This book has two main aims: first, to provide a rare, detailed description of the use of a psychoanalytically informed, reflexive research method to achieve an in-depth understanding of social phenomena. Stressing the 'both/and' nature of psycho-social research, it demonstrates that utilizing psychoanalytic and sociological theories as complementary frameworks of understanding can enable researchers to discover aspects of human experience that ordinarily remain outside conscious awareness.

Second, the book throws some much needed light onto the complex, intrapsychic and...