JUMPING ON SHADOWS: CATCHING THE UNCONSCIOUS IN THE CLASSROOM

Abstract

This article discusses case material from a psychoanalytically informed ethnographic research project where the author had a dual role as a teaching practitioner and researcher in an infant school. It suggests that practitioner researchers can deepen a concern with reflexivity in the research process by transferring elements of the practice of the psychoanalytic clinician — specifically, attention to ‘counter‐transference’ — to their research practice. The article reviews the concept of counter‐transference. It suggests that working out the difference between transference and counter‐transference may be connected unconsciously to working out the distinctions between ego and superego. The article then goes on to provide an illustration of the way in which the author attempted to use her own counter‐transference to inform her research into young children's learning, specifically in relation to her experience of being a teacher. The discussion connects this to the teacher's transferential place as a parental and ‘superego’ figure for pupils. Observational extracts are drawn from the case study of ‘Lutfa’, a Bengali girl placed at the lower end of the ability group range. The article concludes by suggesting that attention to counter‐transference dynamics as a form of reflexivity can provide the practitioner‐researcher with valuable information about the research subjects and about dynamics in the setting, particularly the participants' relationships to ‘superego’ figures.