Writing qualitative research — A gathering of selves

This paper is a reflection and discussion on the integration and personal development that may occur when we use ourselves in heuristic research, particularly in the process of writing. It focuses on my writing about a study I undertook with two of my ex‐clients who are brothers, and their journey towards healing, and on their experience of our counselling relationship as part of that journey. As their counsellor, and the main researcher, my story inevitably intermingles and overlaps with theirs. My ‘selves’ as woman, survivor, client, counsellor, researcher (and numerous other selves) and their selves as survivor, man, client and researcher (and many others) are impacted by the collaborative, experiential nature of the work. Issues faced in the writing of a book about the research (Etherington, 2000), such as self‐disclosure and reclaiming my voice, parallel many of my own issues as a client and my clients' issues.     

‘How can we help when she won't tell us what's wrong?’ Professionals working with South Asian women who have experienced sexual abuse

In this paper, we explore some of the issues facing professionals in the UK currently involved in providing services for South Asian women who have experienced sexual abuse. The study describes part of a wider Economic and Social Research Council funded project, based upon interviews and focus groups with both professionals and women survivors of sexual abuse. Drawing on semi‐structured interviews and two focus groups with 37 professionals including psychological therapists, refuge and project workers, from a range of organisations, our aim in this paper is to provide a discursive analysis of some of the key dilemmas faced by professionals working with sexual abuse in South Asian communities by exploring two central interpretive repertoires: ‘culture not self’ and ‘symptom talk as solution’. The analysis indicates that professionals face a series of dilemmas when working with South Asian women survivors. They highlight the tension between individualised models of personhood in many psychological therapies and the challenge to these by South Asian communities who hold a more relational view of the person. One of the strategies used by professionals to work with the tensions between ‘culture’ and the ‘reality’ of the survivor's pain was the translation of women's distress into symptoms of mental disorder. However, the consequences of this intervention raised some serious issues, including further pathologisation and stigma. The implications of these findings will be discussed in terms of how to understand the experiences of South Asian women from a more socially grounded perspective and to explore the issues they face in accessing and receiving appropriate services to deal with the aftermath of sexually abusive experiences. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Online self‐help: Developing a student‐focused website for depression

Many depressed people, young men in particular, do not seek professional help. This social constructionist action research project aimed to construct a comprehensive self‐help website for students. Its goal was to give a multi‐layered (‘thick’) account of depression to website users offering empowering perspectives and strategies while challenging barriers to help‐seeking. Thirteen student interviewees, representing diverse demographics and depression experiences, attended semi‐structured interviews to elicit ‘coping’ narratives. Ten of them then formed an ongoing e‐mail focus group. An evaluative action research spiral was used to analyse and act upon public health guidelines, student interviews and student focus group commentary. Triangulation was provided via the specifications and ongoing feedback from the other project stakeholders. These were the funding charity steering group (including heads of university counselling services); the university providing programme/ethical approval; and the expert group offering clinical validation. The final site at www.studentdepression.org has nearly 100 pages of information and self‐help resources cross‐referenced with personal narratives. It provides a rich, complex account of how depression may be tackled and resisted. Both student and expert groups were impressed with final site quality and usefulness. Collaborative development with user‐group representatives is likely to have produced a far richer, more accessible and more comprehensive resource than counsellor authorship alone. 1 ¹Formerly at the Counselling Service, Royal Holloway University of London, UK.
     

Coping with Age‐related Threats to Role Identity: Older Couples and the Management of Household Money

As more couples live together into old age, difficult decisions have to be made about money matters, including the financing of late‐life care. This paper analyses in‐depth qualitative data from six older heterosexual couples, part of a wider study concerning money management in later life. Research when these cohorts were younger found that the organisation of money management within households was specialised and highly gendered, leading to substantive imbalances of power and access to financial resources, while also being core to the formation and maintenance of gendered role identities and couple identities. We find in this study that if a partner's ability to fulfil a money management role identity is threatened by later‐life issues such as poor health and cognitive decline, the other partner may try to protect that aspect of the spouse's role identity, using various covert strategies. This might be done to shore up the spouse's self‐esteem in the face of such age‐related threats to role identity, to ‘keep up appearances’ to the outside world or to maintain their identity as a couple at a time of life when there may be multiple difficulties to deal with. These findings have implications for practice and policy in the realm of money and identity management in later life. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mapping the dialogical self: towards a rationale and method of assessment

