access method local variable namespace?

[Douglas du Boulay]

hi,

I know it's possible to access the names of methods within 
class objects from their __class__.__dict__, but I am 
wondering if it's also possible to 
access the namespace of the local variables in those 
methods and to read their contents?

>From the "Programming Python" book I read that local variables are
stored in an array instead of a dictionary for faster access and that
vars() and locals() can be used to access those variables when 
they are in the current scope, but is it possible to this when they
are out of scope?

Thanks
doug