Countertransference in qualitative research: a critical appraisal

Abstract

The adoption of countertransference, an idea drawn from psychoanalytic theory, by qualitative researchers is examined. It is argued that its definition in the qualitative research literature has often been muddled due to the too-simple mapping of a clinical concept into the research setting. Most definitions either examine countertransference in terms of feeling states or behaviours that participants ‘put into’ or ‘project’ into researchers, or make a sharp distinction between this interpretation of countertransference and another that involves the activation of the researchers’ own neuroses. Various manifestations in the research setting that have been described as potentially containing elements projected from the participant are outlined, such as changes in feeling and bodily states, or ‘mistakes’ on the part of the researcher. Alternative suggestions for the use of the researcher’s feeling and bodily states are put forward. These include, cross-comparing these data with other elements and seeing them as potentially created in the intersubjectivity between participant and researcher.

Keywords

countertransference intersubjectivity projective identification psychoanalysis psychosocial studies reflexivity research methods

Introduction

Social and qualitative researchers have become increasingly interested in drawing on psychoanalysis to inform their research strategies (Midgley, 2006). The justification for this stems, in part, from Freud’s (1912) assertion that in clinical psychoanalysis (Clarke and Hoggett, 2009), research and treatment operate side by side. This has led to the reciprocal situation where researchers have sought parallels between the analytic dyad (Bourdeau, 2000) and the research dyad, that is, interviewer (analogous with the psychoanalyst) and participant (analogous with the patient; Cartwright, 2004; Kvale, 1999; Lewis, 2008; Melles, 2005). Certain authors have been more critical and cautious, arguing, for example, that unlike the supposedly unbiased analyst, the researcher is in a far-from-neutral position in that they usually are attempting to investigate a specific research question and are asking the participant for help (e.g. Cartwright, 2004; Parker, 2010; Zepf, 2009).

Nevertheless, some researchers have adopted psychoanalytic ideas in their work. Especially important are the contributions of Hunt (1989) and Hollway and Jefferson’s (2000) much cited ‘free association narrative interview’, an unstructured interview technique attempting to elicit unconscious material from the participant (see also, Osofsky and Osofsky, 2009). A recent study discussed below by Strømme et al. (2010) went one stage further and employed psychoanalytic interpretations in a research interview. This may sully the research environment for a number of reasons, including the conflicted role that the interviewer puts her or himself in, as both researcher and quasi-therapist (Strømme et al., 2010), and the questionable ethics of offering interpretations when they were not asked for, and, in a single interview without chance for future expansion or comeback (i.e. as one would usually find in psychoanalysis; cf. Thompson and Russo, 2012).

Application of ‘countertransference’

Another parallel development in the analytic domain e.g., and world of social science research has been an increasing interest in the concept of countertransference. An important aspect of the application of psychoanalytic ideas in the research setting includes an awareness of the researcher’s emotional and behavioural responses. Many such attempts (Angorsino, 2005; Clarke, 2002; Elliot et al., 2011; Ellis, 2009; Froggett and Wengraf, 2004; Gemignani, 2011; Jervis, 2009, 2011; Lorimer, 2010; Lucey et al., 2003; Marks and Monnich-Marks, 2003; Morgenroth, 2010; Robben, 2012; Roper, 2003; Strømme et al., 2010) have examined the idea that psychic states can be transferred from participant to researcher, in a process analogous to the psychoanalytic concepts of ‘projection’ (the patient/participant describing the feelings in another, which actually come from within themselves; Freud, 1905) and ‘projective identification’ (the patient/participant inducing or putting – usually unbearable – feelings into the therapist/researcher; Klein, 1946). The latter reactions have broadly been labelled as ‘countertransference’.

In line with the criticism that such approaches have received (e.g. Frosh and Baraitser, 2008; Parker, 2010), this article argues that the straightforward mapping of the clinical concept of countertransference onto the research setting is misleading. Rather than engage with those contemporary, relational and constructivist conceptions of how feelings in the analytic setting can be seen as mutually created (e.g. Ogden, 1994; Stolorow et al., 2002), many qualitative researchers, while sharing a constructivist philosophical position, have been hindered in their attempts to explore the overlaps between research and psychoanalysis, especially how psychoanalysts have used their feelings as informative, by drawing on ideas rooted in positivism. This article will be organised by three interrelated problems in the qualitative research literature: how countertransference tends to be defined, how it is described as manifesting and how it is said to be of use.

Discussed are some ways in which the researcher’s emotional and behavioural responses may be informative of the research dynamic, but only if subjected to reflexive consideration. It is suggested that a shift of emphasis is needed away from a narrow and strictly clinical conception and definition of ‘countertransference’ towards attention to ‘inchoate feeling-state responses’ (Cartwright, 2004: 226) on the part of the researcher, and a consideration of how these might have been intersubjectively created in the research context between participant(s) and researcher(s). Whether this critique can iteratively then be used to reconsider the clinical concept of countertransference provides a further twist to the argument.

Definition

In the psychoanalytic literature, the term ‘countertransference’ has been used in at least three ways: (a) ‘Interfering countertransference’, classically referring to the muddying elements of the analyst’s own neuroses, and as a hindrance to the therapeutic process (e.g. Freud, 1910); (b) ‘useful countertransference’, a post-Freudian concept in which elements of the patient’s neurosis are unconsciously transferred onto the analyst, and therefore are a useful tool for understanding the patient’s inner world (e.g. Heimann, 1950; Pick, 1985); (c) as something intersubjective and co-created containing elements of both a and b (e.g. Ferenczi, 1955 [1928]) but which is also a ‘third’ (Ogden, 1994) that cannot be defined exclusively in terms of either analyst or patient, but only as product of their interaction. Thus, a feeling state or dream that emerges in these conditions ‘belongs’ neither to the patient nor the analyst (Ogden, 1996), and is understood through consideration of the intersubjective dynamic.

