Abstract

This chapter is a reflection on remaining ethical when collecting participant information using the psychoanalytically informed research interview. The specific ethical tensions include when participants relate to researchers as confidants and advice-givers, and how to approach such emotionally demanding work. The author shares how she attempted to ethically manage encounters with participants using examples from her study on maternal subjectivity in which able-bodied mothers raising visibly, physically disabled children were interviewed. The author also has a visible physical disability, as does her daughter. Unexpectedly, participants turned the interview relationship around, asking her questions as they shared certain particularities and experiences. The researcher describes how she ethically managed this blurring of roles. She argues for constant psychoanalytic-researcher reflexivity to manage these complex emotional encounters.