Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
My exploration of appropriate research methodologies was aided by my attendance at two
research training modules run by the School of Education at the University of Birmingham,
with a particular focus on identity and epistemology. I subsequently adopted semi-
structured interviews as the most relevant and flexible research methodology that matched
the personal dyadic nature of the subject under investigation. Meeting people face-to-face is
a form of communication I am very comfortable with drawing on 30 years experience
offering pastoral care – helping make sense of complicated and often painful life events
within a faith context; and 25 years as a psychodynamic therapist utilizing psychoanalytic
principles. Face-to-face encounter, analytic and spiritual is part of the fabric of my being
therefore there was correspondence between my methodology – how I do research, and my
being – who I am in my research.
The research interview offers potential for new forms of discovery, conscious and
unconscious, and locates this within a qualitative research paradigm developed in a unique
bricolage by each researcher (McLeod 2001; Kincheloe 2005). The constructs forming my
approach include the following.
1. Examination of the lived experience of the research subjects and researcher understood
through how they encounter the world and make meaning within it – ontologically,
biographically, professionally and spiritually.
2. Multiple interpretations of this lived experience found through rigorous inquiry into
narratives – observed, recorded, textualized – generating forms of knowledge,
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