The descriptions of countertransference by qualitative researchers generally have focussed on ‘useful’ ‘type b’ countertransference, based on the Kleinian (Klein, 1946) notion of projective identification where feelings may be ‘put into’ the analyst by the patient. Some readings of the contested notion (Spillius and O’Shaughnessy, 2012) of projective identification describe how unwanted, unacceptable thoughts, feelings and emotions can be unconsciously transferred onto and into others, including the research relationship between participant and researcher. When qualitative researchers attempt to justify (e.g. Jervis, 2009; Lorimer, 2010; Strømme et al., 2010) this approach, they often cite classic articles such as that of Heimann (1950), where she states that countertransference is an ‘instrument of research into the patient’s unconscious’ (Heimann, 1950: 81). The metaphor here is that of a resonating tuning fork or telephone receiver (cf. Freud, 1912) in which the analyst’s feeling state ‘picks up’ vibrations from patient’s unconscious and therefore provides knowledge about their inner world. A similar process, it is contended, pertains to researcher and participant, and thus, countertransference can be described as a research tool.

Conceptions of the projection of feelings from participant to researcher

Clarke (2002) describes how a feeling state or role can be induced in the researcher, suggesting that in interviews that he conducted he was subjected to the ‘projective identifications’ (p. 174) of his interviewees. For example,

in the case of Mark’s [a participant] interview, we can see processes of both communication and control which I argue Mark uses to create a ‘concerned object’, to elicit a response in me, in some sense, by controlling my feelings. (Clarke, 2002: 185)

Marks and Monnich-Marks (2003) write that when participants’ feelings are unbearable, they may be unconsciously projected into the researcher:

the interviewer’s counter-transference reactions indicate those emotions and contents that interviewees have not to their conscious avail … those aspects, that interviewees have forgotten, repressed or denied are being re-enacted and projected on the interviewer … who [in] this way is being forced to experience them (counter-transference). (no page number, online article)

In the case of their research, they argue that ‘the interviewer becomes the object of the interviewee’s defence of shame’ (Marks and Monnich-Marks, 2003).

For Strømme et al. (2010) paying attention to ‘… countertransference reactions and detailing incidents of nonverbal communication … make it possible to draw conclusions about the relational attitude of the participants and their defense processes’ (p. 215). Thus, ‘countertransference reactions’ may be used ‘to gain access to more unconscious processes in the participant’ (Strømme et al., 2010: 221, my emphasis).

The participant’s use of projection is forefronted while neglecting that of the researcher. In the extracts from research interviews presented in the article, the interviewer is described as ‘interviewer’, while the participant’s first name is used (Strømme et al., 2010). Mistakes that the interviewer makes are explained in terms of projective identification, that is, the participant induces the researcher to behave in this way. Their message is that ‘countertransference’ is a means for solely deepening understanding of the participant in the study, not the researcher, or of the research dynamic. This issue requires more critical consideration. The researchers themselves acknowledge, but do not discuss, ‘participant bias’: ‘the psychoanalytically informed research interview represents a certain challenge to the idea of “co-participation” often present in qualitative research’ (Strømme et al., 2010: 221).

In addition to studies that have examined useful countertransference, attempts have also been made to describe interfering countertransference, that is, the feelings that arise in the researcher that are connected with his or her own past. Such approaches tend to view these two types of countertransference as independent and in need of disentanglement. Lorimer (2010: 98) describes ‘a case of countertransference that I experienced while doing fieldwork at a Danish psychiatric hospital’ (p. 98). She defines this as a strong sensation in mind or body which ‘might indicate the presence of unconscious tension’ in the participant (p. 100) (i.e. useful, informative, countertransference understood as projective identification). However, later she states, ‘I had to be aware of whether a mood was brought on by the person I was speaking with or was more obviously connected with an aspect of my own life’ (p. 106) (i.e. recognising the potential for interfering countertransference). Similarly, Lucey et al. (2003) state that the researcher’s feelings are ‘useful indicators of what might be going on for the subjects of the research’ (p. 280). They also describe how the interviewer’s adolescent self was unconsciously activated during an interview with parents about their adolescent child. This shaped the way she responded to her interviewees, ‘unconscious to unconscious communication’ (e.g. Altman, 2002: 500). Thus, the ‘mirror’ of countertransference does not always produce a crisp image of the other’s inner world. Instead, it can be opaque and distorting (see Gemignani, 2011: 706). However, later in the article, it will be argued that the distinction between ‘useful’ and ‘interfering’ countertransference is an oversimplification, and an example of how qualitative researchers have drawn on psychoanalytic concepts rooted in positivism, while constructivist readings may be more useful.

There are several problems that arise from current definitions of countertransference in the qualitative research literature.

Problem 1. Approaches that adopt the ‘countertransference as projective identification’ model reinforce unequal power relations, the myth of the infallible therapist.

It has not gone unnoticed (Frosh and Baraitser, 2008; Frosh and Emerson, 2005; Parker, 2010) that the view that feelings can be ‘put into’ the researcher may reinforce an unequal power relationship. Unequal power relations (e.g. Burman, 1992) between the researcher and researched have been described in terms of, for example, paternalism, class and education. Assuming that the feelings of the researcher somehow indicate the state of mind of the participant is

a direct result of the application of a Kleinian style of psychoanalysis in which the truth of the subject can be known through meditation by (or though the unconscious of) an interlocutor who has more knowledge and understanding than does the subject’. (Frosh and Baraitser, 2008: 363)

This certainly looks like an imbalance of power, although it might be argued that researcher and researched are merely adopting differing roles, in which power relations are not relevant. It is an example of what Parker (2010) describes as the use of psychoanalysis in human science in order to confirm ‘the shape of a world it expects to find instead of changing it’ (p. 17), or ‘“top down” assertions of expert knowledge’ (Frosh and Emerson, 2005: 322).

