you are a member of such a society, when you arenot a third party who can maintain neutrality, when you try to understand what theother is trying to tell you and when every stage of the research affects not only yourprofessional life but your emotional and personal ones as well.

Today, I will touch on some methodological and ethical issues that are con-nected to undertaking qualitative research in such contexts. I will draw on my own

1146 QUALITATIVE HEALTH RESEARCH / October 2003



work, done in collaboration with colleagues, to demonstrate issues that we confrontin the planning, collection, analysis, and writing stages of such work.

DOING JOINT PALESTINIAN-ISRAELI RESEARCH

As a social psychologist, the research in which I am involved has two main foci—thelong-term psychosocial effects of the Holocaust on the survivors, children, andgrandchildren and the psychosocial effects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on peo-ple who live in the region. I have been involved in qualitative research of theseissues, using the methodology of life stories/biographical narratives—a very open-ended method of data collection that has rather elaborate methods of data analysis.The methods that I use have their bases in the work of Gabriele Rosenthal (1993,1998) from Germany and Amia Lieblich (Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach, & Zilber, 1998)and Ruthellen Josselson (Josselson & Lieblich, 1991) from Israel. Before I explain abit more about the life story methodology, I would like to discuss some methodolog-ical issues that are connected to the planning and running of joint research in a con-text of conflict in which the researcher is a member of the society in conflict. I will befocusing on research that is being jointly carried out with researchers from “theother side.”

For the past 3 years, I have been a researcher for PRIME—The Peace ResearchInstitute in the Middle East—which is a jointly run Palestinian-Israeli institution.The Israeli codirector is Professor Dan Bar-On, a psychologist and qualitativescholar from Ben Gurion University of the Negev, and the Palestinian codirector isProfessor Sami Adwan, from the Education department at Bethlehem University.At PRIME, we undertake educational and psychosocial science research that, wehope, will enhance dialogue and peace building between the two peoples.

Three years ago, we undertook our first big project: We interviewed and ana-lyzed Israeli and Palestinian environmental nongovernmental organizations(NGOs) that had worked together on joint projects. We were a research team of six:three Palestinians and three Israelis who came from different backgrounds and dis-ciplines, and who had different ideas what constituted research. We began our workin April 2000, meeting in our offices in Beit Jala, situated near Bethlehem in the Pal-estinian Authority (also called the PNA). The planning was done together; weagreed on a research plan that took our different perspectives on research intoaccount – we drew up the interview guide, discussed ways of mapping out the orga-nizations, other ways we would collect data, et cetera. The Palestinians began inter-viewing Palestinian NGOs, and we began interviewing Israeli NGOs.

This stage proceeded fairly smoothly; every 2 to 3 weeks, we would meet in BeitJala, exchange summaries of interviews, and discuss how it was going. We decidedto carry out joint observations to see what joint ecological work really looked like(and to compare this to the information that we were learning in our interviews). Ibegan feeling comfortable in this project, and it no longer seemed all that different tome from other studies that I had undertaken with Israeli partners. Then Dan, thehead of the Israeli team, asked me to do something that made me realize that thisproject was not like all those others studies.

For the Palestinians to interview members of organizations in the Gaza Strip(they were from the West Bank), they needed permission from the Israeli army to

Chaitin / SOCIAL TRAUMA AND CONFLICT RESEARCH 1147



cross the borders. These permission slips needed to be renewed every few months.The time had come, and Dan asked me to take care of this matter. I realized thatwhether or not the project would continue was in no small part not only up to theauthorities but also up to us Israeli researchers. We held the power to get theseresearchers permission to travel from one area to another. If I was diligent, theywould get the permission sooner (perhaps). If I forgot, or got busy with other things,then they would have to wait. No longer were we talking about power relationsonly between researcher and research participants, but also between researcher andresearcher!

It was difficult for me to admit that there was asymmetry in the relationsbetween the Israeli and the Palestinian teams—but there it was. It was very difficultfor me to be in the position of such unwanted power. I felt ashamed, and this shamegrew when my Palestinian colleagues gave me their details so nonchalantly, so itseemed, so that I could take care of getting permission. For them, it was an everydayoccurrence, one that they did not like but one that they were used to. This requestshook me up and made me realize, just a bit, what constituted a daily routine for thePalestinians. I didn’t remember reading about such asymmetry between research-ers, or how a researcher should handle him- or herself when such an occasion arises,in any of the qualitative methodology books that I had read.

