EDITORIAL
Why publish the qualitative research in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis?
Dear reader,
This editorial officially ends my participation as one of the editors of the Journal over the past four years. My intention was to make a retrospective evaluation of our accomplishments; however, I will limit myself to only two aspects.
Firstly, I would like to leave a simple message of encouragement for all our colleagues who dedicate themselves to the study of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis to produce and keep spreading the scientific knowledge through Revista de Psiquiatria do Rio Grande do Sul.
Today, we can hardly find a scientist who believes in the absolutely neutral distance between researchers and their research object and also in a single method to acquire knowledge. There are several difficulties to do researches and publish them. What can be seen is a tendency of each discipline to seek its own methods of data acquisition and result verification, as is done by clinical psychiatry and neuroscience. In this sense, psychotherapy and psychoanalysis (included here as a psychotherapy) must find and/or define their own research methodology, and not just try to adapt themselves to methods developed by other sciences. A frequent example of this practice is the frustrated attempt to apply standard research instruments, which are used in a cold and concrete manner, in an attempt to investigate, using quantitative methodology, themes that, due to their subjective nature, are probably better adapted to a qualitative methodology.
Thus, we might ask ourselves: is it possible to objectively research the unconscious, which can only be known through subjective and, at the same time, private experience, as in the therapeutic relationship? Moreover, the scientific rigor may sound too limiting, since the conclusions of a research always tend to be modest, in contrast with the descriptive, almost literary richness of clinical reports to which we are used. In this sense, as Fonagy, a psychoanalyst and researcher, says, the empiric fact sounds boring compared to our clinical reports, which are so evocative.
Although several current researches still have their own criteria to measure tendencies for psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic result and process, the information exchange has increased a great deal, with groups working in South and North America - as well as in Europe - mainly in German and England -, involved in the microscopic study of the moment-to-moment interaction of the intersubjective interaction process in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, in each session or in small session segments.
Therefore, I see a great scientific usefulness in the practical application of the qualitative methodology, which, through content analysis, may be used in the conceptual, empirical and clinical research and consequently observe tendencies, serving as the basis for further investigations and the promotion of knowledge. More recently, researchers from different origins, including our region, using the qualitative methodology, have been increasing their participation in the main international journals, by publishing the results of researches produced in the academic environment or outside it, which should serve as a stimulus for other researchers in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis to submit their studies and researches for publication in the Revista de Psiquiatria do Rio Grande do Sul.
Secondly, but not least important, I would like to register that my honorable and challenging work as an Editor of Revista de Psiquiatria do Rio Grande do Sul, which I shared with César Brito and Flávio Shansis over the past two administrations, ends with the feeling of having fulfilled my duty in the best possible manner. In accordance with the editors and counselors who preceded us, I also wish that those who will succeed me will do it with total dedication, thus achieving complete success in the task of guiding the new directions of our Journal. Nothing we accomplished would have been possible without this continuity and common objectives that unite us as psychiatrists in the task of creating a constantly better, modern journal with a high scientific level, today renowned within national and international communities. During these years, I had the opportunity to work with the inestimable incentive and collaboration of the SPRS boards, represented, respectively, by the Presidents Jair Escobar and Alfredo Cataldo Neto, with Sandra, the untiring secretary, with the competence of Denise at Scientific, editors, several authors, board members, enthusiastic collaborators, without whom our goals and accomplishments would not have been achieved.
My special thanks to our devoted editorial board, composed of the following colleagues: Antônio Marques da Rosa, Anna Kauffmann, Gustavo Schestatsky, Júlio Chachamovich, Letícia Kipper, Maria Angélica Nunes, Maria da Graça Motta and Suzana Fortes.
Good reading and see you soon.
Jacó Zaslavsky
Editor
Publication Dates
-
Publication in this collection
17 Oct 2006 -
Date of issue
Dec 2005
