Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

CHAPTER NINETEEN. RESEARCH INTERVIEW PROCESSES
Each analyst was contacted in advance with an introduction to my research, a list of possible
interview questions and an ethical consent form. 350 My first PhD supervisor suggested that
the initial questions were too general and could take up much valuable interview time before
getting into the key focus of the research. At one level this was an accurate perception but I
retained these questions for two reasons. Firstly, I realized contemporary psychoanalysis
was a variegated term with limited agreement (Cooper 2006) therefore it was essential to
find what each analyst meant without imposing my assumptions. It gave the time for the
interviewee to find their voice, talking about their work in familiar terms before moving
onto the more personal and complex issues of religion and spirituality. Secondly, it allowed
opportunity for the interviewee to decide whether they trusted me, as some had not met me
before. In part this reflected my experience of being interviewed for others’ research and
noting of my internal processes. It also reflected my decision as an act of transparency to
reveal I was a minister of religion. 351 In my initial interview with DB the questions
generated a great deal of valuable information and allowed a person-to-person meeting:
therefore I retained these for the remaining interviews to offer consistency, while
responding with other questions as they emerged stimulated by the intersubjective processes
of that particular interview. This is the subject of later analysis and discussion.
350 Examples are contained in appendix one.
351 This has potential consequences for unconscious processes, especially transference and projection that
ministers of religion can elicit in others (Field 1996).
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