The clinic aproach and its peculiar proposal on the subject-object relationship at educational sciences research

Abstract

This article has an introductory character for the whole dossier.

In the first part, the article focuses on the clinical approach in research in educational sciences, by tracking the features that are considered important in the etymology of the word and history of the clinical method in other disciplines. The approach allows to drive attention to certain aspects, to an issue or problem based on certain epistemological principles that guarantee a way of looking at and reading the phenomena under study. In the case of the clinical approach it seeks: the uniqueness of the situation, the subjects, their idiosyncratic features; depth in the study: tracking temporality;  contextualization in order to understand the peculiar features of what is being studied. Both methodological, epistemological and ethical aspects of the approach are discussed. Psychoanalysis contributes to clinical significant features by including unconscious processes and motivations.

The second part discusses in detail the subject-object relationship. The inclusion of the subject observed and the observer and the vicissitudes that this relationship implies constitute significant material in the production of knowledge. Such inclusion is considered as researcher engagement process and is put in along the analysis process. Transference and countertransference are especially key in the approach presented here.