Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

epistemological assumptions of narrative-as-being, and narrative-as-knowing. ‘The telling
of stories and the accurate recording, transcription and analysis … forms the heart of the
qualitative research enterprise ... stories are not simply meaningless personal anecdotes;
they are important sources of knowledge’ (Swinton and Mowat 2006: 68). Further
underpinning assumptions expressed through the terms of ‘narrative’ and ‘story’ are:
1. The human race has always told stories, traditionally shaped into religious and spiritual
narratives, which are held as vital for our understanding and functioning. Such stories shape
the way we construct meaning, 339 and how we engage with these stories, publicly and
privately, has been researched through autoethnographic approaches focused on groups,
societies and cultures (Etherington 2000); and case study approaches in counselling and
psychotherapy, a widely adopted pattern initiated by Freud (Magid 1993). This research
locates the researcher as one party in a conversation, in the same way that a patient enters
into psychoanalytic treatment to engage in conversation leading to interpretations and
knowledge about themselves, through the agency of another.
2. We are all influenced by and draw on existing stories set within their specific time and
culture (Atkinson and Delamont 2005). Reflexivity is therefore required to both participate
in and stand apart from the story/stories we encounter (Etherington 2004). However these
narratives are in a continual process of replacement and renewal. New narratives are
created, building on previous narratives that are not totally discarded leading to a
multiplicity of narratives offering fragments of insight and truth (Midgley 1992; Miller
2008).
339 As seen in the title of Soldz’s paper ‘Research as the telling of empirically justified stories’ (Soldz 2006).
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