Some researchers (e.g. Lorimer, 2010; Strømme et al., 2010) base their methodologies around their dual roles as researchers and therapists. Lorimer (2010) gets dangerously close to implying that psychoanalysts are master feelers having ‘developed ways of addressing anxiety and in the process reducing its power’ (p. 103). It is also sometimes implied that psychoanalysts are so well trained that they are reliably immune from error: ‘psychoanalysts spend hours evaluating the source of the response so that they do not allow a misinterpretation to skew their capacity for empathy’ (Lorimer, 2010: 100).

Linking to the notion of the inevitability of power differentials (Foucault, 1988), this misses the point that it is through attempting to understand the inevitable misinterpretations that take place during psychoanalysis (Casement, 2002; Winnicott, 1969) that progress can be made. The idea that a course of personal analysis will resolve the therapist’s own neurosis takes us back to the early days of psychoanalysis when Freud aspired to scientific objectivity in the analyst (Freud, 1910). Heimann (1950) states, in relation to the use of countertransference, that ‘when the analyst in his own analysis has worked through his infantile conflicts and anxieties … he will not impute to his patient what belongs to himself’ (p. 83). But even the most well-analysed analysts still make mistakes; it cannot be correct to assume a fully objective, transparent and self-knowledgeable analyst/researcher. More useful for the qualitative researcher may be the intersubjective branches of psychoanalysis that advocate a stance of ‘fallibilism’ (Stolorow, 2003: 223) of the analyst (where the researcher would not assume a feeling state had been projected into them but explore this as one possibility).

Problem 2. Implicit Cartesian certainty in definitions of countertransference.

Residues of the all-knowing analyst in relation to the distorted views of the patient are also reflected in the tendency to write with Cartesian certainty (e.g. Stolorow et al., 2002) about topics such as countertransference where there is potential for an exploration of multiple and contradictory definitions (Parker, 2005b; Stolorow et al., 2002). Gemignani (2011) possibly attempts to make this point in both defining countertransference as ‘the influence of the patient on the therapist’ (i.e. projective identification) and citing Fosshage’s (1995) definition: ‘the analyst’s experience of the analysand’ (p. 375; a more holistic view that could include intersubjective elements). However, as it stands, the certainty of the language employed indicates fixity rooted in Cartesianism. A more tentative and more explicit expression of the possibility of multiply defined truth is called for (e.g. ‘one reading of countertransference is …’).

Problem 3. Not careful enough consideration of the clinical-research comparison.

The increasing prominence of the word countertransference in qualitative research articles is indicative of a not-careful-enough distinction between clinical and research settings (e.g. Branney et al., 2009; Frosh and Emerson, 2005; Georgaca, 2005; Parker, 2005a). As Strømme et al. (2010) point out, ‘since the student therapists [the research participants in their study] had been asked to participate in the study, the interviewer had a responsibility to stimulate the interview process’ (p. 219) – that is, the researcher is the initiator, whereas in therapy, it is the patient who sets the ball rolling with their spontaneous speech and free associations. In one sense, this makes the researcher–participant relationship the antithesis of the therapeutic setting. It is the interviewer’s desire that drives the research process, not the other way around:

The ‘conditions of emergence’ [of the interviewer’s feelings in relation to the research] … are so far removed from the analytic situation as to make their affiliation with psychoanalytic terminology strained and potentially misleading. (Frosh and Baraitser, 2008: 362)

While different settings, clinical psychoanalysis and qualitative research are not antithesis. Undoubtedly, the psychoanalyst is also motivated to take on cases and ‘asks’ the patient for help: for training requirements, to earn money and, most importantly, for the therapist’s own personal and professional growth (Casement, 1985). Similarly, Frosh and Baraitser (2008) in stating that a research participant ‘does not have a sense that the researcher can offer him anything’ (p. 362) are writing in a rather concrete way, which focuses on surface motivations. Of course, there are multiple rationalisations that research participants may give in explaining their participation in a study, seeking ‘a chance to talk’, or a chance to have human contact, particularly when that person is usually an unknown neutral outsider who might offer a fresh perspective on the person’s emotional world, or who is being offered a financial incentive. But it is felt that the decision to take part in research – like the decision to take on a psychoanalytic patient – speaks of the fundamental human wish for deeper self-understanding.

Conclusions

Thinking more carefully about what is meant when the word ‘countertransference’ is used would be part of what Frosh and Baraitser (2008: 346) describe as the need for a more ‘tentative’ contribution of psychoanalysis to social research than has so far been adopted. Parker’s (2010) suggestion that countertransference could be used by psychosocial researchers to describe ‘feelings that cue the researcher into what they think is occurring between them and their objects of study’ (p. 18), would be a welcome step forward. Another possibility has been put forward by Cartwright (2004) who refers to ‘inchoate’ transference–countertransference impressions in the research setting (p. 221). This might include a close observation of changes in the researcher’s feeling state, associations and bodily reactions (e.g. Gemignani, 2011). It could also include the researcher’s observations and fantasies about the participant’s changes in these domains.

