‘The approach is, therefore, intended to be flexible and based on multiple
strategies: ideas can be generated from diverse sources, including numerical and literary information.’
This was in accord with my aim of interrogating a sample of published case studies with examples of mental imagery in psychotherapeutic process.
Also the procedures of the grounded theory method, especially with regard to
developing categories, still stand as probably the most useful method for illuminating typologies potentially existing in the literature of mental imagery. In other words I would be drawing specifically on the methods with regard to data analysis. Charmaz (Morse et al. 2009:127) notes that this has become an accepted practice in regard to grounded theory; ‘Scholars treat several of its strategies as standard practice in qualitative inquiry and as part of the lexicon of qualitative research.’ Charmaz (ibid) believes that grounded theory has now become an umbrella for a range of different variants, emphases and directions for thinking about data. This goes further than Cutliffe’s (2005) suggestion of making an alteration to the methodology and explicitly naming the approach as modified grounded theory. In this case I would assert that I am applying grounded theory methods in a creative but appropriate way to my
research project. I would suggest that this is in more accord with Robson’s (2002:493) description of qualitative data analysis i.e. ‘in the general style of a grounded theory approach.’ I note that another researcher working with similar material i.e. Edgar (2004) in his innovative imagination-based research methods, also chose to use a grounded theory style approach to analyse the data regarding the imagery produced by dreamwork groups.
3.2 Increasing Reflexivity in the Research
However, proposing to use grounded theory style methods does not address the issue of a post-positivism inherent in a research question that seeks to identify purported pre-existing typologies. As McLeod 2001:97) observes;
‘A further critical issue that underpins qualitative research concerns the depth of personal exploration and reflexivity that is undertaken by the researcher.’
This is particularly important for research in the field of counselling and
36 main instrument of the work (Rowan & Jacobs 2002). For this reason some
psychotherapy researchers (West 2001) believe that as grounded theory does not address the notion of critical subjectivity so fundamental to the process of psychotherapy, this makes it suspect as a research approach in this field. Others (Rennie 2000), although mindful of the dangers of it becoming a methodology of choice in psychotherapy, claim that its detailed and well-established procedures allow it to make useful disclosures of hitherto unsuspected patterns and connections. One way of addressing the missing element of reflexivity in my research project would be to adopt a pluralistic approach to research design suggested by research scholars in counselling and psychotherapy (McLeod 2003, West ibid). This research design would need to draw on additional research methodologies that can illuminate both the interior subjective processes of the researcher and also the intersubjective context that is shaping the researcher’s thinking about the project.
3.2.1 Identifying Suitable Complementary Methodologies
In terms of the former, there are a range of research methodologies that have been employed to investigate the interior experience of the researcher viewing this as a potentially rich and significant resource (McLeod 2001, 2003). The foremost example derived from humanistic psychology is heuristic inquiry devised by Moustakas (1990) wherein a total immersion of the inquirer in his or her personal experience of the research topic brings forth a new experience of the phenomenon. Another type of approach founded in the disciplines of sociology and anthropology, that is growing in popularity in counselling and psychotherapy is autoethnography. This approach uses the well-established methods of participant observation and applies these to the researcher’s self. For reasons of parsimony and pragmatism I decided to choose a heuristic methodology because this could be more easily adapted to a small-scale accompanying research exercise. It would allow me to make a study of my own subjective processes using journaling through one discrete phase of the research journey with the aim of illuminating the phenomena being studied. Autoethnography brings more complexity with it in terms of methods and epistemology.
In terms of the latter I needed to consider how I could grasp some of the biases that would be operating that arise out of the intersubjective context and that cannot be disclosed through a purely subjective inquiry. As Alvesson and Skoldberg (2000)
37 make clear, researchers have pre-structured understandings that are inevitably
projected onto each and every stage of the research process. I proposed to draw on their reflexive methodological approach which I would contend is one of the most clearly articulated and operationalised research methodologies that addresses intersubjective processes that has emerged so far in the field of qualitative research methodologies.
3.2.2 Dangers Inherent in Pluralistic Research Designs
It is important to acknowledge at this point that there are dangers inherent in using pluralistic or multi-model research designs (McLeod 2002). These are particularly relevant to any attempt to draw on methodologies with different epistemologies – to give an extreme but unlikely example of a researcher combining a positivist
quantitative approach with a post-structuralist auto-ethnographic inquiry – how can such different views of the person come together in any coherent way? I chose, as the best fit for my research purposes, three approaches from the qualitative tradition in order to lessen the danger of epistemological confusion. I have also been very specific about the way in which the two supplementary approaches are being applied to the researcher whilst the main approach is being used for the collecting and analysing the data on mental imagery. I hoped thereby that this combination of methodologies would operate to increase the reflexivity of a grounded theory style approach to the study of typologies in mental imagery. How this translated into a pluralistic research design will be detailed in the next chapter.
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