This contribution proposes to raise the question of understanding in research in order to address what, in my opinion, makes the specificity of an approach that mobilizes psychoanalysis in educational science. I will try to distinguish this approach from the "simple" comprehensive, qualitative research, in which it is nevertheless inscribed, in order to assume a "non-comprehension" which can prove to be heuristic. This 'non-comprehension' does not mean the impossibility of all knowledge, but implies the refusal of a totalization of knowledge, of a universalization, of a generalization. It assumes the partiality (both partial perspective, Haraway, 1988, and partial element) of knowledge. The use of psychoanalysis and the recognition of the unconscious dimension in human situations brings a logical limit to the belief in a positive and totalizing science. I will show how I use this limit in an ongoing research project on the experience of the circulation of adolescent girls in urban spaces. The researcher's past adolescence affects the representations she brings with her in her research, the difficulty being to take it into account without evacuating the otherness or singularity of the subjects she meets. Research in the field of education can reactivate many elements of the past, whether professional or personal. A constant negotiation takes place between what we think we know about ourselves and what we think we understand about the other. Can we understand others? What does it mean to understand? If it is a question of finding meaning, certain psychoanalytical reference points can be opposed to this quest for meaning: for Jacques Lacan, psychoanalysis is not about comprehension, but about « non-sens » as basis for subjective facts (Lacan, 1967). Taking subjectivity into account insofar as it includes the unconscious could imply (trying to) avoid the search for meaning. The necessary elaboration of the researcher's position is to be considered on different levels: on the level of (also social) difference between the researcher and the « researched » subject; on that of projections and the difficulty of recognising otherness when one encounters it; on that of the writing of the research, traversed by the process of constructing and reconstructing the research, as well as by the issue of "who is speaking", that is to say, the problem of the author (Foucault, 1979). Difference, otherness and identity are unavoidable problems for the researcher who can try not to be the « enemy of mystery ».

Foucault, M. (1969/1979). Qu’est-ce qu’un auteur ? (What is an Author ?). Dits et écrits I, 1954-1975. Paris : Gallimard (Quarto), 2001, p. 817-949. Haraway, D. (1988). Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective. Feminist Studies, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Autumn, 1988), pp. 575-599 http://www.jstor.org/stable/3178066 Lacan, J. (1967). Petit discours aux psychiatres de Saint-Anne, 10 novembre 1967. http://www.psychasoc.com/Textes/Petit-discours-aux-psychiatres-de-Sainte-Anne