Even if it is accepted that researchers are subject to participant projections, these data should always be cross-compared with other data for validation, as Heimann (1960), in a less cited and more cautious article on countertransference in clinical psychoanalysis, recommends. The qualitative researcher is in some ways in an advantageous position compared to the psychoanalyst. There are ways in which research data can be cross-compared, some of which could be unethical in the analytic situation. For example, the qualitative researcher may be more free to make use of a tape recorder for interviews, and provide a more flexible frame of interaction (e.g. not having to keep to the ‘analytic hour’, or having the freedom to ask for a relative’s or teacher’s views).

Manifestations

While ‘countertransference’ in research is a notion that requires greater critical consideration, during researchers’ contacts with participants, as in any human interaction, feelings do arise. Either person may find themselves doing unexpected things or thinking unexpected thoughts. These feelings may be informative of the research relationship, for example, Holmes (under review) describes how, in an interview with a young person about their experience of depression, the participant spontaneously and unexpectedly compared depression to a ‘birthmark’, which seemed to coincide with and influence an image of the participant as a baby that the researcher already had in mind. This section will examine ways in which the manifestation and potential significance of feeling and bodily states have been described in the research context, typically by seeing such feelings as representing elements projected from research participants, and occasionally as containing residues of the researcher’s past.

Feelings in the researcher: inevitable and hard to see

Feelings in the researcher inevitably arise and are sometimes hard to acknowledge: ‘whether I wanted them or not, my emotions were phenomenologically present’ (Gemignani, 2011: 702). Yet, there is resistance within social science to recognise the active role of the researchers themselves (Angorsino, 2005; Lewis, 2008).¹ Jervis (2011) compares the analytic experience of being overwhelmed with a projective identification (Pick, 1985), with similar disturbing experiences for researchers using reflexive research methodologies (Lucey et al., 2003).

It is argued that emotions will be especially strongly activated in researching sensitive topics, such as interviewing Nazi-sympathisers (Marks and Monnich-Marks, 2003) or leaving one’s home country: ‘if embraced and addressed, the researcher’s emotional reactions can be an important source of reflexivity and data’ (Gemignani, 2011: 701), that is, the emotional state of the researcher is tied up with the communication of the participant.

Behavioural manifestations

Researchers have also described how their behaviours in the research process may contain projected elements. Gemignani (2011) speculates that the researcher’s actions can mirror the psychic experience of the participant. In his work, with refugees, he decided to distance himself from painful material, and later thought that through doing so he was ‘contributing to the emotional isolation and incommunicability experienced by many trauma survivors’ (Gemignani, 2011: 701). Gemignani is talking about the manifestation of a behaviour in the researcher as induced by the wish of the participant. This is similar to Sandler’s (1976) notion of ‘role responsiveness’, and what Sandor Ferenczi described in the 1920s:

… ‘antipathy’ was an indication against undertaking an analysis, but … such ‘antipathetic features’ are in most cases only fore-structures, behind which quite different characteristics are concealed; dropping the patient in such cases would be merely leaving him in the lurch, because the unconscious aim of intolerable behaviour is often to be sent away. (Ferenczi, 1955 [1928]: 95) (my italics)

Jervis (2009) highlights this process with an example of her conduct with one participant. Jervis rephrased the participant’s word ‘terrible’ as ‘difficult’. For Jervis, this represented an ‘unconscious collusion in not taking seriously her [the participant’s] distressing experience’ (Jervis, 2009: 152). Thus, rewording of phrases might be one way in which researchers protect themselves and participants from deeper levels of distress, a defensive strategy that Devereux (1967) has mentioned at some length.

Bodily manifestations

The communicative aspects of researcher bodily reactions, both from phenomenological (e.g. Finlay, 2005, 2008) and psychoanalytic (Jervis, 2009; Morgenroth, 2010) perspectives, has been emphasised. Some of the ways in which, according to Jervis (2009), countertransference manifests in the research setting are ‘a fluttery sensation in my chest’; ‘becoming aware of an attempt to make more eye contact with Joanne [participant]’; other people who had entered the room during the interview being ‘largely disregarded by both researcher and participant’ (p. 158). This is potentially valuable information, but probably only if combined with other elements of data from the interaction (see the following).

Manifestations as ‘mistakes’

Participants have been described as inducing mistakes in the researcher, such as slipping out of role. Strømme et al. (2010) describe this process in their interview notes: ‘I feel that she [the participant] is insecure in her relation to me and that I become unduly avoidant as a response to her uneasiness in the situation’ (p. 219). Thus, a movement away from emotionally charged material by the interviewer could be because ‘the interviewer senses that the participant feels vulnerable in front of a critical internalized object projected onto her’ (p. 221). In such cases, the interviewer is ‘seduced’ ‘into prescribed roles by the participant’ (Strømme et al., 2010).

Emotional mismatch

Projection has been described as inducing states of ‘emotional mismatch’ (Lorimer, 2010; Marks and Monnich-Marks, 2003; Robben, 2012). Robben (2012) describes a process of the researcher’s feelings being switched off to strong emotions during interviews with Argentinean war generals who had committed torture. Marks and Monnich-Marks (2003) identified a mismatch between the participants’ often banal dialogues and the turmoil it produced within the researcher. They interviewed 43 people who had ‘agreed to and actively supported Hitler and the Nazi-movement’. Under the sub-heading of ‘counter-transference’ they state,

… we made, over and over again, the following observations: most of the manifest interview-texts appeared to be relatively banal – compared to the powerful latent (unconscious) emotional message between the lines, occurring during the interviews … in the course of the interviews we, the interviewers, often felt overrun, bulldozed, emptied, saddened, confused, sickened, abused or knocked down. During the nights following an interview we were often haunted by nightmares about war or persecution. (Marks and Monnich-Marks, 2003: no page number)

Marks and Monnich-Marks (2003) argue that recognising countertransference in the interview setting is difficult: ‘such contents are hard to discern in the transcript … we need to look at … the message “between the lines”, its atmosphere and scenery…how something is being said’ (emphasis in original). They describe the shame that the interviewers felt when listening to the emotionally disengaged stories of Nazi-sympathisers and describe this as a countertransference reaction.

