A Celebration of Research and Its Development
When I was asked to write something special for this ‘Jubilee Edition’, I went on a mental journey through philosophy. The philosophy of science to be precise. Reflecting on paradigms, science, psychotherapy, methodologies and methods, I concluded that research methods have developed further, since Freud published his first scientific observations more than one century ago. Even though objectivity is still crucial, and researchers perceive themselves as separate from their participants, experiments are no longer that important in the social sciences. Some quantitative researchers also acknowledge observational bias. Nevertheless, observation and measurement, used to test hypotheses and to make predictions, are core features of the positivist paradigm. The Positivists developed a scientific conception of the world in opposition to dominant naïve superstitious or religious beliefs prior to Enlightenment. Therefore, the philosophy of science, the identification of philosophy with the logic of science, became very important. However, several social scientists have become disenchanted with positivism and its brothers, logical empiricism and logical positivism. Like other meta-theoretical perspectives, they are situated within epistemology, a higher school of thought.
Epistemology, the theory of knowledge, attempts to explain how we understand the external world, objects and human interaction. Dominating Western philosophy since the era of Decartes and Locke, epistemology became a long dispute between rationalists (Descates, Leibniz, Spinoza) and empiricists (Hobbes, Berkeley, Locke, Hume).
Disagreement included as to whether knowledge is derived from reason or sense perception. Philosophers fought over the importance of ‘a priori’ (what is before) and ‘a posteriori’ (what comes after) origins. These are related to analytic propositions (already verified and independent of experience) and synthetic propositions (their verification depends on experience). All wives are married, is an analytic ‘a priori statement’, which expresses ‘a priori knowledge’. We know that ‘wives’ are married, it is implied in the word wife.
Synthetic ‘a posteriori propositions’, such as the statement that ‘all pictures are green’, is not automatically true. Not all pictures are green. So these propositions must be verified.
Many epistemological questions have been debated: what exactly is knowledge and what are the sources and limits of knowing? Is knowledge innate and forms part of our nature as a result of evolutionary selection? Has God provided us with knowledge at creation? Are we are born with knowledge structures? Is reason superior to sense experience? Or is knowledge acquired through intuition, introspection, experience or deduction? Deduction is the process by which we derive conclusions from premises by making valid arguments.
According to Leibniz (1704) innateness meant having a natural potential. He elaborated this in response to Locke’s (1698) challenge as to what exactly innate knowledge was. If you find it difficult to figure out what philosophers are arguing about, you are not alone. Think about it as a large group matrix, where group members are debating. For every argument, there is a counterargument. That is a good thing. Not to accept an argument at face value.
Disagreement and skepticism are born out of reflection and debates. Philosophers also disagreed about the relationship between knowledge, certainty and truth. Is it possible for something to be known without it being certain? Is something that is unknown, uncertain, but true? These are complex questions. Wittgenstein (1997) argued that we can know without being certain and be certain without having knowledge.
Truth is related to ontology. Quantitative researchers, who tend to be realists, believe that only physical things, or material objects, are real. But what is reality? This is the field of ontology, an area of metaphysics. The Greek word ‘metaphysics’ means ‘after physics’. Allegedly, it was coined by an ancient editor, who used this term for books that Aristotle had written and were published after his writing on physics. What on earth does metaphysics then mean?
Well, metaphysics is that branch of philosophy, which concerns itself with existence. What kind of entities exist? It tries to explain reality at the highest level of generalizability. In other words, it wants to explain the structure of reality. So it addresses “what is there?” Or “what is its nature?”
Ontology was neglected due to positivism. The ‘scientific’ overcoming of metaphysics and eclipse of ontology under the logical positivists led to an emphasis on epistemology. You might have guessed, this has been problematized. Adorno and Horkheimer (the Frankfurt School) criticized logical positivists and metaphysics. Foulkes was influenced by this school. So their reasoning that it is impossible to understand the world, society and people without taking into account ideology and context, is pretty much in line with group analytic thinking. That is also a central claim of Critical Theory, which is inextricably linked to the Frankfurt School. Horkheimer, who made anti-positivism a central concern, set the tone of subsequent disagreements in the 1960s.
