Emotional experience plus reflection: countertransference and reflexivity in research

Psychoanalysis is informed by a radically alternative theorisation of knowing from the cognitive one that underpins dominant research methodology. Here, I show how psychoanalytic approaches to knowing, captured in the idea of transference-countertransference dynamics, can inform qualitative research methods and expand the practice of research reflexivity. The approach is summed up as emotional experience plus reflection, based on Wilfred Bion’s theory of thinking. I trace parallels in the history of the concepts of reflexivity and countertransference and then provide brief examples taken from recent research using psychoanalytically informed interviewing and observation.