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London School of Economics and Political science
Methodology Institute
Papers in Social Research Methods
Qualitative Series no 7
COUNTER-TRANSFERENCE IN SOCIAL RESEARCH: GEORGES DEVEREUX
AND BEYOND
Alain Giami
June 2001
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Counter-Transference in Social Research : Georges Devereux and beyond
Alain Giami
(INSERM, Paris)
List of contents
1. Transference and Counter-transference
2. Counter-transference in social research
3. Methods: defense or sublimation?
4. The analysis of counter-transference
4.1 The components of counter-transference
5. Two examples of counter-transfer analysis in social research
5.1 Representations of the sexuality of the mentally retarded by parents and special
educators (Giami, Humbert, Laval, 2001)
5.2 Interviewing on sexual behaviour and AIDS (Giami, Olomucki, de Poplavsky,
1997, 1998)
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Counter-Transference in Social Research: George Devereux and Beyond
Alain Giami
Counter-transference is a controversial notion that requires careful discussion1. It originated
in the field of psychoanalysis and describes the analyst’s unconscious reactions to the patient.
It was exported from the field of therapy to that of social research by Georges Devereux. He
appropriated the term counter-transference to describe a researcher’s unconscious attitudes
and, more specifically, his/her subjectivity in relation to the research object and the field of
research. The latter includes the researcher’s personal involvement with the research object,
which Devereux proposed to analyse along with the researcher’s attitudes in research as
significant aspects in the construction of knowledge. In this paper, counter-transference will
be discussed as a theoretical concept, as a reflexive attitude of the researcher, and as a field of
research. Some examples of research that draw upon these various uses of the concept will be
presented.
Biographical Note
Georges Devereux was born in 1908 in Lugos in the Hungarian Transylvania 2. At the age of
18 he immigrated to Paris to study physics with Marie Curie and Jean Perrin and to learn the
Malesian language. His studies led him to the works of Marcel Mauss and Lucien LévyBruhl. He was awarded a Rockfeller grant in 1932 to carry out fieldwork among the Hopi in
California and the Sedang Moi in Vietnam. He obtained his PhD in anthropology at the
University of California (Berkeley) in 1935 and went on to train as a psychoanalyst. He
worked at the Meninger Clinic in Topeka (Kansas) and in 1959 he established himself in New
York as a psychoanalyst. In 1962 he was invited by Roger Bastide and Claude Lévi-Strauss to
teach ethno-psychiatry at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. His work
is still influential in France mostly in clinical psychology and in the treatment of mental
disorders among people from non-western cultures. More recently, Devereux’s work has
received renewed attention in the US through Gilbert Herdt, an anthropologist, and Robert
Stoller, a psychoanalyst, who worked together on the subjective dimensions of erotic culture
in New Guinea, Sambia.
1. Transference and counter-transference
Counter-transference cannot be understood without reference to the notion of transference.
Transference is one of Freud’s most important contributions and describes a process that
takes place in therapeutic interaction and, more generally, in all interpersonal interactions. In
psychoanalytic theory "transference" refers to the process by which the unconscious desires
of the analysand become actual and are projected ("transferred") onto the person of the
analyst. The process involves "a repetition of infantile prototypes that are lived out with a
deep feeling of reality" (Laplanche & Pontalis, 1967). Joan Schimek summarised the criteria
used by Freud to identify transference as "inappropriateness, resistance and repetition of the
past" (Schimek, 1983, p. 436). “Inappropriateness” relates to the analytic "here and now" of
therapeutic social interaction. The "inappropriateness" of the patient’s reactions and
behaviour, from the analyst’s point of view, becomes the source of interpretative work. It is
precisely this "inappropriateness" as a resurgence of the past projected onto the analyst that
1
I wish to thank Gabrielle Ivinson (Cardiff University) for her help in editing the text in English.
I wish to thank Professor Tobie Nathan (Director of the Centre George Devereux at the University of Paris 8 –
Saint – Denis for having directed me towards biographical data about Devereux. (cf. "Sarava " pp. 229-237 in
T. Nathan : Psychanalyse païenne. Essais ethnopsychanalytiques. Editions Odile Jacob, Paris, 1988.
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provides the material to be interpreted. This approach stands in direct opposition to those that
have a more positivist framing within the social sciences which works with a subject’s
"appropriate" reactions, i.e. their compliance when answering questions posed in
questionnaires or interview schedules. Within a positivist framing, non-responses and "don't
know” response in questionnaires are rarely considered worthy of substantive interpretation
beyond issues of sampling or cognitive deficiency. However, as Giami (1996) has pointed
out, “don’t know” and non-responses are relevant research material since they may represent
a statement of the subject in response to the approach and the questions of the researcher and
have the potential to provide crucial insights.
