Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

I found AP to be a warm, responsive, curious, questioning man, who clearly had things to
say and thought that he had a right to say them, unafraid of voicing his opinion and willing
to reveal aspects of self. In some sense I felt a bond of trust was created in part because I
don’t know what he has experienced at the hands of other interviewers. At least one of the
published interviews had a heading that seemed more sensational than the content implied,
so I felt it important to clarify how this interview material would be used.
Unconscious encounter
This interview featured three significant unconscious events. The first was my typing ‘fear’
when AP said ‘feelings’ - ‘Anything that stirs your strongest feeling makes your life more
interesting (AP 598-599). So my unconscious fears revolving around this research are:
completing the work on time; something happening so I could not complete the work at all;
and that I will not have something interesting, valuable, readable, enjoyable or illuminating
to say, the way I perceive AP’s work to be. Yet more than this there is for me an
unconscious fear in any encounter where I do not know the other person, a fear of exposure,
failure, rejection, of being over whelmed, as well as of being liked and loved. However it is
such encounters that enrich life, but each new relationship is always a risk.
Secondly, while talking about my background including being cut out of my parent’s will –
a bell began to toll in the background, followed by the sounding of a horn of a passing train.
My father worked for British Rail his entire life and trains were a central part of childhood,
as if to say that his presence is still alive and well in my unconscious despite any attempts to
kill him or me off. I was left feeling very surprised that I was talking so much about my
personal autobiography – serving as a powerful reminder that qualitative interviewing is a
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