giami, alain. counter transference in social research: beyond georges devereux

8/17/2019 GIAMI, Alain. Counter Transference in Social Research: Beyond Georges Devereux

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23/7/2014 Counter Transference in Social Research : beyond Georges Devereux

http://www.ethnopsychiatrie.net/giami.htm 2/13

framing within the social sciences and thus aim to work with asubject’s "appropriate" reactions, i.e. their compliance whenanswering questions posed in questionnaires or interview schedules.Within a positivist framing, non-responses and "don't know" responsein questionnaires are rarely considered worthy of interpretation.However, as Giami (1996) has pointed out, "don’t know’s" and non-responses should be considered as relevant research material sincethey represent a statement of the subject in response to thequestion 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 andinappropriate reactions that he/she observes in the patient. Theconcept of counter-transference refers to the unconsciousprocesses specifically affecting the analyst. It is defined as "theoverall reactions of the analyst to the patient as a person andtowards his/her transference" (Laplanche & Pontalis, 1967).According to this definition transference and counter-transferencerefer to the reactions of the two people in the "here and now" of thetherapeutic setting as well as to the repetition of the past of bothparticipants actualised in the setting. Strictly speaking, counter-transference refers specifically to the analyst’s reactions to thepatient’s transference. In the analytic setting, counter-transferenceis thus considered a secondary process that derives both from theanalyst’s own neurotic conflicts and his/her reactions to theanalysand. The analyst’s counter-transference is normally viewed as"inappropriate" because it may provoke negative reactions andresistances in his/her emotional reactions to the patient. Accordingto Freud, the analyst should try to overcome his/her counter-transference. However, since the patient’s and the analyst’sreactions are of the same nature, there is a question about whether

or not we need to specific concepts to describe the analyst’sreactions.

Some writers, such as Otto Kernberg, find it difficult to distinguishthe patient’s and the analyst’s unconscious reactions and suggesttherefore that the notion of transference should include thereactions of both. "A totalistic concept of transference does justiceto the conception of the analytic situation as an interaction processin which past and present of both participants, as well as theirmutual reactions to past and present, fuse into a unique emotionalposition involving both of them." (Kernberg, 1965, p. 41).

This conception implies that transference also occurs in the analysttowards his/her patient. However, if we follow this formulation, itbecomes difficult to distinguish reactions that arise from the analyst’sbiography from those that arise in reaction to the patient andtherefore to assess how each might be affecting the analyst's work.

Counter-transference can be differentiated from transference in sofar as it appears as a perturbation of the normal work of the analystinvolving his/her own neurotic dimensions. According to this definitioncounter-transference is something "negative" that needs beeliminated. 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 torepresent the major source of information for the analyst. That is,the way he/she reacts to the patient’s reactions is his/her primarysource of information. Thus, the analyst has to interpret his/her own


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reactions in relation to the patient’s transference. This implies thatthere is no objective knowledge, but only subjective knowledgederived from the analyst’s own reactions. Accordingly, counter-transference can be used to gain.. greater understanding of thepatient through the analysis of the analyst’s personal reactions tohim/her.

Counter-transference can be broadly defined as the analyst’s globalorientation including his/her subjective choice of profession and the

remaining, non-analysed, parts of his/her unconscious. This approachmaintains that all the analyst’s reactions, whether they occur as aresponse to the patient or not, are part of counter-transference.Therefore, counter-transference is not considered solely as asecondary reaction of the analyst to the patient, but precedes it andindeed contributes to the structuration of the interaction. RonaldSearles (1979) suggests that psychoanalysts are individuals whohave not managed to renounce the possibility of curing their ownparents. Didier Anzieu (1959) proposes that Freud’s invention of theanalytical apparatus, excluding body and eye contact was a reactionto phobic attitudes towards his patients. Otto Kernberg (1965)proposed that with psychotic patients, counter-transferencebecomes an invaluable tool giving the analyst information about apatient’s degree of regression.

However, from a practical perspective, the question remains aboutwhat the analyst should do with his/her own reactions. Differentdefinitions of counter-transference imply different strategies. Theseinclude, for example:

- getting the analyst to reduce counter-transference becauseit is considered an obstac le to therapeutic work;

- accepting and using counter-transference while encouragingthe analyst to control it as much as possible;

- allowing counter-transference to inspire the analyst andinform interpretations.