Metaphysics attempts to establish and discern a universal, eternal, fundamental, unchanging, absolute structure of reality that underlies the totally of being, according to Horkheimer (1999). One drawback is that it directs our attention away from the social problem of this world by focusing us on another, quite illusory world. What is eternity other than illusion? According to scientists at least.
Therefore, Horkheimer advanced materialism as a methodological alternative to metaphysics. His version of materialism neither accepts a final truth, as proclaimed in religious and scientific schools of philosophy, nor does it subscribe to the absurdities of relativistic skepticism, which assumes that there are multiple truths and realities. Instead, truth is decided by the relation of the proposition to reality. Sounds complicated? Let me explain.
Take for example the concept of cancer. It has a precise meaning in the present. While this understanding may change over time and eventually become meaningless, if cancer would be eradicated, at the moment different forms of cancer can be diagnosed. Diagnosis may be correct (true) or incorrect (false). Furthermore, we assess this in relation to the entire knowledge about cancer. So Horkheimer’s non-metaphysical epistemology affirms that there is a truth that correspondents with what is known about cancer. However, not all claims about cancer will be true, hence statements must be evaluated against what is known.
Refuting that absolute ideals exist, which stem from notions of an infinite mind and the concept of God, Horkheimer used dialectic in his thinking. Rather than wanting to gain insight into the ultimate nature of reality, Horkheimer aimed to formulate dialectical conceptualizations of sociohistorical structures that bring together theory and practice. All thinking is historically and materially conditioned, he argued. Thus, Horkheimer was against positivist dogma. Amending concepts if and when required, was important.
Locating the birth of reason in the human desire to dominate nature, Horkheimer (2004) announced the destruction of Western metaphysics, since it is speculative. Viewing philosophy through the lens of history, he remarked that instrumental, subjective reason found its first expression in myth. Then it transformed into metaphysics and ended in science. Just as objective reason dethroned religion by casting doubt on irrational beliefs, so did science (positivism) dethrone metaphysics by casting it as nothing more than idle speculation.
His theorizing draws attention to the impact positivism had. It holds that mental entities are not real, because their existence depends on our thoughts about them. But thoughts cannot exist independently from us. That is the crux of the matter.
Positivism also paved the way for the application of the scientific method to social life. Formulating laws, by identifying causes which are viewed as the basis for prediction and generalization, are its preferred means of establishing knowledge. That is why empirical testing is so important. Random samples and controlled variables (randomized controlled trials) are thought to produce reliable (repeatable), and valid (robust) knowledge.
Group analysts were not as enthusiastic as behaviorists to embrace logical positivism, a refined variant of positivism. Humanistic and existential psychotherapists are also critical of quantitative approaches. Dalal (2015, 2023) challenged statistical methods, particularly how results are presented. He applied Goldacre’s arguments when critiquing randomized controlled trials and CBT. Goldacre (2012) highlighted research flaws and criticized the pharma industry and statistics.
Actually, this long tradition of testing drugs by giving them only to white males, is rather disconcerting. Neither their efficacy nor their effectiveness had been demonstrated for females or other ethnic populations. That everybody would benefit from medication was nevertheless assumed. Drugs, trialed on men, were therefore prescribed to all people. In addition to dodgy interpretation of findings, we encounter problematic ethical and medical practices. A drug may be harmful for women or an Asian person. Just because males improve when taking a certain medication does not mean that generalizations are warranted. White men are not representative of the entire species of human beings. Thankfully, feminist researchers have also contributed to achieving more scientifically robust and morally accepted practices.
Furthermore, statistics and probabilities are not the sine qua ultra. Of course, statisticians are aware of the arbitrariness of ρ-values, which decide whether a result is significant or not (Vickers, 2010). If you wonder why a difference of ρ ≤ 0.05 is statistically significant, well, because the scientific community reached an agreement that it was. Does not sound too scientific, does it?
