New case study publication

Submitted by Greta on Sep 09, 2020 in Research

Greta Kaluzeviciute (PhD researcher at Essex and collaborating researcher on SCA) and Prof Jochem Willemsen (SCA board member and lecturer at UCLouvain) published a research article on case studies in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis:

Kaluzeviciute, G., & Willemsen, J. (2020). Scientific thinking styles: The different ways of thinking in psychoanalytic case studies. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis. DOI: 10.1080/00207578.2020.1796491 

The paper seeks to clarify and enrich John Forrester’s idea of thinking in cases. It first attends to issues around the lack of definition for thinking styles, and proposes a more detailed description for what might constitute a scientific thinking style. Second, the paper outlines how thinking in cases differs from other kinds of thinking styles. The paper argues that some of the criticisms directed at case studies are the result of a confusion between statistical and experimental thinking styles and thinking in cases. Finally, the paper proposes that there is more than one way of thinking in cases. It distinguishes between cases as exemplars for analytic generalization, cases as exemplars for analogical learning, and cases in the service of empirical generalization. By making these implicit thinking styles explicit, the paper seeks to demonstrate the importance of case studies at all levels of psychoanalysis: clinical, research, training and teaching.

The paper can be found on IJP's website here. There are 50 free online copies available via this link.  

Case study publication, Research, Generalization, Scientific thinking, Forrester, Psychoanalysis, Thinking in cases,