Counter-transference, as theory and as practice, emerged within thefield of psychoanalysis. Michael Balint was one of the first to extendthe model by pointing out that the clinician’s subjectivity andcounter-transference are present in every caring relationship, andthat it’s influence extends beyond the professional identity of theclinician. Balint captured this by stating that in most cases the

doctor is the first medication administered to the patient through theexpression of himself or herself in the clinical setting (Balint, 1957).

In summary, counter-transference is a concept that recognises thatthe analyst as well as the patient is affected by unconsciousprocesses in the construction of his/her personal and professionalidentity and in interactions with patients. It acknowledges that theanalyst is not a neutral expert and that "working through"unconscious attitudes ought to form a continuous part of theanalyst’s everyday pract ice that may lead to a greater understandingof the therapeutic relationship.

Counter-transference in

behavioural research


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Georges Devereux was the first scientist to attempt to generalise thenotion of counter-transference beyond the field of therapeuticpractice and introduce it into the practice of social and behaviouralsciences. Devereux had trained in both anthropology andpsychoanalysis and he developed a method for studying socialphenomena that drew on these two disciplines in a complementarymanner. He elaborated the theory of the counter-transference of theresearcher in his most important book - "From anxiety to method inthe behavioural sciences" — published in 1967. Roger Bastide, a

French anthropologist, noted that the assessment of the implicationof the observer inside the observed subject had been well-knownsince 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 scientistrelating to social class and nationality did not take into account thesubjective, unconscious dimensions at work in the construction of knowledge. The social influences affecting the scientist can beconsidered as a form of ideological functioning involving "falseconsciousness". Some social scientists, inspired by psychoanalysishad already observed this influence on the researcher in the

collection and the treatment of data.For example, Siegfried Kracauer, a literature historian and a mediascientist, once a member of the Francfurt School and of the Instituteof Social Research at Columbia University, had already noticed theimportance of taking into account what he called a "disciplinedsubjectivity" (or a "discipline related subjectivity") in scientific work."Far from being an obstacle, subjectivity is in effect indispensable forthe analysis of material, which vanishes before our eyes whensubjected to a treatment confounding them with dead matter.Quantitative analysis is not free of such nihilistic influence. Manyquantitative investigations in effect mark the spot where a misplaced

desire for objectivity has failed to reveal the inner dynamics of anatomized content." (Kracauer, 1952, p. 642.). The important point isthat Kracauer did not confine the presence of subjectivity toqualitative research, but also recognised its presence in quantitativeresearch 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 subjectiveinfluence of the researcher and therefore need to take account of counter-transference. The anxieties of the researcher are beingprojected 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 thisinfluence into account and control it in their study of anti-Semitismby using Jewish and Gentile interviewers. By doing so they attemptedto control the influence of the interviewer’s personality on datacollection (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 mostimportant source of inspiration when he quoted the phrase: "we canonly observe the phenomena that occur near or inside the

experimental apparatus and the observer himself is the mostimportant part of this apparatus". Devereux considered that he hadgone further than Freud by suggesting that counter-transference,rather than transference, was the central datum in the behaviouralsciences. In other words, Devereux introduced a major change by


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focussing on the role of the researcher and by proposing that theinfluence of the researcher in the construction of knowledge is thecentral phenomenon in the social and behavioural sciences.

According to Devereux , in behavioural sciences data comprise threeelements. These elements are: (1) the behaviour of the observedsubject; (2) the "perturbations" induced by the presence of theobserver 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 researchstrategies 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 thatinformation concerning the behaviour of the observer is rarelyavailable 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, affectinghis/her relation with the observed subject and situation. Thesereactions produce distortions in the process of knowledgeconstruction that remain hidden from the researcher. Notions of

"inappropriateness" and "resistance", as defined by Schimek, becomecentral in understanding the cognitive processes affecting theresearcher, because they highlight the researcher’s reactions toaspects of reality emerging in fieldwork. Counter-transference pointsto the researcher’s difficulty in clearly distinguishing material thatcomes from outside (the subject, the field) and from inside (his/herown emotional reactions). The researcher has to struggle with theseemotional reactions and anxieties.

Methods: defense or sublimation ?

