Background Following the development of the transdisciplinary field of British psychosocial studies, interest in the application of insights from psychoanalysis in qualitative research has grown in recent years among researchers in nursing and allied disciplines.

Aim To address a paucity of attention to – and lack of clarity concerning – the implications of methodological developments and debate around the application of psychoanalytic perspectives and techniques in research, specifically the theory and practice of research interviewing as a psychoanalytically informed endeavour.

Discussion This paper draws from the author’s doctoral research to provide a critical account of Hollway and Jefferson’s (2000, 2013) free association narrative interview method (FANIM). It describes FANIM’s core elements and then moves on to consider its use by nursing and applied health and social care researchers, and then to criticism that has been levelled against Hollway and Jefferson’s work regarding it.

Conclusion FANIM provides valuable ideas about how to approach nursing research in a way inspired by psychoanalytic principles, but requires further evaluation by nursing researchers.

Implications for practice Nurse researchers may take inspiration from particular aspects of FANIM. They should also reflect on whether they are mislabelling their approach as ‘psychoanalytic’ or ‘psychoanalytically informed’, if they only partly apply it.