Nevertheless, the quantitative paradigm is still the gold standard. Its underlying philosophical position is based on positivism and post-positivism. I do not particularly like the term ‘post-positivism’, it is a bit imprecise. Of course, everything after Comte, the founder of positivism, is ‘post’. But this label is problematic due to implicit assumptions that positivism no longer exists. Linguistically, the word ‘post’ suggests a sequential timeline, with a start and end point. Otherwise, it would not be called after. However, positivism has not ended in the sense that beliefs that originated in the 19th century were discarded. At least not all of them. So viewing positivism and post-positivism on a continuum is more precise.
Aspiration to be scientific and to empirically test hypotheses remain important in the social sciences. Randomized controlled trials would not be at the top in the research hierarchy, if positivism had ceased to exist. The implied death of positivism is erroneous considering that we often encounter the word positivism often when reading quantitative research articles. There is a caveat. This term has been equated with science as such. I do not wish to sound pedantic, but strictly speaking, this is an unwarranted generalization. Positivism was developed further by Popper and emerged as post-positivism. That is what people mean when they talk about positivism and science.
Popper (2002) did not accept that induction was science. Instead, he argued that statements, hypotheses and theories must be falsifiable. Deduction (what is commonly called the hypothetico-deductive model), produces scientific knowledge. While post-positivism acknowledges that not everything is knowable, only results from correlational and (quasi-) experimental methods are reliable and valid, according to the scientific method (Levitt, 2016). Modern science likes to refer to this evidence as ‘facts’.
(Post-)Positivism differs from idealism and the relativist, qualitative paradigm. Hegel, who was a German idealist, held that the ultimate structure of reality can be revealed in thought. Idealism points out that we can think about an object or a person. Then their mental representations are real. In other words, we do not have to see objects or people in front of us, they can exist independently of our perception.
I have noticed that views about research methods in the social sciences are no longer as rigid as they were in decades ago. Plurality has been embraced. It is reflected in mixed methods, which rest on various philosophical assumptions, including critical realism. It holds that an independent reality exists, but it accepts data as knowledge that is not derived from sense experiences.
What are mixed methods? A combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches. You can combine a quantitative survey with a qualitative method by including open-ended questions in the questionnaire, for example. Answers may be analyzed by using Thematic Analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006). It is an apt qualitative method that relies on a step-by-step approach to systematically analyze data. There are different versions of Thematic Analysis. Reflexive thematic analysis might even be regarded as a methodology. It has been elaborated by Braun and Clarke. Qualitative methods have become more trustworthy (valid). They also rely on standardized procedures. Clarke and Braun (2019) have devised a checklist to assess the quality of research and manuscripts. Thematic analysis is a flexible method, because it is not aligned with a particular philosophy. Hence, it is suitable for realist, critical realist and constructionist researchers. Constructionism assumes that reality and knowledge are constructed.
Other approaches also enable a combination of methods. Less popular, but also useful when examining consensus of social policies, is the Delpi method (Adler and Ziglo, 1996).
Numerous qualitative methods exist. Grounded Theory can be used to develop new theories. While theories are the starting point in the quantitative paradigm from which hypotheses are derived and tested, Grounded Theory works the other way round. It is suited when theory is lacking.
Ideally, the researcher has no theoretical knowledge of the topic of interest, according to Glaser and Strauss (1967). Let me give you an example. Suitable participants are chosen from your group and interviewed. Through semi-structured, in-depth interviews, concrete episodes and narratives about group therapy can be obtained by analyzing the recorded transcripts line-by-line. Meaning units and/or codes are then generated. They are compared with each other and across individuals, which then form categories. Summaries of relations between all meaning units/categories are stored as memos. These are used to devise a theoretical model, an overarching framework or a theory.
