The vicissitudes of conducting psychodynamic research in a naturalistic setting

This article reports on our experiences conducting naturalistic research as clinician-researchers in a training setting within a public safety-net hospital. The naturalistic, practice-based context has presented various challenges to the research process, including the following: supporting research with limited finances, establishing continuity of research personnel, designating time for research within an intensive clinical training program, responding to difficulties obtaining data, seeking consultation for advanced data analysis, organizing the writing process, and determining order of authorship. In addition, in mixed-methods research of psychodynamic psychotherapy, each of these challenges has interacted with the inherent challenges of qualitative research. We describe the systemic and project-specific challenges of conducting such research, as well as practical strategies that we have used to overcome them, with the aim of helping other clinician-researchers facilitate naturalistic research. The challenges reflect the problem of being "stuck" in the gap that this special section of Psychotherapy is examining, although the strategies serve as optimistic reminders that this type of work is indeed possible. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).