Oral method life history: contributions for the qualitative research in occupational therapy

Abstract

Oral history of life is one of the methods that constitute the qualitative research field, witch is concerned with the meanings and the senses of actions and relationships between people or groups. This article describes and analyses the contributions that this method - systematized in Brazil manly by the historian Jose Carlos Sebe Bom Meihy and colleagues - can provide to the research in occupational therapy and related fields. Thus, this study presents a discussion about memory, a description of that method, to finally discuss links between the research in Occupational Therapy and the oral history of life.