A comprehensive model of therapeutic action, elucidating positive and negative experiences in the group, was generated by Johansson and Werbart (2009).
Over the past thirty years, many new qualitative methods have been developed or refined. They range from narrative approaches to political action research. Queer research has established its place. Cyber ethnographies have been used by Ashord (2009) to explore online sexual communities. Virtual research has gained prominence. Facebook, dating and other websites lend themselves to text analyses. Surveys can be easily conducted via the internet. More and more approaches have gained prominence even in analytic circles. Innovative research tools exist to examine dialogues in dyads and interactions in groups.
Thus, the case study is no longer the only method par excellence in contemporaneous psychodynamic research that pays close attention to idiographic descriptions. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (Smith, 1996; Smith et al., 2022) also focuses on the idiographic level, which includes any specific event or situation.
Known also as IPA, it has been refined and several variants have been developed. It is more of a perspective from which to approach the data analysis than a distinct method. IPA aims to produce a coherent, third person description, which captures the participant’s view as exactly as possible. Additionally, an interpretative analysis that situates descriptions in a wider context, is its goal. The researcher’s accounts should offer a commentary on the personal, sense-making activities of the participants. Interpretations may be informed by theory. Ultimately, patterns of meaning are developed into themes.
Another crucial aspect of IPA is phenomenology as theorized by Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Gadamer and Sartre. Phenomenology is the philosophical study of consciousness and structures of experiences (perception, imagination, thought, emotion, action, volition, desire). Etymologically, the term ‘phenomenology’ stems from the Greekwords φαινόμενον (that which appears) and λόγος (study). Phenomenology seeks to understand the outside world as it is interpreted by and through human consciousness. Phenomenology can also be used on its own without conducting an IPA study.
The purpose of the phenomenological approach is to illuminate the specific, to identify phenomena through how they are perceived (Moustakas, 1994). Epistemologically, phenomenological research is concerned with personal knowledge and subjectivity. Primarily, it seeks to describe rather than to explain or interpret. It attempts to be without preconceptions and therefore ‘brackets’ usual ways of perceiving. A phenomenological method can make voices heard, bring to the fore the experiences and perceptions of an individual from her/his own perspective, as well as reveal deep issues. Conversations, interviews, participant observation, focus groups and personal texts can be examined. The resulting data is aggregated and organized with mind maps, or entered into a database according to analysis headings.
Phenomenological studies offer detailed accounts of individual situations, which do not lend themselves to direct generalization. While the summary of findings may involve some conjecture in deciding what to select, its main function is to describe, according to Moustakas.
The father of phenomenology, Husserl, was critical of objectivism. His epistemological system aimed to give an exact description of the phenomenon of intentionality. It is a feature of conscious mental states. Consciousness is directed toward some object, thing or person. Hence, it is intentional. Consciousness constitutes us and means being conscious of something. Philosophy should renounce theory and concentrate on the things ‘given directly’ in consciousness, Husserl stated.
Such givenness is a theoretical construct, Heidegger objected. His philosophy centred on existence and ontology. Trying to answer what exists, philosophers do not question existence per se, Heidegger argued. Metaphysical questions rest on the assumption that we already know what ‘to exist’ means. When asking whether a particular kind of mind, God or entity exist, we take existence for granted.
In contrast to Husserl, who neglected ontology and was more concerned with epistemology, Heidegger problematized that philosophy had disregarded the meaning of ‘Sein’ (being, existence). For him, the method of ontology is phenomenology. Being is to be grasped by it. Therefore, Heidegger prioritized ontology over epistemology. He criticized the tradition of Western philosophy since Plato, which he regarded as nihilistic. Because it had obliterated the question of Sein, Heidegger argued that epistemology expressed a reductionistic ontology, because it reduces all Sein to mere presence and then forces all knowledge to conform to this.
