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Introduction to Chapters Five to Nine – Page 142
transcriptions from which the data for analysis has been extracted, which are included in
Chapters Five and Eight respectively.
I use a particular range of methods as part of my analytic and interpretive strategies. The
methods include: the extraction from the data of patterns of content and of themes;
psychoanalytic free association to elements of the session, whether images and
metaphors, or the product of the first method, content and themes; at all times, the
noting of my own countertransference, or responses (of thought, feeling and imagery)
evoked in me by aspects of the material that I am studying, which may have come from
the experience of the original event (in the session) or reflection on it at various times
since; the noting of transference from the students onto the programme, the group, other
students, and the staff including myself; the induction of figurations (Elias, 1994) to the
data, derived from theory or grounded in the data; and the articulation of sequential
chains of interaction together with their possible meaning (These items are tabulated in
Table 3.2 on Page 101).
My practice has been to study all of my records of the semester, including notes and
copies of clinical transcripts, as well as tape recordings of sessions and a range of
transcriptions of those. As I have carried out this study, I have made further notes of
various kinds in my project logbook, particularly observations and analytic and
methodological notes. I have used the NVivo qualitative data analysis software (Bazeley
and Richards, 2000) to manage this logbook, as well as other notes and documents that I
have accumulated. Although some of my notes remain hand-written, I have a store of
data that I can rapidly access and utilise. This procedure has yielded the material for the
analysis and interpretation described above.