Qualitative and quantitative single case research

Abstract

After referring to present-day phenomena underlying the current debate on an adequate, evaluative research process in psychotherapy, the author briefly mentions the related cultural and scientific problems which are being discussed in the psychoanalytic community, i.e. in the discourse on the specific status of psychoanalysis as a “science between sciences” (Alfred Lorenzer, ArnoldModell and others). Referring to a paper by Ulrich Moser, she then discusses analogies in the process of perceiving and acquiring knowledge in the course of clinical and extraclinical psychoanalytic research. She postulates that both approaches, on-line and off-line research - i.e. clinical, composite research and extraclinical, psychotherapeutic research - are two different research strategies of equal value, that could potentially supplement each other. Both have advantages as well as weaknesses, and these are perceived and reflected by the sceptical researchers, but are negated and denied by those who are searching for “ultimate truth” and conviction. Thus she maintains that an unshakable trust in narra-tive meaning structures is by no means further removed from selfcritical research than an unshakeable trust in “objective” numbers. She then goes on to point out several ways in which the “subjective factor” can be dealt with productively in both areas, improving the quality of clinical as well as extraclinical research. Finally she uses her own empirical study on the changes of cognitive affective processes in psychoanalysis to illustrate a concrete attempt at connecting the two research strategies.

Keywords:
Single case study, qualitative and quantitative psychotherapy research, psychoanalysis and Cognitive Science.