Conclusions

A review of the literature has shown that feelings, mistakes and bodily reactions are an inevitable part of doing qualitative research, especially in relation to sensitive topics. There are several feeling and behavioural manifestations that might sensibly be considered as including – if supported by further evidence – projective elements from both participant and researcher: strong, unexpected, anomalous or mismatch feelings; elements of behaviour, that is, how the other is treated overall; pauses and confused questions/responses and difficulties that the researcher encounters (e.g. repetition, asking a closed or leading question) or participant (e.g. incomprehensible or incongruous response).

The qualitative researcher only has direct access to her or his own experience of these manifestations. Offering participants’ interpretations in the clinical sense during an interview is ethically a delicate issue (for an example of an attempt see, Strømme et al., 2010). However, hearing participants’ responses to the researcher’s interpretations has the potential to be a valuable tool, giving them a chance to reject, adjust or accept what the researcher says. How this might be accessed is an interesting question. Perhaps a model could be devised for a ‘post-interview interview’ for participants, focussing on the changing feelings states that they experienced in the research process (see Haaken et al., 2012 for an example of such ‘action research’). This brings us to a third aspect of countertransference in the research setting.

Use

So far, the attempt has been to show how strong and changeable feeling states commonly arise in qualitative research interviews, and demonstrate the various ways that these might manifest. It is argued that especially if viewed as interpsychic (rather than intrapsychic) dynamics, they can ‘enrich and deepen’ (Kvale, 1999: 87) research data. Cartwright gives an example of how analysing participants’ words in isolation will often miss important elements of the data. He describes his feeling of intense fear as a man he was interviewing ‘crouched forwards in his chair’ (2004: 227), but the participant was talking about his philanthropic deeds. Feeling and bodily states are sources of information in the research process and can be used to contextualise inferences. The reporting of feelings states could become part of a broader, more open, and more reflexive research strategy.

One of the main problems with the use of countertransference in research has been merely seeing it as a species of projective identification in which feelings are put into the other. One danger of this model is that it can reinforce a ‘“top down” assertion of expert knowledge’ (Frosh and Emerson, 2005: 322). Strømme et al. (2010), despite admitting a failing, fall into this trap in stating, ‘her [the participant’s] emotional uneasiness influenced the interviewer so that she [the interviewer] failed to maintain an analytic attitude’ (p. 223).

If the qualitative researcher researches with an observational, reflective attitude (including in relation to his or her emotional state, which would preclude an assumption that this is stable, and therefore, any changes must have been induced by the participant), then research data can indeed be deepened and extended in interesting ways. One option is to view feelings and behaviours as intersubjectively created in the research relationship, that is, moving to the ‘co-created’ type c model outlined earlier in the article (see Levine, 1981 for a discussion of how participant dreams may be informative not only of the participant’s psychic world but also of the research relationship). To date, the use of countertransference in qualitative research has tended to have been split in as much as researchers have attempted to engage in a constructivist way with the research – a position that emphasises reflexivity, and the recognition that the researcher is fallible and is not neutral. However, these same researchers have tended to draw on the positivist elements of the concept of countertransference, which are rooted in ideas of analytic, and therefore researcher, neutrality.

Can only analytically trained researchers employ these methods?

Some researchers (e.g. Jervis, 2009; Strømme et al., 2010) suggest that the researcher’s ability to access and think about projected material rests on them having completed a psychoanalytic training, or at least having had a personal psychoanalysis. Jervis (2009) suggests that a course of personal analysis provides a deeper understanding of one’s own defences and thus facilitates a better understanding of what material might be being projected by the patient, and reduces the chances that the therapist’s own defences are ascribed to the patient. According to Strømme et al. (2010), ‘the psychoanalytically informed research interview requires a researcher with psychoanalytic clinical competence to maximise the potential of this method’ (p. 219).

This idea warrants more discussion than it is given. Hollway and Jefferson’s (2000) developed their ‘free association narrative interview’ based on an interest in psychoanalysis, but they were not analytically or therapeutically trained. If a researcher interested in employing psychoanalytic ideas needs to be a psychoanalyst, we also begin to question the value of this method to qualitative researchers when the majority will not have such experience. Would an unanalysed researcher’s data amount to ‘wild countertransference analysis’ (Sandler, 1993: 1103)?

With or without personal analytic training, using countertransference in research requires the researcher to think and feel reflexively, that is, (a) to be able to observe behavioural and emotional changes in themselves and the participants; (b) not necessarily to accept their own or the participants’ words or feelings at face value, but being able to ‘feel around’ responses and (c) an ability to examine potential links between observed changes in feeling states and other aspects of the research situation, such as changes in participant dialogue. Psychoanalytic treatment is one potential means of fostering reflexivity, but it is not the only way (Fromm, 1994).