Devereux elaborated the opposition between the use of methodologyas a defence mechanism against anxiety that prevents theresearcher from gaining knowledge, and the sublimatory use of methodology when tools appear appropriate to the scientific workand help to gain knowledge. According to Devereux, methodologicaltools are sublimatory when, at the same time, they help to reducethe researcher’s anxieties and produce valid knowledge. Devereuxcontrasts the given reality of the external world, which cansometimes be unbearable for the researcher, and the subjectivity of

the researcher’s internal world that has the potential to reduce theunbearable aspects of the external world. He suggests that therelation between the internal and the external world is mediated by acomplex cultural matrix that imposes meanings on contents.According to this view, culture, and especially the researcher’s localculture can reinforce misunderstanding.

Devereux’s approach originates in the view that psychoanalysis canprovide an epistemology for the behavioural sciences. This approachquestions the nature of objectivity, of subjectivity and of the relationbetween the "researched" as a subject and also the researcher as asubject. In other words, the observer is also observed by the

research subject. Data are not only produced in an objective waybut they are co-constructed in the complex interaction between theresearcher 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


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chosen research tools and to the investigator. Classic methodologicalwork on questionnaire-based surveys often considers the interviewerto be one of the major sources of measurement error and bias duringdata collection, independent from the subject of the survey (Hyman,1954; Turner and Martin, 1980). More recently, Johnson andDeLamater, working in the field of sex research, have suggested thatthe "major problem is the attitude of researchers and interviewers toresearch 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 theyhave been "insensitive to the important source of sensitivity inresearch on sexuality -ourselves and our interviewers- and haveoverestimated the extent to which our respondents are sensitive tothese topics and to reporting them." (Johnson and DeLamater, 1976,p. 181).

As an illustration of this, it is interesting to note that the Britishsurvey on sexual attitudes and lifestyles did not include anyquestions on the topic of masturbation, an omission that is quite rarein surveys on sexual behaviour. The authors of this survey justifiedthe absence of such a question as follows: "It is regrettable thatquestions about masturbation were excluded from the surveybecause discussions addressing this practice led to disgust andembarrassment among subjects questioned during the qualitativepre-survey to establish the formulation of the questions." (Wellingset al., 1994, p134). There was absolutely no mention of theresearchers or interviewers discomfort about "this practice" whichmay well have been projected onto the respondents. The omission of the question had a negative outcome in that we do not now knowthe frequency of occurrence of masturbation in Britain. However, italso serves as a valuable source of information about the discomfortthat talking about this practice raises with women. One possible

interpretation of this reluctance to address questions aboutmasturbation is that the researchers on this project were all womenand it has been established that women tend to underreport thepractice 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 butfurther, that these biases become part of the construction of theresearch object. Subjectivity should not only be viewed as anobstacle in the research process but may also provide a "royal path"to knowledge.

Recently, Herdt and Stoller proposed another perspective inspired byDevereux. They defined a new form of ethnography called "clinicalethnography": "Clinical ethnographies are reports that study thesubjectivity of the researcher as well as the people who informhim/her." (Herdt and Stoller, 1990, p. 29). Major sources of knowledge for the clinical ethnographer are gained through subjectiveexperiences of discomfort and shock occurring during fieldwork. Herdtand Stoller operationalized the analysis of counter-transferencethrough discussions among themselves of their own subjectivereactions as well as scientific ideas that arose during fieldwork inSambia. The conversation between both of them became the basis

for the analysis of narratives gathered among the Sambia. Theconfrontation between their differing points of view allowed them toconsider the limits and the benefits of subjectivity over and abovetheir rational, scientific work. This approach can therefore beunderstood as an enhancement of rationality rather than as


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regression away from rationality.

An appeal to psychoanalysis brings with it an openness aboutsubjectivity on the one hand but on the other hand it suggests ablind-spot. Freud’s theory of the unconscious, which was one of Devereux’s starting points, does not take into account the social andideological position of the individual as a component in theconstruction of knowledge and "mis-knowledge". It is primarilyconcerned with the psycho-sexual dimension of subjectivity in the

construction and reconstruction of knowledge and to a lesser extentthe researcher’s cultural positioning.

In his book "Homo Academicus", a study about the academicinstitution and academic actors in France, the sociologist PierreBourdieu (1984) gives an overview of the social dimension of "misknowledge" grounded in the specific position occupied by theresearcher in the field. He poses these questions. How can aprominent French sociologist occupying a central place in the Frenchacademic system study the functioning of an institution to which hebelongs? And in what ways does his specific position in the fieldinfluence his representation of the field? In other words, he places

himself at the same time, both as the subject and the object of hisown research. Bourdieu brings us back to Marx and Mannheim’s initialinsights by reminding us of the interests that the researcher brings tothe study through his/her involvement in a (local) milieu and as amember of a social class. By integrating both dimensions of counter-transference: the psycho-sexual and the social-ideological, we cangeneralise and expand Devereux’s work.

