ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that psychoanalytic thinking offers valuable insights to researchers who seek to explore beneath the surface of human experience. It focuses on a single research relationship. The chapter outlines why the ethical issues that psycho-social researchers must consider are so challenging. Psychoanalysis is especially helpful to psycho-social studies because it uses data-generating free association and addresses the role played by the unconscious. However, it must be remembered that the objectives of psychoanalysis and psycho-social research are quite different. Other research participants shared Fiona’s feeling that while the military intruded markedly into their private lives, it remained largely uninterested in their personal concerns and needs. The use of the phrase “poisoned chalice” is not intended to imply that psychoanalysis might be injurious to social research; rather, that while it appears to offer something wholly beneficial, its contribution is also proving to be problematic. The difficulty comes in making sense of single intersubjective totality psychic creations.