Transference affects both participants in the therapeutic setting. This means that the analyst is
not free from the unconscious and inappropriate reactions that he/she observes in the patient.
The concept of counter-transference refers to the unconscious processes specifically affecting
the analyst. It is defined as "the overall reactions of the analyst to the patient as a person and
towards his/her transference" (Laplanche & Pontalis, 1967). According to this definition
transference and counter-transference refer to the reactions of the two people in the "here and
now" of the therapeutic setting as well as to the repetition of the past of both participants
actualised in the setting. Strictly speaking, counter-transference refers specifically to the
analyst’s reactions to the patient’s transference. In the analytic setting, counter-transference is
thus considered a secondary process that derives both from the analyst’s own neurotic
conflicts and his/her reactions to the analysand. The analyst’s counter-transference is
normally viewed as "inappropriate" because it may provoke negative reactions and
resistances in his/her emotional reactions to the patient. According to Freud, the analyst
should try to overcome his/her counter-transference. However, since the patient’s and the
analyst’s reactions are of the same nature, there is a question about whether or not we need to
specific concepts to describe the analyst’s reactions.
Some writers, such as Otto Kernberg, find it difficult to distinguish the patient’s and the
analyst’s unconscious reactions and suggest therefore that the notion of transference should
include the reactions of both. "A totalistic concept of transference does justice to the
conception of the analytic situation as an interaction process in which past and present of both
participants, as well as their mutual reactions to past and present, fuse into a unique emotional
position involving both of them." (Kernberg, 1965, p. 41).
This conception implies that transference also occurs in the analyst towards his/her patient.
However, if we follow this formulation, it becomes difficult to distinguish reactions that arise
from the analyst’s biography from those that arise in reaction to the patient and therefore to
assess how each might be affecting the analyst's work.
Counter-transference can be differentiated from transference in so far as it appears as a
perturbation of the normal work of the analyst involving his/her own neurotic dimensions.
According to this definition counter-transference is something "negative" that needs be
eliminated. But this raises the issue of the definition of the "normal" work of the analyst
excluding the neurotic reactions of the analyst himself.
In a more positive vein, counter-transference can be seen to represent the major source of
information for the analyst. That is, the way he/she reacts to the patient’s reactions is his/her
primary source of information. Thus, the analyst has to interpret his/her own reactions in
relation to the patient’s transference. This implies that there is no objective knowledge, but
only subjective knowledge derived from the analyst’s own reactions. Accordingly, countertransference can be used to gain greater understanding of the patient through the analysis of
the analyst’s personal reactions to him/her.
Counter-transference can be broadly defined as the analyst’s global orientation including
his/her subjective choice of profession and the remaining, non-analysed, parts of his/her
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unconscious. This approach maintains that all the analyst’s reactions, whether they occur as a
response to the patient or not, are part of counter-transference. Therefore, countertransference is not considered solely as a secondary reaction of the analyst to the patient, but
precedes it and indeed contributes to the structuration of the interaction. Ronald Searles
(1979) suggests that psychoanalysts are individuals who have not managed to renounce the
possibility of curing their own parents. Didier Anzieu (1959) proposes that Freud’s invention
of the analytical apparatus, excluding body and eye contact was a reaction to phobic attitudes
towards his patients. Otto Kernberg (1965) proposed that with psychotic patients, countertransference becomes an invaluable tool giving the analyst information about a patient’s
degree of regression.
However, from a practical perspective, the question remains about what the analyst should do
with his/her own reactions. Different definitions of counter-transference imply different
strategies. These include, for example:
- getting the analyst to reduce counter-transference because it is considered an obstacle to
therapeutic work;
- accepting and using counter-transference while encouraging the analyst to control it as much
as possible;
- allowing counter-transference to inspire the analyst and inform interpretations.
Counter-transference, as theory and as practice, emerged within the field of psychoanalysis.
