Full Description
This book offers an overview of the rapidly expanding field of Psycho-Social research. Drawing on aspects of discourse psychology, continental philosophy and anthropological and neuro-scientific understandings of the emotions, psycho-social studies has emerged as an embryonic new paradigm in the human sciences. Psycho-social studies uses psychoanalytic concepts and principles to illuminate core issues within the social sciences. The present volume contributes to the development of the new research methodologies in a number of ways. It is written largely from the point of view of practitioners who are also researchers. Although contributors draw largely upon object-relations traditions in psychoanalysis, other influences are also present, particularly from continental philosophy and the sociology of the emotions. It develops an approach to epistemology - how we know what we know, which is strongly informed by a living approach to psychoanalysis, not just as a theory but as a way of being in the world - that is as a stance. It examines, in great depth and from a number of perspectives, the complex psycho-social dynamics that characterise the research encounter. And finally, it demonstrates a number of specific methodologies at work and the authors learning from this experience.
Contents
Researching beneath the surface: a psycho-social approach to research practice and method -- Ways of Knowing -- Experiencing knowledge: the vicissitudes of a research journey -- How to live and learn: learning, duration, and the virtual -- When words are not enough -- The Dynamics of the Research Encounter -- Charting the clear waters and the murky depths -- Fear—and psycho-social interviewing -- The use of self as a research tool -- Methods of Inquiry and Analysis -- Seeing ↔ believing, dreaming ↔ thinking: some methodological mapping of view points -- Autobiography as a psycho-social research method -- Managing self in role: using multiple methodologies to explore self construction and self governance -- Analysing discourse psycho-socially
