‘We could be diving for pearls’: The value of the gem in experiential qualitative psychology

This paper presents the gem as a valuable concept for experiential qualitative psychology. The gem is the relatively rare utterance that is especially resonant and offers potent analytic leverage to a study. After contextualising and defining the gem, the paper will give an example from my work on the experience of pain to help illustrate the power of the gem. This will then be discussed in relation to ideas from hermeneutics and hermeneutic phenomenology. I will then offer a speculative spectrum of gems, in terms of the degree to which the meaning of the gem is transparent in the manifest utterance. The spectrum is from shining through suggestive to secret, and I give examples of each type.