The paper will focus on the topic of engaging students of the master-course “Education” at the University Vienna as observers in a psychoanalytic research project. Special emphasis will be put on the question of how to establish and maintain the position of the observer in emotionally stressful research fields as nursing homes. In context of the research project “Quality of life in nursing homes” the main questions of how nursing home residents with dementia experience their everyday life and which relationship experiences they gain with important persons were discussed from a psychoanalytic point of view (Trunkenpolz 2018). Eight students of the master-course “Education” conducted weekly observations according to the Tavistock approach in nursing homes for three months (Rustin 2019; Datler et al. 2014;). During this time and the following interpretation process of the material the students as well as the scientific staff had to cope with topics like illness, physical and psychological degradation processes, confusion, loneliness and the approaching death as well as the feelings of fear and despair, anger, shame and disgust. From a psychoanalytic point of view, these emotions on behalf of the researcher have to be understood in a differentiated way in order to (1) maintain the role of the observer in the field and (2) to be able to think about the nursing home residents and their everyday experiences in a differentiated way even in emotionally stressful situations. If this does not succeed, the entire project team runs the risk of being subject to defensive processes. In the worst case, this can lead to the central questions not being dealt with or that students quit their research tasks too early. With reference to Bions (1962) concepts of “Container – Contained” and “Working Group” the paper will discuss how this area of tension was dealt with in the context of the research project and which forms of accompanying networks were established for students. This paper thus attempts to discuss work with students at university level from a psychoanalytical perspective and what kind of skills students acquire when engaging in such kind of research processes.

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