UNCORRECTED PROOF Psychoanalysis and qualitative psychology: complementary or contradictory paradigms? Nick Midgley AQ1 AQ2 Qualitative Research in Psychology 2006; 3: 1 Á 19 Key words: AQ3 Introduction: the place of psychoanalysis within qualitative psychology Psychoanalysis Á perhaps appropriately Á has a fairly ambiguous status within the field of qualitative research. If you browse through a range of textbooks on qualitative approaches to research in psychology, in which ‘brand name’ methodologies, such as grounded theory and discourse analysis, are regularly introduced, one rarely finds a chapter describing a ‘psychoanalytic ap- proach’ to qualitative research; while major reviews of methodological issues, such as Handbook of qualitative research by Denzin and Lincoln (2000), often make no reference to psychoanalysis at all. Where psychoanalysis is referred to, it is often with a degree of animosity or suspi- cion. Indeed, certain approaches to qualita- tive psychology have defined themselves by their very differences with psychoanalysis. Much of the emancipatory impulse of early ‘new paradigm’ research, for example, set itself in opposition to ‘orthodox’ Freudian psychoanalysis, which was often seen as theory-driven and politically conservative. In arguing for a new way of engaging with people when doing research, authors such as Heron (1981) rejected the traditional model of the researcher as an authority figure investigating a passive ‘subject’, in favour of a model of co-operative inquiry, in which participants in research are respected as co-researchers, actively and openly in- volved in the inquiry side of the research; and the aim of such research was often to ‘give voice’ to marginalized groups who had frequently not been heard before. Within such a model, psychoanalysis was often criticized for maintaining an unequal power Correspondence: AQ4 # 2006 Edward Arnold (Publishers) Ltd 10.1191/1478088706qp065oa Y:/Arnold/QP/articles/QP065OA/QP065OA.3d[x] Wednesday, 24th May 2006 19:51:8 Qualitative Research in Psychology 2006; 3: 1 Á 19 www.QualResearchPsych.com