Michael Balint was one of the first to extend the model by pointing out that the clinician’s
subjectivity and counter-transference are present in every caring relationship, and that it’s
influence extends beyond the professional identity of the clinician. Balint captured this by
stating that in most cases the doctor is the first medication administered to the patient through
the expression of himself or herself in the clinical setting (Balint, 1957).
In summary, counter-transference is a concept that recognises that the analyst as well as the
patient is affected by unconscious processes in the construction of his/her personal and
professional identity and in interactions with patients. It acknowledges that the analyst is not a
neutral expert and that "working through" unconscious attitudes ought to form a continuous
part of the analyst’s everyday practice that may lead to a greater understanding of the
therapeutic relationship.
2. Counter-transference in social research
Georges Devereux was the first social scientist to attempt to generalise the notion of countertransference beyond the field of therapeutic practice and introduce it into the practice of
social and behavioural sciences. Devereux had trained in both anthropology and
psychoanalysis and he developed a method for studying social phenomena that drew on these
two disciplines in a complementary manner. He elaborated the theory of the countertransference of the researcher in his most important book - "From anxiety to method in the
behavioural sciences" – published in 1967. Roger Bastide, a French anthropologist, noted
that the assessment of the implication of the observer inside the observed subject had been
well-known since the work of Marx and Mannheim and the foundation of sociology of
knowledge (Bastide, 1970). However, the recognition of the importance of the social and
political interests of the scientist relating to social class and nationality did not take into
account the subjective, unconscious dimensions at work in the construction of knowledge.
The social influences affecting the scientist can be considered as a form of ideological
functioning involving "false consciousness". Some social scientists, inspired by
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psychoanalysis had already observed this influence on the researcher in the collection and the
treatment of data.
For example, Siegfried Kracauer, a literatary historian and a media scientist, once a member
of the Frankfurt School and of the Institute of Social Research at Columbia University, had
already noticed the importance of taking into account what he called a "disciplined
subjectivity" (or a "discipline related subjectivity") in scientific work. "Far from being an
obstacle, subjectivity is in effect indispensable for the analysis of material, which vanishes
before our eyes when subjected to a treatment confounding them with dead matter.
Quantitative analysis is not free of such nihilistic influence. Many quantitative investigations
in effect mark the spot where a misplaced desire for objectivity has failed to reveal the inner
dynamics of an atomized content." (Kracauer, 1952, p. 642.). The important point is that
Kracauer did not confine the presence of subjectivity to qualitative research, but also
recognised its presence in quantitative research when he remarked that quantitative treatments
transform "live" data into "dead matter". All fields of scientific practice, considered as a
human and social activity, involve the subjective influence of the researcher and therefore
need to take account of counter-transference. The anxieties of the researcher are being
projected in quantitative as well as in qualitative methodology.
In the methodological chapter of The Authoritarian Personality, Adorno and his colleagues
noted the influence of the interviewers’ social appearance on data collection. They tried to
take this influence into account and control it in their study of anti-Semitism by using Jewish
and Gentile interviewers. By doing so they attempted to control the influence of the
interviewer’s personality on data collection (Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, Nevitt
Sanford, 1950).
Devereux did not locate the origin of his own insights in the field of social science. Indeed, he
acknowledged Albert Einstein as his most important source of inspiration when he quoted the
phrase: "we can only observe the phenomena that occur near or inside the experimental
apparatus and the observer himself is the most important part of this apparatus". Devereux
considered that he had gone further than Freud by suggesting that counter-transference, rather
than transference, was the central datum in the behavioural sciences. In other words,
Devereux introduced a major change by focussing on the role of the researcher and by
proposing that the influence of the researcher in the construction of knowledge is the central
phenomenon in the social and behavioural sciences.
According to Devereux , in behavioural sciences data comprise three elements. These
elements are: (1) the behaviour of the observed subject; (2) the "perturbations" induced by the
presence of the observer and by the activities he performs in the context of observation and,
last but not least, (3) the behaviour of the observer – including his anxieties, his defence
mechanisms, his research strategies and the ways in which he chooses to attribute meaning.
Thus scientific knowledge is produced from these three sources. However, in the introduction
to his book, Devereux warns that information concerning the behaviour of the observer is
rarely available or taken into account in scientific work.
