Mother-Daughter Workshops: An Interactive Encounter

This article describes a mother-daughter experience led by a mother and daughter in which women come together to communicate, share, and overcome the barriers that impede the intimacy of their relationship. Through experiential and educational means, participants are encouraged to use the power of the group experience to break through their isolation. Overall, women leave the experience feeling more hopeful about the possibility of a closer relationship.     

Feminism Across Borders: A Hungarian Adaptation of Western Feminism

A grounded theory model of feminist-activist identity development was constructed from semistructured interviews with volunteers of the first Women’s Rights Association (NANE) in Hungary. This article focuses on NANE volunteers’ feminist identity development, which emerged through interpersonal solidarity with Western women; the development of self-confidence and an assertive “voice” in their relationships; and an increased awareness of the violence and oppression against women. A grounded theory approach (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) was used to analyze the interviews. The core category, “Internalizing Western Feminist-Activism: Importing an External Culture to Revolutionize One’s Own,” describes volunteers’ conceptualization that their feminist-activist beliefs emerged from imported ideologies gained through exposure to Western ideas and the international women’s movement, which were then adapted to make changes in Hungary.     

De‐Centering and Re‐Centering: Rethinking Concepts and Methods in the Sociological Study of Religion

Four conceptual and methodological edges or areas of study are outlined. They are located near what have been the boundaries between the sociology of religion and other subfields, where we believe a potential exists to encourage a wide range of scholars to revisit some central concepts. Paying attention to these edges—as a means to de‐center to re‐center our debates in new ways—not only broadens and deepens our knowledge of the “religious,” it encourages us to reexamine long‐standing conceptual tools, unquestioned assumptions, and accepted methods in the sociology of religion. We illustrate these edges through a review of recent literature and examples drawn from our current empirical projects.     

The unsaid in the psychotherapy narrative: Voicing the unvoiced

In research interviews, psychotherapy clients, from different therapeutic approaches, identified silent moments entailing processes that facilitated their therapeutic progress. A grounded theory method was used to analyse these interviews resulting in three categories of productive pauses: emotional, expressive and reflective pauses. This study examines these categories in relation to their narrative context, and, more broadly, to narrative theory. It highlights what remains unsaid in the psychotherapy narrative, describes these silent processes that transform narration into a therapeutic experience and reframes the therapeutic narrative as a method for structuring introspective silences.     

Wearable Activity Technology And Action-Planning (WATAAP) to promote physical activity in cancer survivors: Randomised controlled trial protocol

Background/Objective: Colorectal and gynecologic cancer survivors are at cardiovascular risk due to comorbidities and sedentary behaviour, warranting a feasible intervention to increase physical activity. The Health Action Process Approach (HAPA) is a promising theoretical framework for health behaviour change, and wearable physical activity trackers offer a novel means of self-monitoring physical activity for cancer survivors. Method: Sixty-eight survivors of colorectal and gynecologic cancer will be randomised into 12-week intervention and control groups. Intervention group participants will receive: a Fitbit Alta? to monitor physical activity, HAPA-based group sessions, booklet, and support phone-call. Participants in the control group will only receive the HAPA-based booklet. Physical activity (using accelerometers), blood pressure, BMI, and HAPA constructs will be assessed at baseline, 12-weeks (post-intervention) and 24-weeks (follow-up). Data analysis will use the Group x Time interaction from a General Linear Mixed Model analysis. Conclusions: Physical activity interventions that are acceptable and have robust theoretical underpinnings show promise for improving the health of cancer survivors.     

Clients' Experiences of Obstructive Silence: Integrating Conscious Reports and Analytic Theories

The psychodynamic literature has associated clients' silences in psychotherapy sessions with a variety of processes. These processes include wishes to merge with the therapist, to gain control in session, to communicate the unsayable, to express helplessness and, most frequently, the intertwined processes of resistance and regression. Experiences of obstructive silence—that is, moments in which clients detached from the process of therapeutic inquiry—were examined in this study. A grounded theory analysis was used to explore clients' experiences of silences in psychotherapy across psychotherapeutic modalities. Two types of obstructive pausing processes, Disengaged pauses and Interactional pauses, were identified. The implications of delineating conscious aspects of these complex experiences are stressed and techniques are suggested for therapeutic intervention in moments of experienced threat.     

Clients’ Experiences of Disengaged Moments in Psychotherapy: A Grounded Theory Analysis

The study offers an empirically derived model of clients’ experiences of disengaged moments, defined as moments when clients withdraw, distance, or lessen their intensity of involvement with therapy-relevant material or relationships. Interpersonal Process Recall (IPR) interviews were conducted with nine psychotherapy clients of therapists with varied orientations and experience. The interviews were transcribed verbatim and subjected to qualitative analysis using grounded theory analysis (Glaser and Strauss, The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research, 1967) methodology. The results suggested that clients use disengagement for protection from pain, strategic retreat, relationship management, self-through-other discovery, and self-betterment. The core category across all of the experiences of disengagement relates to communicating difficulties and experimenting within the therapy relationship toward self-change. Recommendations are offered for research and practice.