It is widely believed that the well‐adjusted individual has an integrated, coherent and autonomous ‘core self’ or ‘ego identity’. In this paper it is argued that a ‘multi‐voiced’ or ‘dialogical self’ provides a better model. In this model the self has no central core; rather, it is the product of alternative and often opposing narrative voices. Each voice has its own life story; each competes with other voices for dominance in thought and action; and each is constituted by a different set of affectively‐charged attachments: to people, events, objects and our own bodies. It is argued that by exploring these attachments the dominant narrative voices of the self may be identified. A semi‐structured interview protocol, the Personality Web, is introduced as a method for studying the dialogical self. In phase 1, 24 attachments are elicited in four categories: people (6), events (6), places and objects (8), and orientations to body parts (4). During interviewing, the history and meaning of each attachment is explored. In phase 2, participants were asked to group their attachments by strength of association into clusters, and multidimensional scaling was used to map the individual's ‘web’ of attachments. Using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, the strategy of clustering attachments was shown to be successful as a means for empirically examining the dialogical self. Two case studies of midlife adults are described to illustrate the arguments and methods proposed. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

‘Seeing beyond the battled body’ – An insight into selfhood and identity from women's accounts who self‐harm with a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder

Background: Self‐harm (self poisoning and self‐injury) is broadly characterised as any act intended to harm one's own body, without a conscious intent to die. Research indicates that when practitioners encounter self‐harm they often remain anxious, fearful, frustrated, and challenged about such individuals, principally because they are constrained to understand and respond to self‐harm almost exclusively within a problematised discourse (Walker, 2006). That is, a problem that must be diagnosed and contained. Women who self‐harm with a diagnosis of BPD are often portrayed as being risky, chaotic and their identity can be unstable. The aim of this study was to examine and explore the subjective experiences of women who self‐harm with a diagnosis of BPD. Participants: Four women who had a history of self‐harming behaviour with the diagnosis of BPD volunteered for the study. Method: Face‐to‐face, in‐depth narrative interviews were undertaken and were analysed within a framework which drew upon aspects of the ‘performance’ (Langellier, 1989; 2001) and ‘narrative thematic’ approaches (Reissman, 1993). Findings: Two of the participant's accounts illustrate how their self‐harming appeared to have affected their selfhood and sense of agency. They discuss how the external signs of self‐harm may take over their identity and how others communicate and interact with them. Despite the problematic nature of self‐harm implications for practice are highlighted which practitioners may draw upon in their work around self‐harm.     

Police interview competencies: assessment and associated traits

The present study empirically examines the structure of police interview competencies in self‐reports of 230 police investigators suggesting five major underlying dimensions, that is, ‘Careful‐tenacious’, ‘Controlled‐non‐reactive’, ‘Dominant‐insisting’, ‘Communicative’ and ‘Benevolent’. These dimensions discriminate performance in a series of interview vignettes, grouped in terms of type of case (interviewing a suspect, a witness or a victim) and type of suspect. In addition self‐ratings on these dimensions are related to self‐estimated interview effectiveness in the same vignettes. Participants are further administered the NEO PI‐R (Costa, P. T., & McCrae, R. R. (1992). Professional manual: Revised NEO personality inventory (NEO‐PI‐R) and NEO five‐factor‐inventory (NEO‐FFI). Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources), enabling an examination of the relationship between the competence dimensions and their personality trait building blocks. The implications of this study for the development and coaching of police interview competencies are discussed. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Re‐building Bridges: Homeless People's Views on the Role of Vocational and Educational Activities in Their Everyday Lives

Homeless people face everyday challenges of marginalisation and stigmatisation. Consequently, they can suffer from low self‐confidence, self‐efficacy and agency. Empirical research in Britain on educational, skill‐building and meaningful activities for homeless people principally emphasises the instrumental value of training and learning as a route to employment rather than the impact of activities on homeless people's everyday lives. Theoretical literature suggests that psychosocial benefits related to the development of self‐efficacy, agency and empowerment can be gained from such activities. Participants' experiences and perceptions of educational and recreational activities were examined through 29 interviews at three homeless day centres in London. Thematic analysis suggests the restorative power of engagement in activities and shows that participants value activities, not only as the foundation for future goals of finding employment and housing, but as an immediate way of restoring a sense of self and finding positive experiences with a focus on the present. The findings underline the importance of viewing these interventions from a ‘bottom‐up’ perspective. The study tentatively concludes that accepting and emphasising the immediate personal benefits as a positive achievement of activities may be a valuable approach to better engage homeless clients. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Understanding the Academic–Practitioner Gap for Structured Interviews: ‘Behavioral’ interviews diffuse, ‘structured’ interviews do not

Recent studies about the academic–practitioner gap suggest that the nonadoption of evidenced‐based practices can be explained by their diffusion through practitioner‐oriented literature. This study extends these findings by investigating the case of the structured interview, which has not been widely adopted by practitioners despite its good psychometric properties. Using a social representations approach, we investigate how the academic concepts of ‘structured’ and ‘behavioral’ interviewing are diffused to practitioners in advice books. Results show that ‘behavioral’ interviews diffuse while ‘structured’ interviews do not, and that different arguments are used to describe these concepts. Facilitating the diffusion of structured interview practices requires academics to rethink their ways of communicating with practitioners through media.     

