Research Programs and Research Strategies

Qualitative Methods and American Political Development

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199697915.013.36 ◽

2015 ◽

Author(s):

Daniel J. Galvin

Keyword(s):

Qualitative Methods ◽

Political Development ◽

Qualitative Methodology ◽

American Political Development ◽

Research Strategies ◽

Research Programs

American Political Development (APD) research is well positioned to benefit from advances in qualitative methodology. Drawing on those tools and research strategies more regularly and explicitly, this essay argues, should help to foster more cumulative research programs both within the APD community and across related historical-institutional subfields. Reviewing three common modes of analysis found in APD scholarship, this essay suggests that more explicit identification of each study’s main theoretical contributions and empirical limitations should help to promote more healthy debate around matters of evidence and theory and make it easier for the community of scholars to identify areas in which to build on each other’s work and make more incremental, cumulative gains.

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The Irrelevance of Infant Observations for Psychoanalysis

Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association ◽

10.1177/000306519604400202 ◽

1996 ◽

Vol 44 (2) ◽

pp. 369-392 ◽

Cited By ~ 53

Author(s):

Peter H. Wolff

Keyword(s):

Emotional Development ◽

Psychoanalytic Theory ◽

Developmental Theory ◽

Early Infancy ◽

Social Emotional Development ◽

Research Strategies ◽

Social Emotional ◽

Clinical Theory ◽

Research Programs ◽

Wide Range

The current consensus among psychoanalysts holds that direct infant observations are one means for testing the developmental propositions of psychoanalytic theory; that the observations have already falsified some of the theory's basic propositions; and that they hold the key to a qualitatively different developmental theory of psychoanalysis. The consensus, although not universal, has motivated a wide range of research programs on early infancy, whose findings are commonly interpreted as disclosing psychoanalytic metapsychology and clinical theory in an entirely new light. This essay examines some of the assumptions that have motivated such investigations, as well as the research strategies by which the new versions of theory are promulgated. On the basis of these explorations it is concluded that psychoanalytically informed infant observations may be the source for new theories of social-emotional development, but that they are essentially irrelevant for psychoanalysis as a psychology of meanings, unconscious ideas, and hidden motives.

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