Towards an intersubjective understanding of projective processes in research

The approaches discussed above have tended to see countertransference either in terms of projective identification, or as useful and interfering countertransference as separate entities in need of disentanglement. This distinction is rather crude and outdated and is another example of the influence of the Cartesian isolated mind (Stolorow et al., 2002). It opposes more intersubjective readings (e.g. Ogden’s conception of the mutually created and inseparable ‘transference–countertransference’, Ogden, 1997: 729). Using the second formulation, no feeling is ever entirely put into another. It will always be filtered through the projectee’s distinct psychic apparatus. What results is a situation where ‘no thought, feeling or sensation can be considered to be the same as it was or will be outside of the context of the specific (and continually shifting) intersubjectivity created by analyst and analysand’ (Ogden, 1994: 8). In the research setting, then, the feelings of the researcher and participant may be understood as being both irrevocably and uniquely linked, while entirely distinct as they are filtered through each individual’s subjective experience. Such an approach brings the researcher’s subjectivity more clearly into the picture. It is questionable that the research relationship evokes ‘transference and countertransference’ in the clinical sense. However, when two people come together, the behaviours, words, and actions of one of them will have an effect on the other (see, for example, the work of infant observation researchers who have emphasised the interpersonal elements of the development of infant personality, where infant personality influences style of maternal provision, Beebe et al., 2005; Trevarthen and Aitken, 2001).

Cartwright (2004) suggests that because of the limited time frame of most research interviews compared to the analytic setting ‘inchoate feeling-state responses should not be used as independent evidence, but rather as a corroborative source of information that confirms or disconfirms analytic impressions’ (pp. 226–227).

The assumption that the participant is seducing the researcher into behaving in a certain way seems to be the antithesis of a reflective stance. Instead, reflexivity would involve awareness of behaviours and feeling states, observation of them and reflection on what interpsychic dynamic may have influenced their emergence. Thus, Holmes (forthcoming), interviewing migrants in Bogotá, Colombia, examines the moments when the interviewer found himself or herself responding in ‘unexpected’ ways. After a participant describes many stories of her philanthropy, the interviewer says ‘that’s really lovely’. Data such as these are then cross-compared with other data that have emerged in the interview. The participant’s described philanthropy to poor Columbians, extended to her interaction with the researcher, in offering to recruit other participants for the researchers study, and offering her apartment as a space where they could take place. The overall effect was to suggest that there was a defensive aspect to the participant’s philanthropy and that this might have contained elements that had been projected into the researcher.

How to access this data in the research setting

Jervis (2009) writes about the researcher accessing feelings as follows:

For researchers to really understand respondents’ experiences, they must first feel them. This inevitably involves transiently losing themselves in their countertransference. What is important is that researchers should then recover their objectivity and try to make sense of the feelings evoked in them, which might require them to seek the help of others. (pp. 157–158, emphasis in original)

Again revealing the traces of positivism (‘researchers should … recover their objectivity’) rooted in visions of psychoanalysis that has infiltrated qualitative research, the above quotation also brings to the fore the debate about accessing feeling states in relation to research data. Morgenroth (2010) distinguishes between countertransference-type reactions that occur in the primary research relationships (e.g. during a research interview) and those that occur in response to text and data interpretation (p. 277). The latter is presented as an easier means of accessing this kind of data, as the researcher is too involved in the interview to think reflexively at the time. As Devereux (1967) puts it: ‘the passive spectator role [i.e. someone listening to a recording of a research interview as opposed to someone actually doing one] does not afford … an opportunity for abreacting anxiety through activity’ (p. 85). Morgenroth (2010) argues that the interview data will house unconscious data, which can then be examined in the phase of analysis: ‘as the data are read and discussed by an interpretation panel, so the scene will re-emerge in the feelings of and relations among panel members’ (p. 277).

Marks and Monnich-Marks (2003) also used a panel to investigate their data, in a process they called ‘intervision’.This consisted of group meetings that evaluated interviews. During the meetings, the members listened to the interview tape and expressed any emotional or physical reactions, fantasies and images about the interview that they experienced: ‘misinterpretations are possible … therefore, reactions and observations need to be shared and discussed in group discourses … in order to find intersubjective consensus’. This is a valiant attempt, but it is important to exercise caution in aiming to reach a ‘consensus’ in such a process. It is possible that the essence of the psychic material in question could be to produce the effect of disagreement (see Morgenroth, 2010).

Considering countertransference in isolation is not sufficient

In the clinical psychoanalytic setting, in order to be of use, countertransference must be considered in relation to other data and not in isolation. For example, Heimann (1950) referred to countertransference as an ‘instrument of research’ (p. 51) but a later article (Heimann, 1960), questioning the ‘un-critical use of countertransference’ as a shorthand for feelings in the analyst, without relating them to the ‘actual data in the analytic situation’ (p. 153). She cautioned that the term ‘countertransference’ can become an ‘excuse’ for any emergent feeling in the analyst. A similar trend can be seen in the use of countertransference in the social sciences. For example, Strømme et al. (2010: 219) explain a mistake by the interviewer as a ‘countertransference reaction’, where ‘the interviewer senses that the participant feels vulnerable in front of a critical internalized object projected onto her’ (p. 221). As Sandler (1993) emphasised, not all countertransference comes from the patient. It follows that not all feelings generated in the researcher in the research setting emanate from the participant.

Conclusions

It has been argued that the researcher’s analysis of feeling and behavioural responses in the research setting, commonly dubbed ‘countertransference analysis’, can yield valuable data. However, these reactions should not be considered in isolation but rather used as corroborative evidence cross-compared with other data from the research setting. Also, in order to avoid research becoming a ‘top down assertion of knowledge’, it is important to consider unexpected feelings with an open mind and not assume that they have been projected from the participant. Strømme et al.’s (2010) descriptions of reflexivity in the research setting are important, highlighting the need for ‘extensive … reflections in the research interview in order to be able to understand more of the quality of the interaction’ (p. 221). It was suggested that an understanding of countertransference in qualitative research as something closer to Ogden’s (1994) notion of an intersubjectively created element in the research dyad, which is neither wholly made up of nor wholly devoid of projected elements from both researcher and participant, could be usefully employed.