Effects of a Motivational Interviewing–Based Counseling Program on Classroom Behavior of Children in a Disciplinary Alternative Education Program

A multiple single‐case research design was used to explore changes in teacher‐reported behaviors of 15 children who completed a motivational interviewing–based counseling program in a disciplinary alternative education school. Findings indicated that 7 children made a moderate to large improvement in their classroom behaviors while participating in the program. Students’ self‐motivational statements and self‐reported readiness to change were related to actual teacher‐rated behavioral changes. Implications for future research and counseling practice were discussed.     

Understanding the online therapeutic alliance through the eyes of adolescent service users

Aims: The therapeutic alliance is a concept that has received a great deal of attention within face‐to‐face counselling. Furthermore, links have been made between the creation of strong alliances and successful therapeutic outcomes. This study examines the therapeutic alliance when counselling services are offered online to young people. Method: Fifteen young people took part in online interviews (utilising synchronous and asynchronous methods), and Grounded Theory techniques were utilised to analyse the data. Findings: A core category of ‘Client‐Service Match’ and three subcategories pertinent to the individuals’ experiences of creating good quality relationships with the counsellors were identified: (1) initial engagement, (2) developing rapport, and (3) establishing control. Discussion: The themes elicited are all relevant to the matching process and viewed as a chronological process similar to face‐to‐face counselling. However, unlike face‐to‐face work, specific nuances related to the online work arise that counsellors should be mindful of, including the rationale behind each individual's choice to approach services online, their own computer‐mediated communication skills, technical hurdles, and the perceived ‘power’ of the counsellor.     

BORGES IN MY OFFICE: THE ANALYSIS OF A MAN DWELLING OUTSIDE OF TIME

This article weaves together two threads: the intricacies of the analysis of a difficult‐to‐reach yet extraordinary patient and the literary works of Jorge Luis Borges, which played a significant role in the analysis as a source of inspiration, enriching the analyst's reverie and opening up new psychic spaces. The authors demonstrate the analyst's recourse to several of Borges's stories in order to enrich his own inner world and to better understand the analysand. Some of these stories are briefly presented through the analyst's dialogue with them, and there is a discussion of their function in facilitating the process of working through issues of time, memory, mortality, and identity, contributing to the enhancement of the patient's ability to come face to face with the unwanted, split‐off parts of his self and of reality.     

CHARACTER,PSYCHOANALYTIC IDENTIFICATION,AND NUMERICAL IDENTITY

Identification figures prominently in moral psychological explanations. I argue that in identification the subject has an ‘identity‐thought’, which is a thought about her numerical identity with the figure she identifies with. In Freud's psychoanalytic psychology character is founded on unconscious identification with parental figures. Moral philosophers have drawn on psychoanalysis to explain how undesirable or disadvantageous character dispositions are resistant to insight through being unconscious. According to Richard Wollheim's analysis of Freud's theory, identification is the subject's disposition to imagine, unconsciously, her bodily merging with the figure she identifies with. I argue that this explanation of identification is not adequate. Human character is held to be capable of change when self‐reflection brings unconscious identifications to conscious self‐knowledge. I argue that for self‐knowledge these identifications must be an intelligible part of the subject's self‐conception, and that Wollheim's ‘merging phantasy’ is not intelligible to the subject in this way. By contrast, the subject's thought that she is numerically identical to the figure she identifies with does provide an intelligible starting‐point for reflecting on this identification. This psychoanalytic account provides a clear conception of identification with which to investigate puzzle cases in the moral psychology of character.     

Reconsidering the ‘heresy’ of using treatment manuals

Some argue that the medical model and the experimental design that underlies the use of treatment manuals to prove the efficacy of a psychotherapeutic treatment clashes with the theoretical basis of family therapy. From the point of view of the empirically supported treatments (ESTs) movement, treatment manuals are the operationalization of the independent variable in a clinical trial; the therapist is only part of the procedure and the therapeutic relationship is a confounding variable. Applying that logic to the practice of family therapy might be considered a heresy. This article argues that paradoxically, this heresy has a lot to offer the practice of family therapy. Research is the best way to answer questions like ‘how does family therapy work?’ ‘What makes ‘good therapy’ good?’ ‘Do therapists do what they say they do'? This article recommends an alternative framework for integrating ESTs into practice by proposing empirically informed guides to practice which, being less formulaic, encourage process‐outcome research, are coherent with the systemic model and do not constrain the therapist's creativity. Such guidelines allow therapists to use manuals flexibly so that they deepen the understanding of the process of therapy. We encourage you to listen to the JFT Editor, Mark Rivett, as he interviews the author on Manuals in the Practice and Research of Family Therapy. Available at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1467‐6427/homepage/jft_podcast_series.htm .     

