Reflexive Research and Grounding of Analysis: Psychology and the Psy-complex

Abstract

This chapter is concerned with reflexivity in research and the way research is grounded in the operations of the psy-complex in psychology. A central argument is that qualitative research in general, and a focus on reflexivity in particular, requires theoretical grounding. Distinctions are drawn between ‘uncomplicated subjectivity’, ‘blank subjectivity’ and ‘complex subjectivity’, and the analytic device of the ‘discursive complex’ is described. It is argued that such theoretical grounding can usefully draw on developments in discourse analytic, deconstructionist and psychoanalytic social research. The opposition between objectivity and subjectivity is deconstructed, and psychoanalytic conceptual reference points for an understanding of the discursive construction of complex subjectivity in the context of institutions are explored with particular reference to the location of the researcher in the psy-complex. This is a crucial question for discourse analysts as they describe ‘discourses’ that sometimes appear to be external to them but which are a function of the position they take toward language (Burman, 1992a, 1992b); it also bears upon the deeper question as to how theoretical accounts of subjectivity can be used to track the movement of discourse itself (Pavón-Cuéllar and Parker, 2013).