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.