Reflective-verbal language and reverie in a qualitative interview (original) (raw)

A Method of Phenomenological Interviewing

Qualitative Health Research, 2014

In this article I propose a method of interviewing for descriptive phenomenological research that offers an explicit, theoretically based approach for researchers. My approach enables application of descriptive phenomenology as a total method for research, and not one just focused on data analysis. This structured phenomenological approach to interviewing applies questions based on themes of experience contextualization, apprehending the phenomenon and its clarification. The method of questioning employs descriptive and structural questioning as well as novel use of imaginative variation to explore experience. The approach will help researchers understand how to undertake descriptive phenomenological research interviews.

Interpreting language used in reflective practice

Reflective Practice, 2007

This paper demonstrates the developmental complexities of reflective practice and the potential for insightful transformation through the use of a reflective journal in post-graduate studies. When faced with a reflective assignment brief to select a subject of my choice and expand on it reflectively, I realized interpreting the very language I used in the journal developed the superficial and descriptive accounts into more useful depth. The paper is divided into two parts using Gadamerian hermeneutic phenomenology and Barthesian semiotics applied to postgraduate reflective text from my real world clinical nursing experiences. The reflective process discusses the transpositions taking place in my mind, how self-knowledge and self-deceit parallel real experiences with language-in-use.

Conversation analysis and psychoanalysis: Interpretation, affect, and intersubjectivity

In this chapter, 1 I will use conversation analysis to explore some themes that are central in the clinical theory and practice of psychoanalysis. These themes include interpretation (which is a central theme in classical psychoanalytic theory), and affect and intersubjectivity (which are central themes in some contemporary psychoanalytic discussions). I will discuss these themes using two kinds of empirical material: clinical notes arising from my own psychoanalytic practice, and transcribed materials coming from a corpus of fifty-eight tape recorded psychoanalytic sessions collected by Sanna Vehviläinen and myself. Clinical notes involve the traditional method of representing interaction in psychoanalysis. The aim of the chapter is to show how the conversation analysis of tape recorded material can radically expand our understanding of the key practices of psychoanalysis. In theoretical and methodological terms, this chapter draws upon the idea of " professional stocks of interactional knowledge " (SIKs). We (Peräkylä & Vehviläinen, 2003) have proposed that professions dealing with clients have their specific stocks of knowledge which describe and prescribe the professional interactions. We suggested that conversation analysis should enter into dialogue with such SIKs; this chapter is one effort towards such a dialogue (see also Forrester & Reason, 2006).

Facilitating phenomenological interviewing by means of reflexology

Curationis, 2005

The aim of this article is to show how reflexology could facilitate phenomenological interviewing by probing the lifeworld of individual participants. It presents a hybrid study of phenomenological interviewing and reflexology as a holistic method of health care. In this sense, it is an interparadigmatic study, since it rests on the interface of Western and Oriental thought. This article reports on seven cases which were included in the qualitative, empirical investigation. During the sessions, reflexological readings served as impetus for inquiry into the experiences of the participants, as congestions on reflex points and along meridians were interpreted in terms of physical organs and functions. These readings were related to corresponding emotions as accepted within the reflexology paradigm. It was, however, up to the participants to inform the researcher of events and/or circumstances that caused the emotions. Thus, nonverbal data communicated information that facilitated verba...

Framing a phenomenological interview: what, why and how

Research in phenomenology has benefitted from using exceptional cases from pathology and expertise. But exactly how are we to generate and apply knowledge from such cases to the phenomenological domain? As researchers of cerebral palsy and musical absorption, we together answer the how question by pointing to the resource of the qualitative interview. Using the qualitative interview is a direct response to Varela's call for better pragmatics in the methodology of phenomenology and cognitive science and Gallagher's suggestion for phenomenology to develop its methodology and out-source its tasks. We agree with their proposals, but want to develop them further by discussing and proposing a general framework that can integrate research paradigms of the well-established disciplines of phenomenological philosophy and qualitative science. We give this the working title, a Bphenomenological interview^. First we describe the what of the interview, that is the nature of the interview in which one encounters another subject and generates knowledge of a given experience together with this other subject. In the second part, we qualify why it is worthwhile making the time-consuming effort to engage in a phenomenological interview. In the third and fourth parts, we in general terms discuss how to conduct the interview and the subsequent phenomeno-logical analysis, by discussing the pragmatics of Vermersch's and Petitmengin's BExplicitation Interview^.

