Intro: On October 3, OHMA alumna Emma Courtland presented her thesis, Finding Fathers: A Cautionary Tale for Oral Historians, including audio that highlighted the ways in which her personal journey paralleled those of her narrators. In this post, current OHMA student, Jennie Morrison, considers what it means for oral historians to share pieces of themselves with their narrators, as well as how that shapes the listening process.

“What were you like in middle school?” A 7th grader had expertly turned my question on its head. As the new social work intern at her public school, I had been directing the questions for much of our first session together. I had asked her about her family, her classes, and her hobbies; I had expected her to open up her world to me while I gave nothing of my own. Over the course of the hour that we sat together, she started providing shorter and shorter answers. She evidently had noticed the imbalance in our dialogue. The skepticism on her face made it obvious that she had every intention of adding playfulness back into our conversation, thereby reclaiming the exchange. The subtext of her inquiry felt clear: who are you and what allows you to ask for my story?

The goals that bring a social worker and client together fundamentally differ from those that bring an oral historian and narrator together. While a clinical social worker and client often collaborate to make meaning of a client’s life story in a therapeutic, confidential space, the oral history interview allows this meaning-making to unfold more publicly. Yet my student’s challenge reverberates through both types of relationships.

Emma Courtland’s recent talk on her OHMA thesis, Finding Fathers: A Cautionary Tale for Oral Historians, brought me back to this challenge. In the process of interviewing four narrators who had looked for their fathers in childhood and beyond, Emma used her unique interviewing approach to explore the origins of their stories. The project is deeply personal—Emma had searched for her own father. In fact, she generously shares her personal journey in narrative interludes throughout the thesis. During her public talk, Emma reflected that she leaned into her own vulnerability in order to earn the vulnerability of her narrators.

This idea of reciprocity brought out feelings of both curiosity and ambivalence. While the notion of giving and receiving vulnerability represents a natural way of relating with another individual, I still felt uncertain about how to navigate this as an oral historian. I wondered: how much of ourselves can we bring into the interview space? What does it look like to share pieces of ourselves while still centering the narrator’s story?

These considerations are not new to me. During my time in social work graduate school, my classmates and I wrestled with how and when to share about ourselves. Within the social work field, there is a rich dialogue around the concept of self-disclosure—when clinicians talk about their own identities and experiences with their clients. Common concerns within this ethical debate are that certain forms of self-disclosure can inappropriately redirect focus onto the clinician and can potentially harm the therapeutic relationship. Though thoughtfully delivered self-disclosure can forge connections between the clinician and client, this takes great skill and intuition. For this reason, many seasoned social workers will encourage emerging professionals to be conservative in their use of the strategy.

In this vein, Emma’s instinct to “earn vulnerability through vulnerability” underscores the innate human need for connection, as well as the potential tension between notions of professional “best practice” and human wisdom. As with my 7th grade client’s earnest inquiry, Emma’s choices highlight that we are never entitled to another person’s story. Rather, we earn the privilege to listen through our actions. Recognizing Emma’s success, though, raises questions about how this process can translate authentically and ethically into each interviewer’s practice.

Finding Fathers reminds us that as oral historians, our identities and experiences will always be in the interview room. This is the complexity of what many oral historians describe as the “intersubjective encounter,” a term that suggests that each interview is an emotional and intellectual exchange in which two people strive to connect across similarity and difference. As Emma’s work highlights, this dance is inevitable--who we are intimately shapes what we hear and understand within another person’s experience, and what we disclose shapes what that other person might share with us. The vulnerability and honesty in Emma’s work highlights this dynamic and also pushes us beyond the question of who we are in order to acknowledge that we often exercise choice in how we take up this space and when we bring ourselves into the conversation. These decisions come with a great deal of responsibility.

So how does an oral historian navigate this nuanced layer of accountability? When pondering these choices and their consequences, perhaps the oral history profession could borrow from the social work field’s ongoing, ethics-focused dialogue around when, how, and why to engage in self-disclosure. Social workers view each moment that we explicitly bring ourselves into the conversation as an opportunity to open new dimensions of the dialogue or to inhibit the exchange. Sometimes saying “I know, I’ve been there” can communicate empathy and encourage another person to more freely tell their story, but these seemingly benign statements also run the risk of disrupting the process. While highlighting a shared experience can strengthen a bond, rushing to impose our perception of commonality can actually lead to alienation. The art of social work, and I would also suggest oral history as well, is to balance the human desire for connection with the responsibility to hear each person on their own terms. We must always be aware of the gap between our intentions and our impact when we self-disclose.

Seeing this gap requires self-awareness, which is often forged over time and in community with others. With both oral history interviews and therapy sessions, much of the work continues beyond the initial encounter through practitioner self-reflection and consultation with colleagues. In social work, this generally comes through the practice of structured supervision. Beginning in social work school, students sit down with a supervisor on a regular basis--often weekly--to process and to reflect. In many settings, this ongoing ritual of teaching and learning continues throughout one’s career. Many clinicians extend this by seeking out peer consultation. Supervision is rewarding, but demanding--this is where we ask the tough questions, celebrate our successes, and reflect on our missteps. In my brief time in the OHMA network, I see a similar commitment to shared learning, community accountability, and mentorship. As I prepare for my first interview review with a classmate, I feel a similar nervousness and hopefulness that I felt with my first social work supervision session and peer case consultation. I am reminded that we have the opportunity, and, arguably, obligation, to bring the same curiosity into our conversations with colleagues as we bring into the interview room.

After fumbling through my early experiment in self-disclosure with my 7th grade client, I turned to supervision. I sat with my field instructor and asked: “What is the best way of answering her question? How much should I have shared?” She answered with a question of her own: “Is your decision to share or not to share in service of the client, in service of your comfort, or in service of the relationship?” I believe these same considerations translate into an oral history space, but in light of Finding Fathers, I suggest we add one more: is your decision in service of the narrative(s)? In listening to the audio clips from Finding Fathers, I strongly believe that interviewer self-disclosure, when done well, can facilitate the co-creation of rich, authentic narratives. In fact, I imagine that Emma’s thoughtful decisions about when to take up space as the interviewer, in turn, opened space for her narrators to tell their own stories more fully. Following her example, I toggle between the ethics of social work and oral history, excited to open spaces to listen and learn with others in new ways.

Jennie Morrison is a current OHMA student and a recent graduate of the Columbia School of Social Work. Prior to this, Jennie worked in youth development, a field that fueled her intentions of listening deeply and providing platforms for individual voices.

This post represents the opinion of the author, and not of OHMA.