ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines some of the methodological developments and draws upon the experiences of a group of researchers and doctoral students based around the Centre for Psycho-Social Studies at the University of the West of England. It explores the emergence of psycho-social research in the human sciences, its origins, aims, and, in particular, the innovations that have been made in methods of data generation and data analysis. Since the 1990s, partly due to the impact of feminism, the social sciences have begun to change. Traditional models of human rationality, which opposed reason to passion, are being challenged. Psycho-social studies is an emergent perspective, the exact contours of which necessarily remain indeterminate at present. Joffe proposes a psychodynamic extension to social representational theory, using empirically derived research data to demonstrate the explanatory power of psychoanalytic concepts such as splitting and projection.
