ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the psycho-social research methods used for a research inquiry into a “corporate” role in a local authority in the UK, in the period 2000–2002. This corporate role involved the design and dissemination of “modernizing” policies and carrying out a range of projects. The contribution of empathy or emotional communication is underplayed in accounts of qualitative research methodology. An effective way to focus the subconscious is through imagery and visualization. The use of metaphor in inquiry is recognized as a form of “knowing”, or, in other words, “presentational knowing”. “Deep” metaphor was used frequently by managers in the interactive interviews. Deep metaphors are of substantial value in phenomenological research. One creative way through is to allow the experience of inquiry itself to speak thoroughly, to pay attention to dream and metaphor, to build fully on the representational knowing so that the words, logical or metaphorical, grow out of this deep experience.