A researcher’s counter-transference can be defined as the sum of unconscious and emotional
reactions, including anxiety, affecting his/her relation with the observed subject and situation.
These reactions produce distortions in the process of knowledge construction that remain
hidden from the researcher. Notions of "inappropriateness" and "resistance", as defined by
Schimek, become central in understanding the cognitive processes affecting the researcher,
because they highlight the researcher’s reactions to aspects of reality emerging in fieldwork.
Counter-transference points to the researcher’s difficulty in clearly distinguishing material
that comes from outside (the subject, the field) and from inside (his/her own emotional
reactions). The researcher has to struggle with these emotional reactions and anxieties.
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3. Methods: defense or sublimation ?
Devereux elaborated the opposition between the use of methodology as a defence mechanism
against anxiety that prevents the researcher from gaining knowledge, and the sublimatory use
of methodology when tools appear appropriate to the scientific work and help to gain
knowledge. According to Devereux, methodological tools are sublimatory when, at the same
time, they help to reduce the researcher’s anxieties and produce valid knowledge. Devereux
contrasts the given reality of the external world, which can sometimes be unbearable for the
researcher, and the subjectivity of the researcher’s internal world that has the potential to
reduce the unbearable aspects of the external world. He suggests that the relation between the
internal and the external world is mediated by a complex cultural matrix that imposes
meanings on contents. According to this view, culture, and especially the researcher’s local
culture can reinforce misunderstanding.
Devereux’s approach originates in the view that psychoanalysis can provide an epistemology
for the behavioural sciences. This approach questions the nature of objectivity, of
subjectivity and of the relation between the "researched" as a subject and also the researcher
as a subject. In other words, the observer is also observed by the research subject. Data are
not only produced in an objective way but they are co-constructed in the complex interaction
between the researcher and the subject.
Therefore in the social sciences it is quite common to analyse bias. These biases include those
related to the subject of research, to the chosen research tools and to the investigator. Classic
methodological work on questionnaire-based surveys often considers the interviewer to be
one of the major sources of measurement error and bias during data collection, independent
from the subject of the survey (Hyman, 1954; Turner and Martin, 1980). More recently,
Johnson and DeLamater, working in the field of sex research, have suggested that the "major
problem is the attitude of researchers and interviewers to research into sexuality".
Concerning methodology, they state that "concern with the threat of the subject matter is a
projection of the interviewer's own discomfort". They suspect that as researchers they have
been "insensitive to the important source of sensitivity in research on sexuality -ourselves and
our interviewers- and have overestimated the extent to which our respondents are sensitive to
these topics and to reporting them." (Johnson and DeLamater, 1976, p. 181).
As an illustration of this, it is interesting to note that the British survey on sexual attitudes and
lifestyles did not include any questions on the topic of masturbation, an omission that is quite
rare in surveys on sexual behaviour. The authors of this survey justified the absence of such a
question as follows: "It is regrettable that questions about masturbation were excluded from
the survey because discussions addressing this practice led to disgust and embarrassment
among subjects questioned during the qualitative pre-survey to establish the formulation of
the questions." (Wellings et al., 1994, p134). There was absolutely no mention of the
researchers or interviewers discomfort about "this practice" which may well have been
projected onto the respondents. The omission of the question had a negative outcome in that
we do not now know the frequency of occurrence of masturbation in Britain. However, it
also serves as a valuable source of information about the discomfort that talking about this
practice raises with women. One possible interpretation of this reluctance to address
questions about masturbation is that the researchers on this project were all women and it has
been established that women tend to underreport the practice of masturbation (Béjin, 1996).
Devereux’s insistence on taking account of researchers’ counter-transference provides a new
perspective in the consideration of bias. Researcher bias is not only viewed as having
negative effects but further, that these biases become part of the construction of the research
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object. Subjectivity should not only be viewed as an obstacle in the research process but may
also provide a "royal path" to knowledge.
Recently, Herdt and Stoller proposed another perspective inspired by Devereux. They
defined a new form of ethnography called "clinical ethnography": "Clinical ethnographies are
reports that study the subjectivity of the researcher as well as the people who inform
him/her." (Herdt and Stoller, 1990, p. 29). Major sources of knowledge for the clinical
ethnographer are gained through subjective experiences of discomfort and shock occurring
during fieldwork. Herdt and Stoller operationalized the analysis of counter-transference
through discussions among themselves of their own subjective reactions as well as scientific
ideas that arose during fieldwork in Sambia. The conversation between both of them became
the basis for the analysis of narratives gathered among the Sambia. The confrontation
between their differing points of view allowed them to consider the limits and the benefits of
subjectivity over and above their rational, scientific work. This approach can therefore be
understood as an enhancement of rationality rather than as regression away from rationality.