Pupils' perceptions of self and of labels: Moderate learning difficulties in mainstream and special schools

Background: The study is set in the context of international moves towards more inclusion of children with disabilities into mainstream schools and the greater importance attached to the child's voice in decision making in education. Aims: To examine how children with moderate learning difficulties (MLD) in mainstream and special schools see themselves; to investigate their positive, negative and mixed self‐perceptions; to explore their evaluations of the terms and labels used by others to describe them; and to examine whether their perceptions vary according to special educational placement, age or gender. Sample: One hundred and one children; 50 in special and 51 in mainstream schools, of whom 51 were age 10–12 and 50 13–14 years; within each age group half were boys and half were girls. Method: Semi‐structured in‐depth interviews based on a common framework derived from the research questions. Results: Most pupils were aware of their learning difficulties and felt mainly negative about their difficulties. Pupils in special schools had more positive self‐perceptions of educational abilities than those in mainstream schools. Self‐perceptions of general characteristics were mainly a mixture of positive and negative with no differences by placement. ‘Stupid’ and ‘thick’ were perceived as the most negative labels, while ‘has help’ was the most positive label. The SEN term was infrequently recognized. Conclusions: The findings are discussed within the context of a multi‐dimensional, complex and contrary framework of self‐perceptions, and reference groups as the bases for self‐perceptions and as an active and interpretive process in the formation of self‐perceptions.     

Philosophical dialogues as paths to a more ‘positive psychology’

Although family support programmes have been in place for several decades in Greece very little attention has been paid to evaluating the effectiveness of such endeavours, the techniques that influence their outcomes and the receptiveness to their messages. The purpose of this paper is to give an overview of research findings collected during the first qualitative research phase of a community mental health promotion project. The research was conducted in order to delineate programme outcomes and the characteristics that had an impact on the participants' lives. The 3‐month family support programme intended to introduce ‘philosophical dialogues’ as means to developing personal and communal understandings of what makes life worth living. The programme was developed and implemented on Crete under the auspices of a non‐profit community organization appropriately named ‘The Lyceum for Women’. The features of the programme that contributed and enhanced the participants' tendencies to become not passive targets but active partners and stakeholders in the process will be clarified, as will the conceptualization and approach. Of the 45 evaluation protocols that were analysed the following themes were most important for the participants: ‘Group as‐a‐whole process’—the sense of sharing and development understandings in a ‘parea’ (in‐group); ‘relational outcomes’—feeling of belonging, ‘reciprocated kindness’, and giving of self to others; personal and emotional outcomes‐self‐efficacy and empowerment; knowledge outcomes‐learning about positive emotions and enjoying the simple things in life; and group facilitator outcomes‐sharing stories, ‘gives of self to the community’. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Positive Self‐regard and Claim to Leadership: Two Fundamental Forms of Self‐evaluation

The present article examines the common factor structure of various self‐evaluative personality constructs. Consistent with previous research, we found considerable redundancy between constructs. Two basic forms of self‐evaluation could be distinguished: Positive Self‐regard (PSR) reflects people's contentedness with themselves in comparison with their own standards. Constructs such as depression, self‐esteem and neuroticism have very high loadings on this factor. In contrast, Claim to Leadership (CTL) reflects the subjective conviction that one is called to take charge and lead others. This conviction is often called ‘narcissism’. PSR mainly reflects an intra‐personal kind of self‐evaluation, whereas CTL reflects an inter‐personal kind. Both forms of self‐evaluation independently predict intellectual self‐enhancement, but only one of them (PSR) also predicts self‐reported mental health. Moreover, the two forms of self‐evaluation are differentially associated with self‐reported and peer‐reported inter‐personal traits (Dominance and Affiliation). Finally, the concepts of ‘Grandiosity’ and ‘Vulnerability’ from narcissism research may easily be reframed in terms of CTL and PSR. The two‐dimensional framework may help overcome the conceptual confusion that exists around different forms of self‐evaluation and streamline the field for future research. Copyright © 2013 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Notetaking in non‐academic settings: a review

There is considerable research on notetaking in academic settings but relatively little of it in non‐academic ones. This paper reviews the effects of notetaking in legal situations, counselling and interviewing, and assesses the usefulness of notetaking as a memory aid for older people and as a prospective memory device for brain‐injured persons. The results suggest that: notetaking has no significant effect on recall in ‘real‐life’ jury situations; there is some evidence that notetaking by counsellors in counselling sessions might be harmful for clients; there is some evidence that notetaking in interviews can reduce bias in decision making; there is some evidence that notetaking is helpful for older persons; and that too little research has been conducted on the use of notetaking as a device for aiding the prospective memory for brain‐injured persons to reach any firm conclusions. The general limitations of the research are reviewed and implications for future work considered. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.