Qualitative research has traditionally portrayed itself as the heir to the epistemological critique of quantification in psychology. In this chapter we consider the aesthetic features in qualitative discourse and show that they reveal an underlying preservation of and even support for metatheoretical beliefs that are valuable for empiricism. This is remarkable given the explicitly antiempiricist stance of qualitative-oriented researchers. The aesthetics of rigor, replicability and objectivity are as present in qualitative as in quantitative research. Using Tim Ingold's distinction between techniques and technologies, we argue that the relationship between researcher and method that predominates in contemporary qualitative psychology removes the personal dimension from the act of knowledge. This contradicts the very spirit of a truly idiographic science. We propose that for psychology to undertake a proper study of human phenomena it must look back into the much-neglected romantic tradition in the human sciences and rediscover its crucial concepts of empathy and fantasy.