An appeal to psychoanalysis brings with it an openness about subjectivity on the one hand but
on the other hand it suggests a blind-spot. Freud’s theory of the unconscious, which was one
of Devereux’s starting points, does not take into account the social and ideological position of
the individual as a component in the construction of knowledge and "mis-knowledge". It is
primarily concerned with the psycho-sexual dimension of subjectivity in the construction and
reconstruction of knowledge and to a lesser extent the researcher’s cultural positioning.
In his book "Homo Academicus", a study about the academic institution and academic actors
in France, the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1984) gives an overview of the social dimension
of “misknowledge” grounded in the specific position occupied by the researcher in the field.
He poses these questions. How can a prominent French sociologist occupying a central place
in the French academic system study the functioning of an institution to which he belongs?
And in what ways does his specific position in the field influence his representation of the
field? In other words, he places himself at the same time, both as the subject and the object of
his own research. Bourdieu brings us back to Marx and Mannheim’s initial insights by
reminding us of the interests that the researcher brings to the study through his/her
involvement in a (local) milieu and as a member of a social class. By integrating both
dimensions of counter-transference: the psycho-sexual and the social-ideological, we can
generalise and expand Devereux’s work.
4. The analysis of counter-transference
While it is important to recognise the existence of subjective, active and unconscious
influences on the researcher and in his/her research work, it is even more important to ask the
pragmatic question; how these influences be detected and analysed? In other words, how are
we to perceive these effects in the research process? In a study of the representations of
sexuality of the mentally retarded (Giami, 1987; Giami, Humbert, Laval, 2001) developed a
specific research tool to confront the different points of view that arose in data analysis.
Herdt and Stoller developed a similar approach by commenting upon the material they had
collected either separately or together. The conversations that ensued can be understood as
equivalent to the kind of supervision that is practiced among clinicians. That is, the clinician
discusses the difficulties that he/she comes across in work with a patient with others who
share a psychological insight yet who do not share the clinician’s position with respect to the
patient. The confrontation between these different points of view may help to uncover blind
spots in the clinician or researcher’s perspective. Nevertheless, the analysis of the effects of
counter-transference in research cannot go far beyond some insight into the
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"inappropriateness" of the researcher’s reactions. After that, the researcher remains free to
decide what to do with the information.
4.1 The components of counter-transference
The researcher is, in one way or another, the subject and object of the knowledge that he/she
elaborates. The specific position he/she occupies in the field allows at the same time for a
specific kind of focus and for specific blind spots. From any one position, there are aspects of
the world that one can perceive and aspects that one cannot. Absolute objectivity is, by
definition, impossible and one has to find the appropriate focus, the "good distance",
according to one’s research objectives. The position of the researcher in the field defines (1)
what he/she can know, (2) what he/she might be able to know, (3) what he/she cannot know
and last but not least (4) what he/she actively refuses to know for some social or
psychological reason 3. In some cases, researchers know what they do not know and what
they cannot know; in others they do not even take account of what they cannot know.
In considering the researcher’s position the first component to take into account is gender.
Gender identity and sexual orientation allow one to know some aspects of reality and prevents
one from knowing and understanding others.
The second component is the researcher’s age and position in the cycle of generations.
The third component is the researcher’s position and social attitudes towards the topic being
researched.
The fourth component is the way the researcher’s is positioned and understood within society
as a whole.
In some instances the researcher is recognised as an individual but in most cases he/she is
referred to as a collective subject. The notion of the researcher as a collective subject can be
tracked according to the way science has developed as technology, a processes documented
by historians of science such as Ludwig Fleck and Thomas Kuhn. This kind of historical
analysis has brought to light the role of folk theories in the production of scientific theories on
the one hand and to the way scientific paradigms (or general conceptions) are shared and
assessed by communities on the other. What is recognised as knowledgeable and true in one
social-scientific community, is not necessarily recognised as such in another.