First-Person Research An Analysis Procedure for the Micro- Phenomenological Interview

Constructivist Foundation, 2019

> Context • The advent of the embodied approach to cognition produced a paradigm shift giving experience a primary place in the different fields of inquiry. This gave rise to the need to develop methodologies for the study of experience from a first-person perspective. In this context, micro-phenomenology emerges as a methodological tool that allows the study of experience in a systematic and rigorous way. > Problem • To reproduce and share the micro-phenomenological analysis-crucial for the intersubjective validation of micro-phenomenological research-it is relevant to have a procedure that allows us to trace the different steps of the analysis. As many of the stages of the micro-phenomenological analysis remain implicit, a step-by-step description has not yet been produced. We describe the procedure of analysis of the micro-phenomenological interview, step by step, thus complementing the micro-phenomenological analysis method. > Method • In order to specify the analysis procedure, we used the micro-phenomenological interview to explore our experience of abstracting, developing the example of an analysis carried out in the context of a specific investigation. > Results • We propose an analysis procedure organized in a concertina shaped structure. It has fifteen stages organized into five sections. Each surface of the concertina corresponds to one stage of the analysis. We identified grouping as an abstraction operation that participates in the very early stages of the categorization process. This operation participates in the categorization mechanism we called "itera-tive interrogation." Moreover, we propose that the refinement of the structures results from a process that involves recursively contrasting the description of the experience, the understanding we have gained from it throughout the analysis and the resulting structures. > Implications • The proposed procedure allows the tracing not only of the different steps of the analysis, but also of the criteria used to solve the numerous issues that arise throughout it. The iterative interrogation mechanism makes it possible to reveal, in an orderly manner, the principles used by the analyst to establish the diachronic and synchronic units. This greatly facilitates the communication of a process that is highly implicit. We hope this procedure will contribute to the establishment of standards in micro-phenom-enological research, facilitating the exchange between researchers and thus consolidating the intersubjective validation procedures that make it possible to evaluate the quality of neuro-and micro-phenomenological research. > Constructivist content • The present article proposes a concrete procedure to trace the researchers' criteria in the process of building generic structures of experience. This procedure facilitates the inclusion of the researcher's subjective stance in the construction of knowledge. > Key words • Micro-phenomenology, neurophenomenology, explicita-tion interview, iterative interrogation, first-person research, embodied approach, categorization, experience, synthesis process.

The lived experience of remembering a ‘good’ interview: Micro-phenomenology applied to itself

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences

Micro-phenomenology is an interview and analysis method for investigating subjective experience. As a research tool, it provides detailed descriptions of brief moments of any type of subjective experience and offers techniques for systematically comparing them. In this article, we use an auto-ethnographic approach to present and explore the method. The reader is invited to observe a dialogue between two authors that illustrates and comments on the planning, conducting and analysis of a pilot series of five micro-phenomenological interviews. All these interviews asked experienced researchers of micro-phenomenology to browse their memories to identify one successful and one challenging instance of working with micro-phenomenology. The interview then focused on this reflective task to investigate whether applying the method to itself might reveal quality criteria. The article starts by presenting a shortened and edited version of the first of these interviews. Keeping the dialogue form...

Language & Life: Being a Person in Therapy

Bachelor's thesis, University of Southern Denmark, 2019

This research paper examines the way individuals bring forth their 'self' by using narration in dialogic interactions with other individuals, situated in the setting of psychotherapy. Using theories by Per Linell, Barbara Johnstone, M. M. Bakhtin and others, I will show that the individual self is markedly present in these interactions. I focus on the psychotherapeutic 'client' character as the main object of the analysis but introduce the concept of being a "person-in-therapy" in order to avoid reducing the unique individual's personhood to being a 'client' or a 'patient'. This resonates with the presented conviction that personhood, or the self, is a process that is constructed through dialogic interactions (Linell, 2009, inter alios). The considered data consists of therapist and person-in-therapy conversations and originates from the research project "The Ecology of Psychotherapy: Integrating Cognition, Language, and Emotion," located at Centre of Human Interactivity, Institute of Language and Communication at University of Southern Denmark. The data will be presented as transcriptions and I will carry out a "thematic content" analysis (Bakhtin, 1986) in order to investigate the content of the utterances created within therapeutic sessions and how these disclosures are connected to the bringing forth of the individual and narrative self. I will show how the genre of therapy grants its participants entrance a metaphysical 'space' in which the mundane constraints of the everyday are relaxed and the intimate talk that follows this process. I will also show a person-in-therapy being moved to discover her own self assisted by prompts made by the therapist and how her experience of narrating a past event triggers a (re)emergence of suppressed feelings. I will conclude that by relaxing the constraints of the mundane interaction, therapy becomes a 'space' where persons-in-therapy can examine their own experiences and attitudes and how this layered behaviour acts as a reflection of the narrative self that they have presented in their dialogical interactions with the therapists.