The psychoanalytically-informed interview in social work research

ABSTRACT

British psycho-social studies is a new paradigm of transdisciplinary scholarship situated at the borderlands of social and psychological theory. Its development has been represented as providing avenues for a more critical and reflexive engagement with psychoanalysis in social work, disentangled from the unfavourable meanings with which psychoanalysis has been associated (e.g. as apolitical and reductively focussed on intrapsychic dynamics). However, much remains to be said about the implications of methodological developments and debate in psycho-social studies for social work research, particularly in terms of the impetus it provides for reflecting on the transformations brought about in resituating psychoanalytic concepts and practices away from their traditional clinical context in social research and theory. This article draws from doctoral research concerned specifically with the theory and practice of research interviewing. It provides an account of the development of this research and explores the role of interpretation as part of a psychoanalytically-informed interview approach.

KEYWORDS:

• Interpretation
• psychoanalytically-informed interviewing
• practice-near research
• psycho-social research

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. I am repeating here an inversion of Devereux’s (1967) influential From anxiety to method in the behavioural sciences by Balbus (1998, p. 197). Crapanzano (1977, p. 69) has previously referred to From anxiety to method as a ‘significantly ignored book’ in the social sciences. However, in recent years in psycho-social research work and other discussion of psychoanalysis and qualitative research, the book has found renewed interest. In short, Devereux’s argument was that any attempt to study human social life arouses anxiety and that most research methods developed to study it function as defences against this anxiety by removing subjective elements. Devereux argued that rather than deny this aspect of research, the researcher should make use of the ‘disturbances’ produced and consider their emotional reactions as data (see Giami, 2001; Midgley, 2006 for discussion). The inversion of the title of his book, from method to anxiety, is used here in the sense that, from relatively early on in my doctoral studies, I was drawn to this sort of psychoanalytically inspired research stance, but in attempting to put it into practice, became increasingly preoccupied with (and anxious about) matters surrounding how it was to be conceptualised and used (see Archard, 2019).

2. Clearly, as Hollway and Jefferson point out, this does not mean that psychoanalysts are not or cannot be concerned with the external world, but that their primary focus resides with our inner worlds and the way in which the external world is refracted through this.

3. References to page numbers for DQRD in this article are, for the most part, for the second edition (Hollway & Jefferson, 2013). In this edition, the core text remains the same, but, due to inclusion of additional material before and after this (and different formatting), the page numbers are different from the first edition.

4. As with other literature referenced in this article and the work from which the article is drawn, these references include the work of researchers who are associated with the field of psycho-social studies in a contemporary sense, as well as that of researchers who are on the edges of or outside it, or whose work preceded it.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by an Economic and Social Research Council studentship [Ref: 1013476].

Notes on contributors

Philip John Archard

Philip John Archard is a social worker and social work researcher based in Leicester. He recently completed his PhD at the University of Nottingham School of Sociology and Social Policy and now works in a clinical role in child and adolescent mental health services. Address: School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham. [email: [email protected].]