THE INTIFADA

When the Intifada1 broke out in late September 2000, the project came to a stand-still. We could no longer meet face to face. It was too dangerous for us Israelis totravel the roads to Beit Jala, because Palestinians were firing from buildings in thattown across the way to the Gilo neighborhood, and the road that we needed to takeled between those two points. And the Palestinians were under fire from the Israeliarmy, and had curfews and military road blocks imposed on them. All of us—Palestinians and Israelis—were in shock over the very quick and violent deteriora-tion of the relationships between the two peoples. The importance of researchingenvironmental NGOs faded when people were being murdered and terrorizedevery day. We did manage to talk to one another on the phone a few times and tokeep up some e-mail contact, but these calls and e-mails always left me feelinguneasy and helpless.

A month into the war, after we saw that the situation was not going to beresolved quickly, we decided that we would write a report based on what we hadsucceeded in gathering for submission to our donors. Because we couldn’t discusstogether how to do this, each side made its own plan and did what seemed right toit—again, not an optimal situation and one not addressed in methodology books.Eventually, we did manage to meet three times in Jerusalem. These were goodworking meetings; the relations between us were more or less the way they hadbeen before, and we managed to make joint decisions.

The writing of the joint report was also very difficult for both sides. At times, Ifelt that parts of the Palestinian chapters included propaganda and were not “scien-tific” in nature. At times, my Palestinian colleagues told me that something that Ihad incorporated into the report was unacceptable to them, as it struck them asoffensive or as going against their norms.




This work was difficult, not just from the professional and academic viewpointbut from the emotional one as well. There were a number of times when I felt on myguard, on the defensive. I was uneasy with statements that appeared in the Palestin-ian chapters claiming that the Israelis were responsible for all of the damage thathad been done to the Palestinian environment. These statements made me angry,and I was willing to accept them only when they were specifically prefaced withsuch remarks as “According to Dr. so and so . . . ” If such statements could not beclarified, then, I said, that they must be deleted.

The writing stage appeared to be emotionally difficult for the Palestinianresearchers as well. My Palestinian colleagues did the same with my chapters. Forexample, if I included something in the text that appeared to them to be insensitive,such as when I quoted one of my interviewees who had used derogatory and insult-ing language about Palestinians and about Islam, they demanded that I reword orblack out the remark. In short, both teams were extremely sensitive, not only to theoverall product but to every line, indeed to every word. After a number of e-mailrounds and discussions, we did manage to write a report that we all felt reflectedour work and even to publish an article about the work—no minor victory in thesedays of troubles.

The work on the environmental project ended 2 years ago. Over these past 2years, the relationships, in general, between the Israelis and the Palestinians havecontinually deteriorated, making it harder and harder technically to find a way forPalestinians and Israelis to work together. But more than that, the war is taking itstoll on all of us. None of us are immune to what is going on around us and to thealmost complete portrayal of the other side as a demonic enemy. The Palestiniansare discouraged from working with Israelis, and we Israelis often meet with similaropposition on our side. So, how does one go on with joint projects when coexistencecontinues to be out of reach? We must continually redecide to continue our work toface these kinds of problems. I assume that these are the kinds of problems thatresearchers working within other conflict areas must face as well, as they try to con-tinue on with their work.

THE REFUGEE PROJECT

Last year, in the middle of the Intifada, we began our Refugee Project, the projectthat I mentioned earlier on. I would now like to go into more detail about the project.The goals of this project are

1. to document life stories of former/present refugees and to make this documentationavailable for students, teachers and researchers,

2. to gain insight into the understanding of issues such as the connection that these indi-viduals have in regards to the land and to their societies, perception of self identityand of the “other,” and to learn how the individuals live with their traumatic experi-ences, and

3. to get their perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, especially in connection tothe Palestinian refugee problem.

To date, the Palestinian team has interviewed more than 70 people—all ofwhom have been refugees since 1948 who are living in the area of Bethlehem and therefugee camps there. On the Israeli side, we have interviewed approximately 20




people. All of the interviews are videotaped. Because of the ongoing war, we areworking in parallel, not jointly. From time to time, we update one another concern-ing progress on the project. I will now focus on the Israeli side of the project.

