View/Open - Scholarly Commons Home

Chapter Two Part Two – Methodology - Page 51
Early on in the life of the study, I planned to make use of grounded theory (Glaser &
Strauss, 1965; Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Strauss & Corbin, 1994, 1998). A major reason
for my initial choice of grounded theory was that I thought I needed a philosophical
base relatively ‘outside’ of psychoanalytic practice. I thought this to be true given the
extent to which, participating as I was in the work under study as both a tutor and course
director, I was very much ‘inside’ the work, and in positions of power. However, the
analytic methods of grounded theory, which deal with text and involve fragmenting that
text in analysis, proved in my experience to be unsuitable for the exploration of
intersubjective and unconsciously associative processes. Practically, this was evidenced
for me by my difficulty in engaging in ‘associative play’ (the activity that my colleague
and I try to develop in our students), when discussing my work in a grounded theory
research working group. Also, although there are some studies combining grounded
theory with psychoanalysis (Tuckett, 1994), in general, grounded theory methodology
does not seem able to accommodate some phenomena of crucial interest in the area of
psychoanalysis that informs this study.
A particular challenge comes from Hollway and Jefferson’s (2000) notion of “the
defended subject”, that is, a subject theorised to have an unconscious mind and to be
inevitably unable or unwilling to be fully open with an investigator. Related concerns
are echoed by Ewing (2006) in her appraisal of ethnographic interviews as a research
method. I therefore returned to psychoanalysis as an epistemological basis for the study,
but decided to supplement this with the added lenses of group analysis and of
anthropology, or more particularly, group-analytic ethnography.
This framework involves a synthesis of a range of theoretical and disciplinary
contributions. The methodology is formed from a particular interweaving of