Overall conclusion

Although countertransference is a concept, which has transcended its roots in psychoanalysis, this article has argued that those contemporary approaches to qualitative research that emphasise reflexivity and are rooted in constructivism are sometimes impeded by the adoption of a concept from a body of theory (‘psychoanalysis’) from an era when that field was guided by (unrealistic) positivism (represented, for example, by the idea of analytic neutrality). The article has also argued that some applications of psychoanalysis, such as those guided by infant research (e.g. Beebe et al., 2005; Trevarthen and Aitken, 2001) and intersubjectivity (Ogden, 1994; Stolorow et al., 2002) provide an alluring field from which the qualitative researcher can draw ideas. Like much of psychoanalytic theory, they prioritise unconscious, irrational and emotional factors, which are often neglected by more traditional methodologies. They also offer interpretations of analytic fallibilism that can aid the reflexive process in research. However, the clinical and research settings are distinct and a simple mapping of concepts can cause confusion. This article has offered suggestions as to how qualitative researchers might make use of their own feeling and behavioural states. These states have the potential to become research data and may be used to tap an important aspect of communication in the research relationship. Furthermore, considering these factors as potentially intersubjectively created may enhance reflexive involvement in the research process.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Professor Bob Hinshelwood and Dr Nick Midgley for comments on an earlier draft of this article.

Funding

This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (grant number ES/J500045/1).

Notes

Author biography

Joshua Holmes is a PhD student at the Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies, Essex. His PhD examines the use of the psychoanalytic concept of reverie in research and other settings. He is a research psychologist interviewing young people and their parents about their experience of depression and therapy for the IMPACT-ME (Improving Mental Health with Psychoanalytic and Cognitive Therapies – My Experience) study.

References

Altman

(2002) Where is the action in the ‘talking cure’? Contemporary Psychoanalysis 38: 499–513.

Angorsino

(2005) Recontextualizing observation. In: Denzin

Lincoln

(eds) Handbook of Qualitative Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 161–183.

Beebe

Knoblauch

Rustin

. (2005) Forms of Intersubjectivity in Infant Research and Adult Treatment. New York: Other press.

Bourdeau

(2000) Dual relationships in qualitative research. Qualitative Report 4(3/4). Available at: http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/QR4-3/bourdeau.html

Branney

Gough

Mandill

(2009) The other side of social psychology? A review of the utility of Lacanian psychoanalysis with a focus on the theory of the four discourse. Annual Review of Critical Psychology 7: 187–204.

Burman

(1992) Identification and power in feminist therapy: a reflexive history of a discourse analysis. Womens Studies International Forum 15(4): 487–498.

Cartwright

(2004) The psychoanalytic research interview: preliminary suggestions. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 52: 209–242.

Casement

(1985) On Learning from the Patient. London: Routledge.

Casement

(2002) Learning from Our Mistakes: Beyond Dogma in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. London: The Guilford Press.

10.

Clarke

(2002) Learning from experience, psycho-social research methods in the social sciences. Qualitative Research 2: 173–195.

11.

Clarke

Hoggett

(2009) Researching Beneath the Surface. London: Karnac.

12.

Devereux

(1967) From Anxiety to Method in the Behavioural Sciences. The Hague, Paris: Mouton.

13.

Elliot

Ryan

Hollway

(2012) Research encounters, reflexivity and supervision. International Journal of Social Research Methodology 15(5): 433–444.

14.

Ellis

(2009) Revision: Autoethnographic Reflections on Life and Work. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.

15.

Ferenczi

(1955 [1928]) Final Contributions to the Theory and Technique of Psycho-Analysis. London: The Hogarth Press.

16.

Finlay

(2005) ‘Reflexive embodied empathy’: a phenomenology of participant-researcher intersubjectivity. The Humanistic Psychologist 33(4): 271–292.

17.

Finlay

(2008) A dance between the reduction and reflexivity: explicating the ‘phenomenological psychological attitude’. Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 39: 1–32.

18.

Fosshage

(1995) Countertransference as the analyst’s experience of the analysand: influence of listening perspectives. Psychoanalytic Psychology 12: 375–391.

19.

Foucault

(1988) Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. New York: Vintage.

20.

Freud

(1905) Three essays on the theory of sexuality. In: The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (S.E.), vol. VII, PEP-Web, 123–246.

21.

Freud

(1910) The future and prospects of psycho-analytic therapy. In: The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (S.E.), vol. XI, PEP-Web, 139–152.

22.

Freud

(1911) Letters from Sigmund Freud to C.G. Jung, December 31, 1911. In: The Freud/Jung Letters: The Correspondence Between Sigmund Freud and C.G. Jung. PEP-Web, 475–476.

23.

Freud

(1912) Recommendations to physicians practising psycho-analysis. In: The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (S.E.), vol. XII, PEP-Web, 109–120.

24.

Froggett

Wengraf

(2004) Interpreting interviews in the light of research team dynamics: a study of Nila’s biographic narrative. International Journal of Critical Psychology 10: 94–122.

25.

Fromm

(1994) The Art of Being. London: Continuum.

26.

Frosh

Baraitser

(2008) Psychoanalysis and psychosocial studies. Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society 13: 346–365.

27.

Frosh

Emerson

(2005) Interpretation and over-interpretation: disputing the meaning of texts. Qualitative Research 5: 307–324.

28.

Gemignani

(2011) Between researcher and researched: an introduction to countertransference in qualitative inquiry. Qualitative Inquiry 17(8): 701–708.

29.

Georgaca

(2005) Lacanian psychoanalysis and the subject of social constructionist psychology: analysing subjectivity in talk. International Journal of Critical Psychology 14: 74–94.

30.