The interview process begins well before I arrive at the home of the participantwith the videographer. In my first phone call to the potential interviewee, I beginwith an explanation of the project, making sure that the person understands thatthis is a joint Palestinian-Israeli venture. Except for the call with Rafi that I describedat the beginning of my remarks, I have never been turned down by anyone becausethis is a joint project (or at least never been told that this is the reason). However, I amoften told, “I don’t want to get into politics,” or asked, “Can you assure me that thiswon’t be used for political gain?” I promise that whatever is said will be used onlyfor educational and research purposes, and clarify that although I will be askingsome specific questions connected to the study, the interviewees are completely freeto answer how they see fit.

I begin with a modified version of the life story, which I will now explain inmore detail. When we use life stories for data collection, we ask our interviewees avariant of a very open question, “Please tell me your life story, whatever you think isrelevant.” When this method is used in its purest form, I sit back and do not inter-rupt the interviewees at all; I let them talk about whatever they want, in whateverorder they choose, touching on the topics that they choose, until they let me knowthat they have reached the end of their main narrative (by saying something like,“And that’s about it. Do you have other questions for me?”). At times, the narrativeor main narration might last no more than 10 minutes; it usually lasts somewherebetween 1 hour and an hour an a half but can go for as long as 4 to 5 hours.

THE LIFE STORY METHOD

Why do I use the life story as the main method in my work? This project, as well asmost of the others that I am involved in, taps extremely sensitive issues—massivesocial trauma that includes experiences such as wars, genocide, difficult and forcedimmigration processes, deep and personal losses, with complex layers of meaning.Therefore, I need a method that is both open—one that does not limit the scope ofanswers a participant wishes to give, giving him or her as free reign as possible—and one that is sensitive—a methodology that does so in an unobtrusive, accepting,and nonjudgmental way. It is important to have a method that helps me go to thecomplex heart of the matters I am researching—that mirrors, as much as possible,the world of the person sitting across from me.

I use the life story method because I see it as a method that reflects my valuesand one that I consider “good” for undertaking research. Here, I will mention tworeasons.

First, the life story method assumes an almost peer-like relationship betweenresearcher and interviewee. When using this method, the researcher refrains, asmuch as possible, from imposing his or her theoretical framework or perspectiveson the world on the autobiographer. What to talk about, and how to talk about it, isinitially and primarily left up to the interviewee. Although the dominant powerrelations between the researcher and the interviewee still remain (after all, I am theone from the university who will eventually publish findings and get most, if not all,of the credit for the work, and that is the reason for calling these relations “almost




peer-like”), it limits them, making the researcher a bit more humble and morerespectful of the other. To no small degree, we consciously forfeit control of the inter-view, and we let the interviewee lead us.

Second, by depending on the life story method as my main way of gatheringmaterial, it infers that the researcher will not be able to understand, for example,what it was like to have lived through the Holocaust, to have served as a soldier dur-ing the first Intifada, to have lived through a terror attack, or to have forcibly beenuprooted from your home and to have become a refugee, without being able to putthe event into the context of the entire life story. It says that context is everything,and that we must be respectful of that context as well.

In the Refugee Project, I begin by asking the autobiographer to tell me his or herlife story, but I modify it by asking them to begin with their childhood, only inter-rupting to help the person keep to a chronological order or to provide detail, as Ithink that this will make it easier for others to understand and follow the interviews.At the end of the life story—which usually lasts 1 hour to an hour and a half—I askthe interviewee three questions connected directly to the study:

1. Do you know what was on this land before the establishment of the state in 1948?2. If a Palestinian were to come to your community and say, “I’m originally from here,”

would you be interested in talking to him or her? What would you like to say to himor her?

3. When you think about the conflict between us and the Palestinians, do you have anyideas concerning a solution? How do you think the Palestinian refugee problemcould/should be resolved?

The answers range in time from 5 minutes to half an hour. I then ask the participantif there is anything else that he or she would like to add to the life story.

After this stage of the interview, the participants have the opportunity to showphotographs, documents, or artifacts that have meaning to them, which are alsovideotaped. In the last part of the interview, the participant is asked to take us to aplace in the community that has special meaning for him or her. At times, the persontakes us to such a place (for example, the community synagogue); at others, the per-son just wants to show us around his or her house and farm. This can also take from5 minutes to half an hour. At the end of the entire process, we have a video of about 3hours for each person (who, of course, gets a copy).

