Research and psychoanalysis: A controversial and complex relationship

: The connection between empirical research and clinical practice in the psychoanalytic area, as an approach where the psychoanalytic procedure and its results get objectified, continues to be controversial. Even if it is not so frequent, the significance of giving emphasis to the psychoanalytic areas in research, is evident through the literature review, as the benefits are supported to be many and substantial. To begin with, the empirical research is necessary in order for the psychoanalytic clinical theory to be strengthened in a wider scientifically accepted way and further developed, through the evaluation and the confirmation of what it entreats.3 Moreover, there is an important need of wide research, in order to evaluate the efficacy of the therapeutic techniques, as psychoanalytic therapeutic approaches are frequently adjudged incompetent and they are not form an option of the treatment of many psychiatric and emotional disorders, mainly because of the lack of findings concerning their efficacy. It is a fact though, that research in psychoanalytic areas cannot be conducted in the same way that can be conducted in different clinical interventions. It is essential to be conducted within the epistemological and theoretical environment that the psychoanalysis itself establishes, with main purpose -avoiding every objectification- the subjectification through intersubjectivity. On the other side, both the psychoanalytic thought and the psychoanalytic procedure, have proved to be significantly useful for the conduct of qualitative research and for the understating both of research findings and the way the research itself was carried out. The contribution of the psychoanalytic thought is highly important for the understanding of how the social data are being organized and constructed, as the unconscious has a crucial role in the construction of reality and in the way we perceive others and as a result in the construction of research data and the research environment. In addition, in the field of psycho-social research, the researcher is perceived to be himself part and the data and of the research procedure, as he always got influenced by the dynamics of the people or the group that he studies, operating himself as a "projective surface".