What is conceptual research in psychoanalysis?

Abstract

The development of psychoanalysis as a science and clinical practice has always relied heavily on various forms of conceptual research. Thus, conceptual research has clarified, formulated and reformulated psychoanalytic concepts permitting to better shape the findings emerging in the clinical setting. By enhancing clarity and explicitness in concept usage it has facilitated the integration of existing psychoanalytic thinking as well as the development of new ways of looking at clinical and extraclinical data. Moreover, it has offered conceptual bridges to neighbouring disciplines particularly interested in psychoanalysis, e.g. philosophy, sociology, aesthetics, history of art and literature, and more recently cognitive science/neuroscience. In the present phase of psychoanalytic pluralism, of worldwide scientific communication among psychoanalysts irrespective of language differences and furthermore of an intensifying dialogue with other disciplines, the relevance of conceptual research is steadily increasing. Yet, it still often seems insufficiently clear how conceptual research can be differentiated from clinical and empirical research in psychoanalysis. Therefore, the Subcommittee for Conceptual Research of the IPA presents some of its considerations on the similarities and the differences between various forms of clinical and extraclinical research, their specific aims, quality criteria and thus their specific chances as well as their specific limitations in this paper. Examples taken from six issues of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis in 2002-3 serve as illustrations for seven different subtypes of conceptual research.

Conceptual research in tourism

“…Simon (1969) defines empirical research as "that which obtains knowledge from first-hand observations or experimentation as well as the re-examination of data collected by 4 others" (p.6). Some scholars consider conceptual research as opposite to empirical research (Bowen and Sparks, 1998;Gagnon, 1982;Schwab, 1999;Weibelzahl and Weber, 2002) whilst others hold different opinions (Dreher, 2000(Dreher, , 2003Leuzinger-Bohleber, 2004;Leuzinger-Bohleber and Fischmann, 2006). Of course concepts are central to each of the four major research paradigms -positivism, post-positivism, interpretivism and criticalism but for brevity we will clarify the epistemological and ontological issues of conceptual research in relation to the two main traditions of objectivism and subjectivism.…”

“…Elsewhere, conceptual research is found to be one of the three most used research methods in Information System Studies, but researchers report a lack of codified principles and procedures (Mora, Gelman, Paradice and Cervantes, 2008). Furthermore, Leuzinger-Bohleber and Fischmann (2006) indicate that the quality criteria for conceptual research have not been clearly defined.…”

“…Kuhn also did not envisage that conceptualisation could be independent of empiricism in the creation of knowledge. Consequently under objectivism conceptualisation is seen as a tool for gaining knowledge about a subject rather than a concept being the subject of the research itself (Leuzinger-Bohleber and Fischmann, 2006).…”

“…According to Schwandt (1994), the concern here is with issues of knowing and being rather than with issues of method. In this sense conceptual research, according to Leuzinger-Bohleber and Fischmann (2006) "is not defined by a method but by a topic"(p.1375). Alexander's argument for "theoretical methodology" further supports the case for conceptual research:…”

“…Young (1995) proposes that an important defining parameter of conceptual research is its attempt to systematically clarify concepts. It is generally used to develop new concepts or to reinterpret existing ones (Kothari, 2008;Leuzinger-Bohleber and Fischmann, 2006). That means conceptual research makes the concepts themselves the objects of the research, 8 investigating the origin, meaning and use of concepts as well as their evolution over time or in other contexts (Wallerstein, 2009).…”