"Is an interpretation always, to some extent, an imposition of our own discursive or psychical attachments?" The answer to this question, in part, lies in exploring the subjectivity of researchers/analysts and participants/analysands in the research encounter. In part, it lies in tracing what happens to psychoanalytic concepts in the research process. This is the project taken up by Claudia Lapping in her 2013 paper entitled "Which subject, whose desire? The constitution of subjectivity and the articulation of desire in the practice of research". The article reminds us that our inner emotional experiences are always both a potential source of insight and a path towards imposing our own needs and desires on organizational members. Interpretation is sometimes the expression of our own, not others', desires. And, sometimes it is an attempt to hide the lack that we cannot bear to acknowledge. The research encounter inevitably evokes something about us. We may attribute these aspects of our experience to the other (through interpretation) when, in fact, they reveal something about our selves.
Category: Qualitative research
Trauma and organizations
This recent book highlights the challenges in consulting to "traumatized organizations" - a state arising from "failed dependency" in the organizational setting. In the introduction, editor Earl Hopper suggests that "consultations to traumatized organizations are always disturbing to the consultant" (p. xxii) making countertransference an important aspect of data generation and analysis. The book is instructive for organizational researchers who negotiate similar dynamics in the doing of embedded or immersive research. The book features contributions from an international group of analysts and consultants who draw from a variety of psychoanalytic perspectives. Each chapter focuses on a dimension of organizational life in an organizational setting (e.g. behavioral health, correctional, corporate, academic) characterized by traumatic experience.