Reflections on the use of a psychoanalytically informed interview approach for a study exploring how children’s services professionals experience the suffering of parents

Abstract

Hollway and Jefferson’s free association narrative interview method is an approach to qualitative research interviewing that draws on concepts and practices traditionally associated with psychoanalytic therapy. Owing to this “psychosocial” framework, the method is an attractive proposition to psychodynamically orientated practitioner-researchers and various studies by researchers in counselling and clinical psychology and the allied fieldsof social work and mental health nursing have made use of the method or aspects of it. In this article, I describe and reflect on the completion of one study informed by the method which sought to explore how professionals working in English local authority children’s services experience the suffering of parents. Specifically, I am concerned with some of the more practical issues involved in doing the research. The topics covered comprise gaining access to and interviewing a suitable sample of professionals; interviewing technique and the analysis of interview material; and the role of researcher reflexivity and the use of the researcher’s “countertransference” experience (with a specific concern for boredom).Overall, the article contributes to furthering thinking about this method as a tool of social work research and what it means to do qualitative research and research interviews with social work practitioners in a psychoanalytically informed way.