The analysis of counter-

transference

While it is important to recognise the existence of subjective, activeand unconscious influences on the researcher and in his/her researchwork, it is even more important to ask the pragmatic question; howthese influences be detected and analysed? In other words, how arewe 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 researchtool to confront the different points of view that arose in dataanalysis. Herdt and Stoller developed a similar approach bycommenting upon the material they had collected either separately ortogether. The conversations that ensued can be understood asequivalent to the kind of supervision that is practiced amongclinicians. That is, the clinician discusses the difficulties that he/shecomes across in work with a patient with others who share apsychological insight yet who do not share the clinician’s positionwith respect to the patient. The confrontation between thesedifferent points of view may help to uncover blind spots in theclinician or researcher’s perspective. Nevertheless, the analysis of the effects of counter-transference in research cannot go farbeyond some insight into the "inappropriateness" of the researcher’s

reactions. After that, the researcher remains free to decide what todo with the information.


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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/sheoccupies in the field allows at the same time for a specific kind of focus and for specific blind spots. From any one position, there areaspects of the world that one can perceive and aspects that onecannot. Absolute objectivity is, by definition, impossible and one hasto find the appropriate focus, the "good distance", according to one’sresearch objectives. The position of the researcher in the fielddefines (1) what he/she can know, (2) what he/she might be able toknow, (3) what he/she cannot know and last but not least (4) whathe/she actively refuses to know for some social or psychologicalreason [2] . In some cases, researchers know what they do notknow and what they cannot know; in others they do not even takeaccount 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 allowone to know some aspects of reality and prevents one from knowingand understanding others.

The second component is the researcher’s age and position in thecycle of generations.

The third component is the researcher’s position and social attitudestowards the topic being researched.

The fourth component is the way the researcher’s is positioned andunderstood within society as a whole.

In some instances the researcher is recognised as an individual but inmost cases he/she is referred to as a collective subject. The notionof the researcher as a collective subject can be tracked according tothe way science has developed as technology, a processesdocumented by historians of science such as Ludwig Fleck andThomas Kuhn. This kind of historical analysis has brought to light therole of folk theories in the production of scientific theories on the onehand and to the way scientific paradigms (or general conceptions)are shared and assessed by communities on the other. What isrecognised as knowledgeable and true in one social-scientificcommunity, is not necessarily recognised as such in another.

These four components play different key-roles depending on thetopic that is being researched. The methodological intention thatunderpins counter-transference theory is to go beyond the limitationsthat the four components impose on the production of knowledge soas to allow new ways of making sense to emerge. Thus it can beseen that when researchers draw on research tools without thisawareness, unconscious fears surrounding the research topic and/orideological beliefs act to limit the production of knowledge andmethodology comes to act as a defence mechanism. Devereux refersto this as the sublimatory use of methodology.

In research practice all or some of these components come to bear incomplex ways. Political and ideological constraints may reinforce and justify unconsc ious, personal and counter-transferential attitudes of the researcher.

I will illustrate these ideas with two examples. In the first one, I will


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demonstrate how we attempted to reduce the negative bias of theresearcher by constituting a team of researchers to representdifferent positions with respect to the research topic. Each memberof the team had something in common with one of the groups understudy and less in common with others. Discussions among teammembers helped to build a global perspective of the field. In thesecond example, I will illustrate how the counter-transference andpersonal involvement of the interviewers collecting data in a surveyon sexuality can itself be treated as an object for study in it’s own

right.

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 groupsof individuals who had different positions and different kinds of involvement with mentally retarded individuals : special educatorsand parents. The aim of the study was to describe therepresentations of both groups and to understand the differencesbetween them on the basis of their respective relationships with thementally retarded individuals. The most important underlying principleof the study was that one cannot evaluate or comparerepresentations of sexuality with the so-called actual sexual life of mentally retarded individuals. A logical extension of this principlemeant that the primarly research objective was to compare parents’

representations and special educators’ representations with differentaspects of the global system of representation elaborated by theresearch team.

