A Widened Scope on Therapist Development: Designing a Research Interview Informed by Psychoanalysis

Abstract

This article presents a qualitative research interview method informed by psychoanalysis, which can collect data beyond the subjective report of the participants. The method has been used to study acquisition of psychodynamic understanding and therapy technique among student therapists in psychology. Within the psychodynamic tradition, the subjective report of every person is viewed as potentially distorted by defense processes. Moreover, relational patterns in an interaction are viewed as significant data about the intrapsychic object relations of a person provided that the person is placed in a projective situation. Since common qualitative interview methods focus primarily on verbal data, such psychodynamic assumptions represent a methodological challenge. To collect a wider scope of data than merely the subjective report, a research interview has been developed based on a certain degree of projection, a psychoanalytic listening perspective, and the use of emotional expression in the interview relation as data. Subsequently, relational scenarios and incidences of defense processes in the research participants are inferred.

Keywords:

• countertransference
• projective principle
• psychoanalysis
• psychoanalytic clinical interview
• psychoanalytic clinical method
• psychodynamic therapy
• qualitative method
• relational scenario
• research interview
• transference
• triangulation

Acknowledgements

Our thanks to the participators of this study who offered their personal experiences to research scrutiny, and a special thanks to Emily, who in addition has contributed to the text herself. We wish to thank Professor Hanne Haavind, Professor Michael Helge Rønnestad, David Giles, and the two reviewers who have given valuable and inspiring comments to the text.

Notes

¹Ethical approval was obtained from the Data Inspectorate in Norway and recommendation by the Regional Committee for Medical Research Ethics.

²All quotations are translated from Norwegian by the first author.

³Had the interviewer planned these research interviews today, she would have presented a modified version of a clinical instruction. Thus, the participants had from the beginning got a frame to act upon. The formulation could for instance have been: “Now I am interested in how you experience your process of acquiring therapeutic competence in your internship – all sorts of elements that you connect to this process. Feel free to elaborate whenever you want. It is not of primary importance that you answer my questions, I am first and foremost interested in what you emphasize in your learning process.”

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hanne Strømme

Hanne Strømme, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Oslo. Her research interest is therapist development, therapeutic competence and supervision, especially within the psychodynamic tradition. She is a candidate at the Norwegian Psychoanalytic Institute.

Siri Erika Gullestad

Siri Erika Gullestad is professor and Head of the Department of Psychology, University of Oslo. She is president of Norwegian Psychoanalytic Society. Gullestad is a training and supervising psychoanalyst, as well as the author of several books and articles on psychoanalytic theory and therapy.

Erik Stänicke

Erik Stänicke, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Oslo. His research interests are on studying mechanisms of change in psychoanalytic treatment, especially in the postanalytic phase. Stänicke has written about the tense interface between psychoanalytic theory and philosophy. He is a candidate at the Norwegian Psychoanalytic Institute.

Bjørn Killingmo

Bjørn Killingmo is professor emeritus, Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, and a training and supervising psychoanalyst. Killingmo has published internationally on theoretical and technical issues in psychoanalysis.