I have found these interviews to be extremely exciting for me as a researcherand as a person. They are rich in detail, emotionally touching, and, at times, emo-tionally difficult. I do not always hear things that I would like to hear, and at times, Iwish that I had not asked the question. For example, Yona, a Holocaust survivorwho was incarcerated in Auschwitz as a boy, told me at the end of his interview, “If itwere up to me, I would put all of the Palestinians on transports and send themaway.” I did not hear this sentence when Yona said it during the interview; it wasonly when I was making a copy of the tape for him that I heard what he said. I didnot want to hear Yona, a man who had suffered so much at the hands of the Nazisand their collaborators, talk about shipping out Palestinians to other countries. Itwould be much easier for me if he had expressed empathy toward the suffering ofthe Palestinians due to what others had done to him. Denial (Langer, 1991) and wish-ful thinking on the part of the researcher should be another note discussed in meth-odology books.




ETHICAL CONCERNS

This brings us to the issue of ethical concerns in research undertaken in conflictarenas. It is very difficult for us Jews who research Holocaust survivors to presentthem in a bad light. These are people who suffered what no one should ever have tosuffer; they lost their families, their homes, and their communities in ways that themind can barely imagine. After the war, they could not return to their homes,because these homes no longer existed. All that they had known was destroyed.

This dilemma is made even more difficult when we remember that the informa-tion that I am gathering is part of a joint Palestinian-Israeli study. If I have difficultyin hearing what Yona had to say, how will the Palestinians react? How will they un-derstand this man? And if such statements are being made on the Israeli side, thenI assume that such statements are also being made on the Palestinian side. And, Iknow from prior experience, such as the women’s meeting that I briefly described atthe beginning of this lecture, that it is very difficult for me, and for my Jewish-Israelicolleagues as well, to continue on with this work when we hear and face hate fromPalestinians.

When we ask people to be open with us, and to tell us about their lives andabout their thoughts, we run the risk that what they have to say may lead not only tofurther deterioration of the relationships between the two conflict sides but also touneasiness on the part of the researchers from the same side. Such openness andhonesty might lead the researchers to becoming too hurt, frightened, or emotionallyoverwhelmed to want to continue.

As researchers, it is not our task to edit out statements that we find unpleasantor, worse, that offend our sense of morality. As part of a research team, it is my job tobe honest with my partners about my findings. These tasks take on added signifi-cance in the context of joint Palestinian-Israeli research. Although I work hard atremaining true to these requirements and ethical standards, I raise the point to showthat, when working in such a conflictual context, the decision to stay true to thesegolden rules can never be taken for granted. The decision is made consciously eachtime.

CONTINUING ON WITH THE JOINT RESEARCH

I prepared a short film that demonstrates the kinds of material and issues that areemerging from the Refugee Project. Unfortunately, I will not be able to show it at thismeeting because the Israeli video system and the North American video system areincompatible with one another. Even though you will not be able to see it now, Ihave chosen to mention this film for another reason. When I was in the process ofmaking it, and upon its conclusion, I showed the film to a number of family mem-bers, friends, and colleagues. I was very surprised—indeed, taken aback—by anumber of comments that I received about the film. I learned that this film was seenas being “anti-Israeli” by some of these viewers. “It presents Israelis in a bad light—the people who hate us will love it!” “You should have censored what Mordechaisaid—it doesn’t sound nice,” and “Your presentation of the Palestinian-Israeli con-flict at the beginning of the film is one-sided. You present the Palestinian side, anddistort facts about the Jewish side.” There were other viewers, of course, who saw




the film in a different light—as representing a real part of our Israeli context. Pain-ful, yes, but also truthful. In short, I learned from this experience that the makingand screening of such a documentary is connected to extreme political overtonesand strong emotions as well as to methodological, research, and educationalaspects.

