Evaluación de la diversidad

Despite the long history of psychoanalysis, there is a considerable dearth of psychoanalytic methodology in the research field: “If you browse through a range of textbooks on qualitative approaches to research in psychology … one rarely finds a chapter describing a ‘psychoanalytic approach’ to qualitative research” (Midgley, 2006, p.214). Cartwright (2004) also noted this lack: “the development of research methodology in psychoanalysis remains in its infancy … Because the methodology is closely associated with the treatment setting, little progress has been made in developing other forms of research methodology using psychoanalytic principles” (p.210). Even the latest edition of the comprehensive Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research by Denzin and Lincoln (4th edition, 2011), 766 pages in length, contains no entry for

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While planning the design of my study back in 2009 and 2010, in my survey of the available literature on psychoanalytic research, I repeatedly found references to Hollway and Jefferson’s (2000) Doing Qualitative Research Differently. It was frustrating that it was out-of-print at the time that I was constructing my research model, for it was apparent that their book was a notable exception to this neglect, and by all accounts seemed to offer a promising research model which they called the Free Association Narrative Interview (FANI) method. And indeed, having been able to access the second edition, published in 2013, it would have been helpful to have read their work earlier. In particular, the fact that they incorporated aspects of a grounded theory approach into their method would have been helpful for me as I grappled to find a method that could help me to make sense of the mass of data that I planned to collect. Additionally, their insistence on the need for there to be room for participants to set their own agendas in the research interview would have provided an important confirmation for me of the hunch that I held in this regard.

At the same time, there are some essential differences between their model and that which eventually emerged for me, both from my readings and from interactions with the participants. The most notable of these relates to their object-relations framework, which leads to a focus on the intrapsychic world of the participant and the defences he or she employs to ward off anxiety – ‘the defended subject’ is their theoretical starting point (Hollway & Jefferson, 2013). While I am in agreement that defences are important aspects to consider, especially when researching sensitive and anxiety-provoking topics, I see a much more active and creative manner of engagement for the participants in the research than the term ‘subjects’ would suggest. I am interested also in thinking about how my own very real impact and influence on the person and the situation might have played a role in the narrative that ensued, to a greater extent than Hollway and Jefferson’s FANI method would suggest. In their preface to the second edition (2013), Hollway and Jefferson note that this has indeed been a criticism of their work, citing Thomsom’s comment that “Analysis of the defended researcher is insufficiently developed.

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They do mention the possibility that the researcher is also defended, but it certainly doesn’t feel that way” (Thomson, 2010, in Hollway & Jefferson, 2013, p.xi).

A further point of difference between their approach and mine relates to their insistence that interpretation not take place during the interviews but only during later data analysis, seeing as they do that interpretive work “is separate from the participant and has a different audience” (p.72). I shall say more at a later stage about my view of the need to include the participant in the interpretive process as a co-creator of meaning, but note here my agreement with Hoggett, Beedell, Jimenez, Mayo and Miller (2010) that “Researchers cannot but ‘think into the encounter’, and their thinking necessarily assumes the form of interpretations, a kind of ‘thinking aloud’ “(p.176).

For the most part, researchers working psychoanalytically in the field of psychosocial research tend to focus on the interview component of the research. Very few report in any detail how they utilise the data that they glean from the interviews in order to reach their findings. Hollway and Jefferson’s (2000) FANI method is a notable exception, as is the work of Lucey, Melody and Walkerdine (2003), who reported on an overlapping three-tier method of data analysis. On the first level, the researchers looked at the manifest content of the participants’ stories - the themes, events, characters and so on. The second level comprised an initial exploration of unconscious processes as revealed in images, metaphors, silences, disjunctions and the like, alongside the researcher’s recorded emotional responses to the interview. The third level went beyond what was known and conscious at the time of the interview in the researcher, based on the premise “that our experience of the intra-psychic dynamic could tell us something important about this person’s relationship to the wider social world” (p.281). Lucey et al. (2003) cited Parker’s (1995) usage of the concept of ‘unconscious to unconscious

communication’ in this regard. Although not clearly elucidated, it would seem that they refer here to a Kleinian understanding of the concept, in which it is implicit that the communication is

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one-way – that is, from patient to analyst, or participant to researcher, and centred on the ideas of projection and projective identification.

First proposed by Freud (1958/1912), who wrote that “The analyst must bend his own

unconscious like a receptive organ toward the transmitting unconscious of the patient” (p.115), the idea of ‘unconscious to unconscious communication’ is an important aspect of human relatedness in my understanding of the nature of reality, but my view would see this as a bidirectional communication, more akin to Ferenczi’s (1995) conception of a ‘dialogue of unconsciouses’. And thus, while Lucey et al.’s (2003) incorporation of this element of

unconscious to unconscious communication represented an important point of resonance for me, I knew that my study would need to find a way of incorporating the mutuality of the research process into the findings, in order to present what I would view as a more complex and

therefore richer understanding of the studied phenomenon. Additionally, I needed to find some methodological inspiration on how to make a meaningful whole out of the findings of the study – an aspect that Lucey et al. (2003) do not elaborate in sufficient detail, in my view.