Heidegger’s investigation of the meaning of Sein is concerned with the ontological difference between being (Sein) and beings (entities). To examine this distinction, Heidegger draws on the notion of Dasein (being there, being in the world). He conceives phenomenology as a theoretical enterprise that starts from ordinary experience. Attentive and sensitive examinations of this experience aim to reveal the ‘a priori’, transcendental conditions that shape and structure experience. However, the goal of phenomenology is also interpretation of being, of existence and entities (beings). In line with Gadamer, Heidegger postulated that phenomenology is not only transcendental but also hermeneutic. Inevitably, interpretation is influenced by a historically embedded notion of Sein, in other words by preconditions. A cycle of interpretation and re-interpretation may generate comprehension of existing, of being in the world and of beings.
Heidegger also pointed out that we have been ‘thrown into this world’. He writes about Befindlichkeit. It is a ‘thereness’, which includes a state-of-mind and receptiveness. Having already been situated in the world, we find things that matter. That disposition manifests itself in moods (Stimmung). It can be a sombre and gloomy place when somebody is depressed. Shifting oneself out of this mood results in entering another mood, which will reveal the world differently.
Moods are not inner subjective colourings laid over an objectively given world. For Heidegger, they are aspects of what it means to be in our world at all. So a mood neither arises from the outside nor from inside, but from Being-in-the-world. Furthermore, moods are culturally conditioned, because Being-in-the-world involves cultural embeddedness. Hence, psychiatric illness can be understood as culturally affected existential feelings.
Both Husserl and Heidegger argued that humans are not separate from reality. People are a fundamental part of a meaningful world and vice versa. Consequently, human beings can only be understood by considering their involvement with the lifeworld. That we cannot remove ourselves from the world, systems of meaning, and our thoughts to definitely find out how how/what these really are, is an implication. Distinctions between object and subject are therefore superfluous.
In philosophy, the term ‘lifeworld’ refers to how we gain knowledge of the world. Lifeworld is more than just our environment. It includes our experiences of the world, how we interpret it and how it presents itself in consciousness. For Husserl, lifeworld was the foundation and horizon of possibilities of all experience, the source of all knowledge. While the world is perceived as given and real, and presents itself to consciousness as natural, the lifeworld is at the same time subjective and relational.
The transcendental phenomenology of Husserl is predicated on reduction and bracketing. This means that we must suspend claims about existence when making sense of our world. Husserl developed the method of bracketing, epoché. To understand experiences, bracketing our own assumptions is vital to qualitative analyses, because our own beliefs should not guide interviews and findings. Whether this is possible is another question. Humanistic and feminist researchers have argued otherwise.
Phenomenological and transcendental reduction are distinguishing characteristics of Husserl’s approach. Through transcendental reduction, we can discover our transcendental ego (self-experience, experience of the other and others). The transcendental ego differs from our empirical ego, which assumes that it exists in the real world.
Discovery of the transcendental ego occurs within the sphere of all possible experiences. To establish these, the ‘irreal’, transcendental ego must perform a phenomenological analysis of the involved cogitatum in order to explicate meaning of self and others. The cogitatum is the object that exist within the thinking/considering of a thing.
Husserl re-conceptualized the categories of ‘fact’ and ‘essence’. Contrasting ‘immanence’ with ‘transcendence’, he highlighted that the most basic foundations of knowledge are constituted by conscious acts. The possibility of separate others within our consciousness offers the basis for intersubjectivity, which co-exists along subjectivity within the deepest level of experience. This means that knowledge can be obtained through processes of consciousness. Nothing is ever revealed without consciousness.
Truth was important to Husserl and Heidegger. Are they realists? Do they assume that that an entity is independent of the world itself? While both acknowledge that the being of this entity can only be explained in its encounter and interpretation of its structures, the nature of an observed object will place constraints on what can be revealed. Furthermore, since we are thrown into a human world that already exists, we encounter subjects, objects, systems and engage with them through rational reflection. So there is a touch of realism in Heidegger. Critical of empiricism, Husserl was nevertheless not entirely opposed to the importance of representations of physical objects either. And consciousness itself must exist before it can function as the primal region that establishes access to the world.