From a methodological and political point of view, being a researcherin psychology placed me in a closer position with respect to thespecial educators than to the parents, particularly since I am not theparent of a mentally retarded child. At some point in the research, Irealised that my social proximity with the group of special educatorsmight be provoking a blind spot in my analysis of both groups’ representations (the educators and the parents). Since I had noexperience of being a parent of a mentally retarded child, the danger

was that I would consider the representat ions of the educators more"real" or "true" than the representations of the parents. This in turnwould reinforce the stigma attached to parents of mentally retardedchildren, and maintained by special educators among others. In orderto make sure that the discourses collected from each groups retainedan equal status — as complementary parts of the same global, yetcontradictory, system — I decided to include one person who workedas a special educator and one parent with a mentally retarded childon the research team. In consequence, I was able to ensure thatthat during analysis the two sets of narratives were treated with thesame level of understanding.

In this study, the most important dimension of counter-transferencewas identified as the researcher’s proximity and identification withone target group rather than the other. The knowledge of thepossible risk posed by such an identification, in which the educatorsappeared to be more similar to me and the parents more strange,


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was used to construct research apparatus that included individualsfrom each these groups.

Interviewing on sexual behaviour

and AIDS (Giami, Olomucki, de

Poplavsky, 1997, 1998)

In this project we tried to describe and understand the attitudes andrepresentat ions of the interviewers that were selected to administera telephone questionnaire in the French National survey on sexualbehaviour (Spira, Bajos, ACSF group, 1994).

The use of interviewers is not the only source of bias in theproduction of data. The establishment of an interviewer-respondentrelationship is also one of the main requirements in ensuring thesuccessful collection of data. In this study we confirmed theimportance of the quality of the interviewer-respondent interactionthrough the daily monitoring of the interviewers.

We tried to assess the psychological processes and in particularincidents of counter-transference that were affecting theinterviewers. We took from Devereux’s work the assumption that: "Aninterview about sex even in the case of a sc ientific interview is initself a kind of sexual interaction, which can be lived out on asymbolic, verbal and emotional level as shown in the analysis of thesexual transference in psychoanalysis" (Devereux, 1967, p. 29). Thisassumption has the merit of emphasizing the importance of fantasiesdeveloped during this type of communication.

Completing a quest ionnaire verbally involves a relationship betweentwo 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 beingaddressed. During telephone interviews, the interviewer occupieshis/her place of work where he/she enjoys a professional status.Respondents, however, are questioned in the privacy of their homesand asked questions about the most intimate aspects of their privatelives. The questionnaire itself served as a mediator in theinterviewer-respondent’s communication. The interview was designedto proceed according to a well defined scenario that progressed byalternating questions that were considered banal with thoseconsidered sensitive.

However, the professional nature of the involvement of theinterviewer does not exclude conscious and unconsciousmanifestations of his/her subjectivity even when interviewers usetightly structured. We therefore considered it necessary to study theinterviewers' representations of sexuality and AIDS in order toidentify the difficulties we anticipated they would confront and toinvestigate their spontaneous interpretations to responses that mighthave affected the quality of the data collected.

In contrast to the first example, this study did not aim to useanalysis of the researcher’s counter-transference as a centralresearch tool, but to map in a systematic fashion the dimensions of the interviewer’s personal involvement and investment in theinterview process. The knowledge of these subjective attitudeshelped to establish a protocol of training and supervision of theinterviewers, which in turn helped them to deal with the personal andsubjective difficulties arising in the interviewer-respondent


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interaction.

Aside from its psychoanalytical origin, counter-transference raisesthe broader question about the nature and extent of humaninvolvement in scientific work. A serious consideration of thisquestion may encourage a little more modesty in the desire forabsolute objectivity in science and remind us of the limitations in ourquest for knowledge.

The English version of the paper

has been edited by Gabrielle

Ivinson (Cardiff University)

References :

Adorno, T.W., Frenkel-Brunswick, E., Levinson, D., Nevitt Sanford, R.(1950). The Authoritarian Personality . New-York, Harper and Brother.

Anzieu, D. (1959). L'auto-analyse : Son role dans la découverte de la psychanalyse par Freud. Sa fonction. Paris, PUF.

Balint, M. (1957). The Doctor, his patient and the Illness. London,Pitman, Medic-Publ.

Bastide, R. (1970) Préface, pp. VII-XIX in: G. Devereux: Essaisd'ethnopsychiatrie générale. Paris, Gallimard.