These four components play different key-roles depending on the topic that is being
researched. The methodological intention that underpins counter-transference theory is to go
beyond the limitations that the four components impose on the production of knowledge so as
to allow new ways of making sense to emerge. Thus it can be seen that when researchers
draw on research tools without this awareness, unconscious fears surrounding the research
topic and/or ideological beliefs act to limit the production of knowledge and methodology
comes to act as a defence mechanism. Devereux refers to this as the sublimatory use of
methodology.
In research practice all or some of these components come to bear in complex ways. Political
and ideological constraints may reinforce and justify unconscious, personal and countertransferential attitudes of the researcher.
5. Two examples of counter-transfer analysis in social research
I will illustrate these ideas with two examples. In the first one, I will demonstrate how we
attempted to reduce the negative bias of the researcher by constituting a team of researchers
3
The French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan has named this process : the "passion for ignorance".
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to represent different positions with respect to the research topic. Each member of the team
had something in common with one of the groups under study and less in common with
others. Discussions among team members helped to build a global perspective of the field. In
the second example, I will illustrate how the counter-transference and personal involvement
of the interviewers collecting data in a survey on sexuality can itself be treated as an object
for study in it’s own right.
5.1 Representations of the sexuality of the mentally retarded by parents and special
educators (Giami, Humbert, Laval, 2001)
This was a comparative study of the representations of two groups of individuals who had
different positions and different kinds of involvement with mentally retarded individuals :
special educators and parents. The aim of the study was to describe the representations of
both groups and to understand the differences between them on the basis of their respective
relationships with the mentally retarded individuals. The most important underlying principle
of the study was that one cannot evaluate or compare representations of sexuality with the socalled actual sexual life of mentally retarded individuals. A logical extension of this principle
meant that the primarly research objective was to compare parents’ representations and
special educators’ representations with different aspects of the global system of representation
elaborated by the research team.
From a methodological and political point of view, being a researcher in psychology placed
me in a closer position with respect to the special educators than to the parents, particularly
since I am not the parent of a mentally retarded child. At some point in the research, I realised
that my social proximity with the group of special educators might be provoking a blind spot
in my analysis of both groups’ representations (the educators and the parents). Since I had no
experience of being a parent of a mentally retarded child, the danger was that I would
consider the representations of the educators more "real" or "true" than the representations of
the parents. This in turn would reinforce the stigma attached to parents of mentally retarded
children, and maintained by special educators among others. In order to make sure that the
discourses collected from each groups retained an equal status – as complementary parts of
the same global, yet contradictory, system – I decided to include one person who worked as a
special educator and one parent with a mentally retarded child on the research team. In
consequence, I was able to ensure that that during analysis the two sets of narratives were
treated with the same level of understanding.
In this study, the most important dimension of counter-transference was identified as the
researcher’s proximity and identification with one target group rather than the other. The
knowledge of the possible risk posed by such an identification, in which the educators
appeared to be more similar to me and the parents more strange, was used to construct
research apparatus that included individuals from each these groups.
5.2 Interviewing on sexual behaviour and AIDS (Giami, Olomucki, de Poplavsky, 1997,
1998)
In this project we tried to describe and understand the attitudes and representations of the
interviewers that were selected to administer a telephone questionnaire in the French National
survey on sexual behaviour (Spira, Bajos, ACSF group, 1994).
The use of interviewers is not the only source of bias in the production of data. The
establishment of an interviewer-respondent relationship is also one of the main requirements
in ensuring the successful collection of data. In this study we confirmed the importance of the
quality of the interviewer-respondent interaction through the daily monitoring of the
interviewers.
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We tried to assess the psychological processes and in particular incidents of countertransference that were affecting the interviewers. We took from Devereux’s work the
assumption that: "An interview about sex even in the case of a scientific interview is in itself
a kind of sexual interaction, which can be lived out on a symbolic, verbal and emotional level
as shown in the analysis of the sexual transference in psychoanalysis" (Devereux, 1967, p.
29). This assumption has the merit of emphasizing the importance of fantasies developed
during this type of communication.
Completing a questionnaire verbally involves a relationship between two people. The
situation is, however, asymmetric. For the interviewer, the relationship forms part of a
professional activity, whereas it is the private life of the respondent that is being addressed.
