Chapter 1 presents an overview of the psychosocial literature on personal narratives, in general, and in connection to genocide and war, in particular. We begin with the concept of societies’ master narratives, emphasizing their long-term impacts on people’s personal narratives of genocide and war. We then look at the main characteristics and uses of personal narratives in psychosocial research. From there, we briefly present and discuss archives of personal narratives of survivors of gross human rights’ violations and their use in different truth commissions, followed by usages of personal narratives in research of genocide and war in different places in the world. Our focus in this chapter is mainly (though not exclusively) on the contexts of the Holocaust and the Israeli–Palestinian/Arab–Jewish conflicts.