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BRIGITTE GEIRLER-PILTZ — ÉVA NEMES
trait most representative of humanity is — to speak with Foucault — our “will
to know”?. We strive to understand our world, other people, ourselves, what
happens to us and what makes our societies tick. Finding things out — either
haphazardly or in a systematic and organized fashion — comes natural to us,
as can readily be seen in child behaviour. Scientific research, then, is one form
of study to satisfy our inborn curiosity; perhaps the most pervasive. If we as
supervisors and coaches want to know and understand our trade better, we will
have to practice research.
Although it goes too far to state that democracy is the exclusive precondition
for research, it is certainly conducive to unpopular and uncomfortable
questions that pose a serious challenge to conventional wisdom, or unsettle
the claims of the powers that be. True; research has been — and still is — carried
out in authoritarian and dictatorial regimes too, but the political freedom to
pose every imaginable question and to look for every possible outcome, even
if these are unexpected, counterintuitive or painful, is best guaranteed under
democratic conditions. Proof of this is the room for self-reflective study and
research democracies leave, or even purposely create. Democracies — however
imperfect — generally handle sharp questioning of their own preconceptions
better than we see happening in any other known form of government.
This is what Anton Pelinka made clear with his opening address, giving an
example of research into the various interpretations and misinterpretations of
“the only game in the global village”: democracy. If we want to research our
trade freely and uncompromisingly, we have to understand democracy in order
to (better) support it.
ROLE AND ISSUES OF RESEARCH IN SUPERVISION AND COACHING
This heading serves as platform for Wolfgang Knopf, former ANSE president
from Austria to deeply submerge into the topic of research. He impressively
illustrates Without Research No Development, No Professionalisation. With
an overview of the topic of the Conference he offers a short introduction to
the history of ANSE, focusing on the question how to tackle the complex
quality issue; a challenge by which ANSE since many years was — and still
is — confronted with. In this context, the need of research for the benefit of
the profession becomes apparent. Making ample use of research outcomes
from other disciplines, Knopf states, the ANSE community is slowly developing
? See for instance Michel Foucault, Histoire de la Sexualité 1: La volonté de savoir, Paris,
Gallimard, 1976.
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