ABSTRACT
This chapter explores issues in conducting interviews for socioanalytically orientated research and consultancy. This broadly includes two interrelated areas: The systemic processes within a group, organisation, or society and the in-depth discovery of unconscious processes that affect the group, organisation, or society. A socioanalytic perspective is located in the conjunction of its systems and psychoanalytic dimensions. The systems dimension speaks to the structural features of the organisation. The role of interviewer includes managing the boundaries of the task, time, territory, and research/consulting ethics. The socioanalytic researcher or consultant will have initially designed their research purpose through the development of a research or consultancy rationale. System defences are commonly employed unconscious processes to rid systems, individual, interpersonal, subgroup, organisation as a whole, of intolerable feelings so that the system can survive. Primitive defences range in strength and endurance through basic assumptions, covert coalitions, and organisational rituals; however, all have some similar properties.
