ABSTRACT
This chapter is drawn from PhD research into the emotional experiences of servicemen’s wives, whose repeated relocation, particularly overseas, involves numerous losses. It focuses on the psychoanalytic concept of countertransference, defined as “the whole of the analyst’s unconscious reactions to the individual analysand”. The chapter considers how countertransference may usefully inform the reflexivity required of psycho-social researchers, drawing particularly from the notion of “total counter-transference”. Meanwhile, the idea of researchers remaining emotionally aloof from respondents was also being challenged. Consequently, the traditional neglect within sociological research of the often irrational feelings that influence all of us has begun to be replaced by the utilization of researchers’ subjectivity. Similarly, researchers who pay attention to what is going on inside them, especially to anything unusual, may discover that a respondent has communicated something of how they feel without actually verbalizing it.