During telephone interviews, the interviewer occupies his/her place of work where he/she
enjoys a professional status. Respondents, however, are questioned in the privacy of their
homes and asked questions about the most intimate aspects of their private lives. The
questionnaire itself served as a mediator in the interviewer-respondent’s communication. The
interview was designed to proceed according to a well defined scenario that progressed by
alternating questions that were considered banal with those considered sensitive.
However, the professional nature of the involvement of the interviewer does not exclude
conscious and unconscious manifestations of his/her subjectivity even when interviewers use
tightly structured. We therefore considered it necessary to study the interviewers'
representations of sexuality and AIDS in order to identify the difficulties we anticipated they
would confront and to investigate their spontaneous interpretations to responses that might
have affected the quality of the data collected.
In contrast to the first example, this study did not aim to use analysis of the researcher’s
counter-transference as a central research tool, but to map in a systematic fashion the
dimensions of the interviewer’s personal involvement and investment in the interview
process. The knowledge of these subjective attitudes helped to establish a protocol of training
and supervision of the interviewers, which in turn helped them to deal with the personal and
subjective difficulties arising in the interviewer-respondent interaction.
Aside from its psychoanalytical origin, counter-transference raises the broader question about
the nature and extent of human involvement in scientific work. A serious consideration of this
question may encourage a little more modesty in the desire for absolute objectivity in science
and remind us of the limitations in our quest for knowledge.
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Information, 35 (1), pp. 93-109
Giami, A., Humbert, C., Laval, D. (2001). L'Ange et la Bête - Représentations de la sexualité
des handicapés mentaux par les parents et les éducateurs. Paris, Ed. du C.T.N.E.R.H.I. (1st
edition : 1983).
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Now" and the "There and Then". Psychoanalysis and contemporary thought, 6, pp. 435-456.
13
Searles, R. (1979). Countertransference and related subjects. Selected papers. New York,
International Universities Press.
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Sage Foundation.
14
Comments should be addressed to the author at the following address:
Alain Giami – INSERM U 292
82 rue du Général-Leclerc
94276 Le Kremlin Bicêtre – Cedex
France
Email : giami@vjf.inserm.fr
Alain Giami is a social psychologist. He is full time researcher at INSERM (French National
Institute of Health and Medical Research) in Paris and teaches in the doctoral program in
Psychology at Université Paris 8 (Saint-Denis). He is responsible for the research team :
"Sexuality, society, individual". He published several books and papers about representations
of sexuality, handicap and AIDS. He is currently working on a book about the medicalisation
of sexuality in which he tries to articulate historical, societal, and individual perspectives.
15
LSE Methodology Institute
Discussion Papers - Qualitative Series
Editorial
The LSE Methodology Institute’s Discussion Papers are an opportunity for visitors to the
School, members of staff, and invited speakers to the Institute seminars to put forward an
argument on qualitative methodology. The paper may be at an early stage inviting a swift
first round of reviews. The papers are internally reviewed before they are accepted and then
distributed within and outside the LSE for further discussions with the authors.
In this series we encourage contributions that propose ideal-typical descriptions of particular
procedures for qualitative data collection and/or analysis, be these text, image or sound based.
In an ideal world typifying comprises a discussion of
•
•
•
•
•
•
the underlying concepts,
the strength and weaknesses of the method,
its comparison to similar approaches,
a discussion of good and bad use of the approach through using criteria such as reliability,
transparency or others,
one or two exemplary results obtained with the method,
around 5,000 words of length
Martin Bauer
London, October 1996
16
List of papers in the series
no 1
The Narrative Interview: Comments on a technique of qualitative data collection
(Martin Bauer, LSE, October 1996)
no 2
Determining the Central Nucleus of Social Representations
(Celso Pereira de Sa, Rio de Janeiro, November 1996)
no 3
Word Associations in Questionnaires: A practical guide to design and analysis
(Wolfgang Wagner, University of Linz, Austria, February 1997)
no 4
Computer-Assisted Analysis of Qualitative Data (Udo Kelle, University of Bremen,
Germany, August 1997)
no 5
The episodic interview (Uwe Flick, Hannover, November 1997)
no 6
Types of Category in the Analysis of Content (Bradley Franks, LSE, February 1999)
no 7
Counter-Transference in Social Research: Georges Devereux and Beyond (Alain
Giami, INSERM, Paris, June 2001)