However, both Husserl and Heidegger are not realists. They are more akin to idealism, which is also opposed to materialism. It is the metaphysical thesis that everything in the world is the result of thought (either human, God, or a similar transcendent entity). Immaterial minds, either infinite (God’s) or finite (humans), are regarded as ‘real’ entities. Of course, when you kick a stone, this is not only a thought. However, idealists insist that the world would ‘only appear to be’ as it is. So their ‘real’ differs. Apparently material objects can be understood as reducible to states of minds or to ideas. If you are interested in their debates, you can read volumes of theoretical arguments. But remember that not all translations are as good as the original. Some words cannot be translated. This is why misunderstandings and misconceptions occur. If you wonder why I have written so much about phenomenology, well, philosophical assumptions are crucial to IPA.
IPA can offer us valuable insight into lived experience. In psychotherapy research, an interpretative approach can be employed to explore how socio-economic and political contexts impact on mental health. Contextualized understanding of experiences may be used to make sense of complex (inter)subjectivities.
Nowadays, there are many methodologies and methods to choose from when conducting studies. Why are qualitative methods important? Quantitative methodologies have limits. They can tell us about cause and effect. But they cannot capture the intricacies of human interaction and provide us with an in-depth understanding of experience. And experiences are subjective. We encounter tricky epistemological and ontological dilemmas.
Thus, we have to decide which philosophical position we adopt, because it impacts on methodology and methods. How do we understand truth and knowledge? Can we think of truth as corresponding to reality? Is there only ‘one scientific’ truth or are there multiple truths? How do we acquire knowledge and what do we accept as valid knowledge? Do we perceive the mind as a series of events, as Foulkes suggested, or can it be equated with the brain?
Then there is determinism. Is our behavior determined by un/conscious forces? Should we assume the operation of the principle of cause and effect? To what extent does behavior depend on reason, because we can also think logically?
Have you ever wondered why so many subscribe to Western doctrines? Historians argued that choices are not made according to evidence. They are based on accepted (social) values. Whatever the reasons may be, many assumptions influence our choice of paradigm, methodology and methods. Issues about science are not settled and science has also been regarded as a social activity. How did those fundamental changes come about?
Kuhn (1962) wrote that paradigms change when the scientific community is no longer satisfied with explanations and theory. Perhaps this is why social scientists do not cling to the quantitative paradigm as they used to. Critical reactions to (logical) positivism have rendered the philosophy of science less important when Feyerabend (1975) challenged their accounts. They are inadequate to explain the major transitions that have occurred in the history of the sciences, he argued. If we seek a methodological rule that will explain all of the historical episodes that philosophers of science tend to celebrate, then the best candidate is ‘anything goes’. In other words, relativism. Even though this is an extremely provocative claim, the very concepts of scientific progress and rationality have also been questioned by others. So we do not have to be a relativist to criticize these concepts.
Must scientific progress comprise an accumulation of truth? What if the basis is wrong? Replacing or developing new paradigms makes sense, considering that there is no definitive answer to ‘what counts as knowledge, truth and reality’. Perhaps that is why there is more diversity in the social sciences. Many different journals publish only qualitative research. This is a more recent trend. It is also noticeable in psychotherapy.
Once criticized for their resistance towards carrying out research, I have found qualitative and quantitative studies in Group Analysis. However, the ‘scientific’ study of the world and others (positivism) is also prevalent. Quantitative practice is apparent in manualized mentalization-based group therapy. Used to treat borderline personality disorders, it has been researched by Karterud (2015). So group analysts are not opposed to research. Their professional identities are not compromised when they engage in research. Not too long ago, such anxiety had been expressed at a conference where the survival of Group Analysis had been discussed.
Fear about the unknown world of research seems to have subsided since then. That is progress, or not? It seems to me that methodological incommensurability has been overcome not only by mixed methods but by our group analytic ‘both/and’ approach. Food for thought until the next paradigm shift will occur.
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