Béjin, A. (1996). Female Masturbation in France. The estimation of the underreporting of a practice in : M. Bozon, H. Léridon eds.

Sexuality and the Social Sciences. Dartmouth, Aldershot

Bourdieu, P. (1984). Homo Academicus . Paris, Editions de Minuit.

Devereux, G. (1967). From Anxiety to Method in the Behavioral Sciences. The Hague, Paris Mouton et Co.

Giami, A. (1987). Coping with sexuality of the disabled . A comparisonof the physically disabled and the mentally retarded. Int. J. Rehab.Research, 10 (1), pp.41-48

Giami, A. (1996). Non response and Don't know answers in sex

surveys. Social Science Information, 35 (1), pp. 93-109Giami, 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).

Giami, A., Olomucki, H., de Poplavsky, J. (1997). Surveying sexualityand AIDS : Interviewer Attitudes and representations. pp. 61-77 in :J. Bancroft (ed.)Researching Sexual Behavior . Bloomington, Indiana University Press.

Giami, A., Olomucki, H., de Poplavsky, J. (1998). Enquéter sur lasexualité et le sida : Les enquêteurs de l'ACSF. in : N., Bajos, M.,Bozon, A., Ferrand, A., Giami, A., Spira, (eds). La sexualité aux temps du sida. Paris, PUF.

Herdt, G., Stoller, R., (1990). Intimate communications - Erotics and


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the study of culture. New York, Columbia University Press,

Hyman, Herbert, (1954). Interviewing in Social Research Chicago,University of Chicago Press.

Johnson, A., Wadsworth, J., Wellings, K., Field, J. (1994). Sexual att itudes and lifestyles. London, Blackwell Scientific Publications.

Johnson, W., Delamater, J. (1976), Response effects in sex surveys.

Public Opinion Quaterly , 40, p. 165-181.Kernberg, O. (1965). Notes on Contertransference. AmericanPsychoanalysis ASSOC Journal 13, pp. 38-56.

Kracauer, S., (1952). The challenge of qualitative analysis. The Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. XVI, pp. 631-641.

Laplanche, J., Pontalis, J.B. (1967). Vocabulaire de la psychanalyse .Paris, P.U.F.

Schimek, J. (1983). The construction of the transference: Therelativity of the "Here and Now" and the "There and Then".

Psychoanalysis and contemporary thought , 6, pp. 435-456.

Searles, R. (1979). Countertransference and related subjects.Selected papers. New York, International Universities Press.

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Notes

[1]. I wish to thank Professor Tobie Nathan (Director of the CentreGeorge Devereux at the University of Paris 8 — Saint — Denis forhaving directed me towards biographical data about Devereux. (cf."Sarava " pp. 229-237 in T. Nathan : Psychanalyse païenne. Essaisethnopsychanalytiques. Editions Odile Jacob, Paris, 1988.

[2]. The French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan has named thisprocess : the "passion for ignorance".

*Alain Giami is a social psychologist. He works currently as afull time researcher at Inserm (French National Institute of Health and Medical Research) in Paris and teaches in thedoctoral 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 aboutrepresentations of sexuality, handicap and AIDS. He is currentlyworking on a book about the medicalisation of sexuality in whichhe tries to articulate historical, societal, and individual

Abstract : Counter-transference is a controversial notion thatrequires careful discussion. It originated in the field of psychoanalysis and describes the analyst’s unconscious


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reactions to the patient. It was exported from the field of therapy to that of research by Georges Devereux. Heappropriated the term counter-transference to describe aresearcher’s unconscious attitudes and, more specifically,his/her subjectivity in relation to the research object and thefield. The latter includes the researcher’s personal involvementwith the research object, which Devereux proposed to analysealong with his/her attitude to the practice of research assignificant aspects in the construction of knowledge. In this

paper, counter-transference will be discussed as a theoreticalconcept, as a reflexive attitude of the researcher, and as a fieldof research. Some examples of research that draw upon thesevarious uses of the concept will be presented.

[Giami Alain (2001) Counter-transference in social research: beyond GeorgeDevereux, Papers in Social Research Methods - Qualitative Series, no 7, [edMW Bauer].London School of Economics, Methodology Institute]

Correspondance : [email protected]

retour au site du Centre Georges Devereux :

http://ethnopsychiatrie.net

http://ethnopsychiatrie.net/http://www.ethnopsychiatrie.net/mailto:[email protected]

giami, alain. counter transference in social research: beyond georges devereux

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