Haaken

Wallin-Ruschman

Patange

(2012) Global Hip-Hop identities: black youth, psychoanalytic action research, and the moving to the beat project. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology 22: 63–74.

31.

Heimann

(1950) On counter-transference. The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 31: 81–84.

32.

Heimann

(1960) Counter-transference. In: Tonnesmann

(ed.) About Children and Children-No-Longer, Paula Heimann, Collected Papers 1942-80. London and New York: Tavistock and Routledge, 73–79.

33.

Hollway

Jefferson

(2000) Doing Qualitative Research Differently: Free Association, Narrative and the Interview Method. London: Sage.

34.

Holmes

(under review) Reverie in research interviewing.

35.

Holmes

(forthcoming) Using psychoanalysis in qualitative research: countertransference-informed research reflexivity and defence mechanisms in two interviews about migration’, Qualitative Research in Psychology.

36.

Hunt

(1989) Psychoanalytic Aspects of Fieldwork. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

37.

Jervis

(2009) The use of self as a research tool. In: Clarke

Hoggett

(eds) Researching Beneath the Surface. London: Karnac, 145–166.

38.

Jervis

(2011) Relocation, Gender and Emotion: A Psycho-Social Perspective on the Experiences of Military Wives. London: Karnac.

39.

Klein

(1946) Notes on some schizoid mechanisms. The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 26: 99–110.

40.

Kvale

(1999) The psychoanalytic interview as qualitative research. Qualitative Inquiry 5(1): 87–113.

41.

Levine

(1981) Dreams of the informant about the researcher: some difficulties inherent in the research relationship. Ethos 9(4): 276–293.

42.

Lewis

(2008) With feeling: writing emotion into counselling and psychotherapy research. Counselling and Psychotherapy Research 8(1): 63–70.

43.

Lorimer

(2010) Using emotion as a form of knowledge in a psychiatric fieldwork setting. In: Davies

Spencer

(eds) Emotions in the Field: The Psychology and Anthropology of Fieldwork Experience. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 98–127.

44.

Lucey

Melody

Walkerdine

(2003) Project 4:21 transitions to womanhood: developing a psychosocial perspective in one longitudinal study. International Journal of Social Research Methodology 6(3): 279–284.

45.

Marks

Monnich-Marks

(2003) The analysis of counter-transference reactions is a means to discern latent interview-contents. Forum: Qualitative Social Research 4(2).

46.

Melles

(2005) Beyond the romantic impulse for authentic data to coconstruction of meaning in interview-based educational research. Qualitative Research Journal 5: 21–30. Available at: http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/709/1536

47.

Midgley

(2006) Psychoanalysis and qualitative psychology: complementary or contradictory paradigms? Qualitative Research in Psychology 3(3): 213–232.

48.

Morgenroth

(2010) The research relationship, enactments and ‘counter-transference’ analysis: on the significance of scenic understanding. Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society 15(3): 267–280.

49.

Ogden

(1994) The analytic third: working with intersubjective clinical facts. The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 75: 3–19.

50.

Ogden

(1996) Reconsidering three aspects of psychoanalytic technique. The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 77: 883–899.

51.

Ogden

(1997) Reverie and metaphor. The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 78: 719–732.

52.

Osofsky

(2009) Like father, like son: a psychoanalytical approach to interviewing in extreme circumstance. Psychoanalytic Inquiry 29(6): 529–541.

53.

Parker

(2005a) Lacanian discourse analysis in psychology: elements of theory and practice. Theory & Psychology 15: 163–182.

54.

Parker

(2005b) Qualitative Psychology: Introducing Radical Research. Buckingham: Open University Press.

55.

Parker

(2010) The place of transference in psychosocial research. Journal of Theoretical & Philosophical Psychology 30(1): 17–31.

56.

Parker

(1995) Torn in Two: Experience of Maternal Deprivation. London: Virago.

57.

Pick

(1985) Working through in the countertransference. The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 66: 157–166.

58.

Robben

(2012) The politics of truth and emotion among victims and perpetrators of violence. In: Robben

Sluka

(eds) Ethnographic Fieldwork: An Anthropological Reader (2nd Edition). West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons, 175–189.

59.

Roper

(2003) Analysing the analysed: transference and counter-transference in the oral history encounter. Oral History 31(2): 20–33.

60.

Sandler

(1976) Countertransference and role-responsiveness. International Review of Psycho-Analysis 3: 43–47.

61.

Sandler

(1993) On communication from patient to analyst: not everything is projective identification. The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 74: 1097–1107.

62.

Spillius

O’Shaughnessy

(2012) Projective Identification: The Fate of a Concept. London: Routledge.

63.

Stolorow

(2003) On the impossibility of immaculate perception – there is no relationship without interpretation, and there is no interpretation without relationship. Progress in Self Psychology 19: 217–223.

64.

Stolorow

Atwood

Orange

(2002) Worlds of Experience. Interweaving Philosophical and Clinical Dimensions in Psychoanalysis. New York: Basic Books.

65.

Strømme

Gullestad

Stanicke

. (2010) A widening scope on therapist development: designing a research interview informed by psychoanalysis. Qualitative Research in Psychology 7(3): 214–232.

66.

Thompson

Russo

(2012) Ethical dilemmas for clinical psychologists in conducting qualitative research. Qualitative Research in Psychology 9: 32–46.

67.

Trevarthen

Aitken

(2001) Infant intersubjectivity: research, theory, and clinical applications. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 42(1): 3–48.

68.

Winnicott

(1969) The use of an object. The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 50: 711–716.

69.

Zepf

(2009) Psychoanalysis and qualitative psychotherapy research – some epistemological remarks. The Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry 37(4): 645–664.