Let’s go back now to the Refugee Project, and to collaborative work with “theenemy” in general. When working as part of a team of researchers, not only in con-flict situations but in general, each one of us must work in ways that mesh with theunderstandings and expectations of all members on the staff. When working withresearchers from the other side, there are often greater differences in these under-standings and expectations. In the present study, in the coming months, we will sitdown together, we hope face to face and not only via e-mail or on the phone, anddecide on broad guidelines for analyzing the materials. It is clear to me, as in the caseof the environmental project, that there will be differences between our approachesto the analyses and to the end products. The interviews differ not only in style butalso in length. For instance, the Israeli interviews tend to be longer than the Palestin-ian ones, as we are using life stories as the basis of the interviews whereas the Pales-tinian team has designed an interview based on five questions. In our work, we areacutely aware of giving equal time for each side and that it is of utmost importanceto present an equal number of quotations from each side. We believe that our finaljoint products must reflect symmetry even though there is no such symmetry on theoutside, in the real world.

From my acquaintance with researchers in other conflict areas, there is no doubtthat the overall issues that I have noted in this talk are not unique to the Palestinian-Israeli context. Joint research between former/present enemies affects the planning,collection, analysis, and writing stages. And all of these issues connect to ethical andmoral questions, which are central not only to our work but to our personal lives aswell.

CONCLUSION

If I attempt to summarize the points that I see as being connected to methodologicalissues in conflict research that I have noted in this article, I think that we must beaware of the following.

Everything is political—every stage of our research is connected to and affected bypolitics.

At times, we see the “other” researcher as the enemy. Learning to see the other as a fellowresearcher and collaborator in peace-building efforts is one of our many challenges.

Your research participants might see you as “the enemy,” making it difficult not only tofind potential interviewees but also to carry on with the work without becoming toodiscouraged.

Different political views—from the same side and from the other side—can come to thesurface, making it hard to carry out the work that the researcher set out to do.

There is a difficulty in containing statements that go against one’s worldviews and senseof morality.

To carry on, we use defense mechanisms, such as repression, denial, intellectualization,and wishful thinking.




Being embedded in an atmosphere of hate can affect one’s resolve to work on the re-search. This resolve might wane, and, at times, it will be hard to remain immune tosocial and political events.

Research touches one’s professional, social, family, and personal life. Collaborative con-flict research touches every aspect of one’s life.

There is often asymmetry between researchers from conflict groups. We must work tominimize this as much as possible.

Violence and conflict bring research to a standstill; there is an inability to know whetheror not you will be able to finish what you began.

Inability to meet affects the stages of data collection and data analysis. This can lead eachside to work with different procedures.

Difficulties continue into the writing stage. There might be “defensive” writing and aheightened sensitivity to the written word.

At times, the researcher might need to compromise his or her ethical and research stan-dards. These might take a “back seat” to the superordinate goal of continuing jointwork.

Three years ago, when I began undertaking collaborative conflict research withPalestinians, I was a rather naive researcher, unaware of much of what I was gettingmyself into. As time goes on, and as our political situation further deteriorates, Ibecome more convinced that this work must go on, though it becomes more difficultas we go on. Perhaps the only way to continue to plan, to collect data, to begin toanalyze the data, and to produce end products is by believing that one day, in the nottoo distant future, we will have helped establish the groundwork for additionalresearchers, in our conflict region, and in other conflict arenas as well, who willchoose to follow a similar path.

NOTE

1. Intifada refers to an uprising or “shaking off” in Arabic—the name given by the Palestinians forthe mass uprising against the Israeli Occupation. The first Intifada began in December 1987; the secondone—the al-Aqsa Intifada—began in late September 2000.

REFERENCES

Josselson, R., & Lieblich, A. (1991). The narrative study of lives. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Langer, L. (1991) Holocaust testimonies: The ruins of memory. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Lieblich, A., Tuval-Mashiach, R., & Zilber, T. (1998). Narrative research: Reading analysis and interpretation.

Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Rosenthal, G. (1993). Reconstruction of life stories: Principles of selection in generating stories for narra-

tive biographical interviews. In R. Josselson & A. Lieblich (Eds.) The narrative study of lives (Vol. 1,pp. 59- 91). London: Sage.

Rosenthal, G. (Ed.). (1998). The holocaust in three generations: Families of victims and perpetrators of the Naziregime. London: Kassel.

Julia Chaitin, Ph.D., is a professor and researcher at the Israeli Center for Qualitative Methodologies(ICQM), Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel.




“i wish he hadn’t told me that”: methodological and ethical issues in social trauma and...

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