Clarke (2002) is another who reports on his methods beyond the interview process. He proposed a research methodology, drawing primarily on the work of Hollway and Jefferson (2000), which utilized psychoanalytic tools and concepts to enhance traditional ethnographic research methods. In outlining his method, he proposed that the raw data gained from interviews with the participants be analyzed on two levels:

First, there is an analysis of the interaction between researcher and researched; this enables us to address the mutual construction of the research data, and to identify unconscious mechanisms at work in different patterns of response within the research environment. Second, there is an analysis of the substantive content of the interview; this enables the researcher to identify both common and different patterns of experience (p.176).

As a general outline, Clarke’s (2002) description of his goals in utilising his research method has much in common with what I hoped to achieve in my study. But the actual process of identifying patterns of experiences remains somewhat vague in his account, beyond a

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description of the steps taken to identify themes and links. Like Lucey et al.’s (2003) study, Clarke (2002) did not actually outline how he put the material together into a cohesive and meaningful whole, and this represented a gap in the methodology for me, one which I found Charmaz’s (2006) version of the Grounded Theory Method (GTM) much more helpful in addressing – of which I shall say more in a later chapter.

In addition, Clarke’s (2002) method of analysis has as its final step the identification of

“unconscious mechanisms such as projective identification both in the subject’s response to the interviewer and in the material the subject describes. This allows analysis of the way in which research data are constructed by both researcher and respondents.” (p.176). I am in agreement that hypotheses about the nature of unconscious material are certainly a significant part of the psychoanalytic understanding of interaction and interview material. But I am wary of this suggestion that it is only in the participant’s response to the interviewer that the action of the unconscious may be discerned, and I have difficulty in grasping how this could further the aim of understanding the co-created nature of the interaction. It makes more sense to me that the interviewer’s responses should also be subject to a reflexive and analytic process that seeks to identify his or her unconscious contributions. This is a process that is a regular and necessary step within the Relational frame, to which I am drawn because of its ethical insistence on mutuality and reciprocity in examining the co-created nature of interaction, and thus it was clear that my research method in this study needed to express this, both in the interview processes and data analysis.

Stopford’s (2006) study of African-Australian relationships provided an important and helpful precedent for the kind of study that I hoped to produce from my examination of the ways in which South African migrants construct and experience their migration from South Africa. Her grounding in a Relational psychoanalytic frame was a significant point of resonance, and her method of reflecting on and analyzing her data gelled with the way in which I hoped to be able to immerse myself in the stories that the participants in my study told. In particular, her

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repeated readings of the data, each time focusing in on different elements of the interview, seemed to me both logically and intuitively fitting, and her emphasis on noting and commenting on her own experience of the material as part of the co-creation of the narratives resonated as a fundamental part of what I hoped to be able to do. I found it helpful to understand her method of selecting her participants, in the way that she drew upon existing social connections and networks, for I anticipated that I too would need to use such a directed and even somewhat personal process to identify participants who met the criteria for my study. And finally, her utilization of elements of a Grounded Theory approach to explore and manage her data,

especially in the initial stages of her analysis, confirmed the hunch that I had that this particular research method held promise as a useful means with which to approach a large amount of data.

I was puzzled however at Stopford’s (2006) decision to utilize Glaser and Strauss’ (1967) model of Grounded Theory research as the basis of her analysis, since Barney Glaser in particular is firmly rooted in a positivist frame, and has been a vociferous critic of any attempts to introduce researcher subjectivity into the research process:

When I say that some data is interpreted, I mean the participant not only tells what is going on, but tells the researcher how to view it correctly—his/her way. I do not mean that they are mutually built up interpretations. Adding his or her interpretations would be an unwarranted intrusion of the researcher (Glaser, 2002, p.3).

In my view, the constructivist approach of Charmaz (2006) is far more suited to the spirit and aims of a Relational psychoanalytic frame.

In addition, while I was impressed with the measures Stopford (2006) took to engage her participants in a discussion of the way she had analysed their interviews, by providing them with a written account of what she had made of each of their stories and then engaging them in a discussion of these, this represented for me a greater focus on the individuals themselves in the analysis of individual stories than I wished to achieve. In my study, I wished to focus to a greater extent on the themes that emerged from all the stories taken together, rather than an

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analysis of the individuals involved. Thus, it seemed to me that my post-analysis engagement with the participants needed to invite them to discuss all the themes that had emerged from the migration stories, rather than a narrow focus on their particular presentations. In this way, I hoped to achieve a model that would represent a composite picture of the emotions and

experiences of a particular group of post-apartheid migrants from South Africa, a model whose components were formed via a specific research process and the construction of which was informed by the tenets of Relational psychoanalysis.

In the following chapter, I will outline the Relational psychoanalytic dimensions of my study. At this point, the considerable literature and formative influence of the psychoanalytic research interview needs to be examined.