>
> Can anyone recommend a book on how to conduct oral history interviews? I am
> looking for something that would be readily available (read immediately) in
> the Washington DC area. Please respond directly to me as I am not a list
> member. Thank you for your assistance.
>
> Janet Dombrowski, Reference Librarian
> National Geographic Society
> [log in to unmask]
> 202-775-7879
>
Please forward any recommendations to me, Thanks!
Wish you had been able to meet the Griots (preservers of Oral history)
that I befriended while I was a Peace Corps Vol in Senegal in '73-'75.
I now use many of the techniques they used in my hypnotherapy work...
though not exactly what you were asking for, you might find
Peter Brown's THE HYPNOTIC BRAIN of some interest.
"Hypnotic abilities are basic human abilities. They originate in our
species' unprecedented capacity for subtle and continual
face-to-face communication. Our evolutionary path and even the very
structure of the brain have been profoundly influenced by the
process of communication." (Peter Brown, 1991)
"Poetry and music were important tools to heighten and enhance the
rhythms of communication. In the absence of written records, the
rhythm and imagery of poetic devices allowed important information
to be retained in living memory..." (Peter Brown, 1991)
"...A growing body of convincing evidence, however, suggests that
speech as we know it was not anatomically possible until about one
hundred thousand years ago...Humankind began to evolve long before
the spoken word. Speech added a whole new diminsion to communication
and probably stimulated the beginnings of cultural development, but
it did so by augmenting, not by replacing, an already
well-established communications style. The human brain was
neurologically committed by its evolutionary success to its talent
for exquisitely sensitive, ongoing, and flexible nonverbal
communication." (Peter Brown, 1991)
The folk society (as defined by Redfield, 1947) was small,
non-literate, homogenous, with a strong sense of group solidarity
which... "made use of the newfound ability to speak combined with
our ability for face-to-face communication. The growth of the
association areas provided the cerebral basis for elaborating this
combination into radically new patterns...patterns based on the
common legacy of the primate family. Our capacity for face-to-face
communication and for synchronizing interactions was the basis of
civilization until the development of literacy." (Peter Brown,
1991)
"The evidence shows that the brain evolved primarily for social
communication, of which hypnosis is a special form. Through the
interactions of our earliest relatives, the brain developed to
adapt to a world of highly specialized communication (Steele,
1989). It is structured in order to be influenced by and to express
face-to-face communication. All communications in general, and
hypnosis in particular, derives from those basic abilities."
(Peter Brown, 1991)
"...hypnosis is a highly specialized form of face-to-face
communication. The hypnotherapist monitors the hypnotic state by
means of facial cues, and those cues may be important in the self
monitoring of the hypnotic subject. Face-to-face communication
emphasises the parallel activity of conscious and unconscious
processes as they are interwoven in communication."
(Peter Brown, 1991)
"The language of face-to-face conversation is the basic and
primary use of language, all others being best described in terms
of their manner of deviation from that base."
(Charles J. Fillmore, 1974)
"Moreover, face-to-face communication is a highly complex
neurologic task that provides a glimpse of the dynamic
organization of the brain. That organization demonstrates the
pervasive nature of automatic unconscious processes that coexist
with conscious awareness." (Peter Brown, 1991)
Hope this isn't too far off base for your use...
Are you familiar with Julian Jaynes' ORIGINS OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE
BREAKDOWN OF THE BICAMERAL MIND?
"...hypnosis can cause this extra enabling because it engages the
general bicameral paradigm [with its four aspects: collective
cognitive imperative, induction, trance, and archaic authorization]
which allows a more absolute control over behavior than is possible
with consciousness." (Julian Jaynes)
It was my experience (and it took several months to "retune" my brain)
that the primary focus of face-to-face communications in Africa was not
so much the preservation of "information" (the linear/conscious componant
of oral tradition) as induction into the ancestrial trance
of the tribe (the "subconscious" rhythmic componant of the oral tradition.)
This is probably old hat to you, but just in case....Thx.
--
Arthur Brett Breitwieser, C.H.T. ([log in to unmask])
Director, The Hermes Hypnotherapy Project
Curate, The Sanctuary of the Soul (The American Fellowship Church)
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