Paper short abstract:

The paper introduces the term “vexed intimacies” to consider personal and methodological challenges of navigating interactions with potentially dangerous interlocutors while aiming to do emancipatory and inclusive knowledge gathering in the field of residential psychiatry in Denmark

Paper long abstract:

As a junior researcher doing ethnography in residential psychiatry for people living with severe mental illness and substance use, I have wavered when considering the anthropological professionalism of building genuine relationships in the field. By the unbearable idea of potentially reproducing a marginalization of people I long to help, if adding my occasional suspicion to the equation, I have been reluctant to write about how I felt when I was told to always wear an assault alarm during fieldwork. I have disallowed myself to think, or let alone speak, about my fear, when a man suspected me of stealing his amphetamine during the night, or when a woman, who the day before had smashed a thermos into the face of another resident, screamed at me for not opening her door in a timely fashion.

Following contemporary methodological discussions within feminist or decolonial theory, I describe the dilemma of navigating interactions with potentially dangerous interlocutors while aiming to do emancipatory and inclusive knowledge gathering, what I suggest to be understood as 'vexed intimacies’. Similar considerations of professionalism reappear in an emic mirror by staff. Behind closed doors, safety concerns, boundary issues, compassion fatigue, non-disclosure of personal information, and involvement in police complaints and trials consistently occupy the office space.

This paper explores a parallel hesitancy to consider one's mental well-being when working with individuals perceived as dangerous, as both an autoethnographic contribution to the discourse on methodology and researcher position in anthropology and an emic discussion of mental healthcare in Denmark.