Broken mirror: The intertwining of therapist and client stories of childhood sexual abuse (CSA)

In recent years, there has been a great deal of attention given to the potential increased risk of vicarious traumatisation (VT) for clinicians with a history of childhood sexual abuse.

I am curious about whether the silencing, which has been ubiquitous within society, is also prevalent within the therapeutic profession. I wonder if therapists with a history of abuse feel they have to bracket their experience, and if this limits the potential for positive transformation.

In this paper, I draw upon my narrative study of therapists with a history of abuse. The methodology followed was narrative inquiry with two therapists in addition to an autoethnography. I used ‘narrative analysis’ to analyse the data. The findings of the study covered themes of transgenerational trauma, ‘the wounded healer’, caregivers’ responsibility in communal cultures and dissociation.

In this paper, I will consider the part dissociation plays when there is a shared history of trauma, and the ways in which dissociative enactments within the consulting room themselves may be part of the mutual healing. For this paper, only extracts from interviews with one of my participants will be included.     

Letter writing as a reflective practice: understanding the shuffling,shifting, and shaping of a researcher identity

This article presents letter writing as a form of arts-based inquiry and reflective practice. The author argues that letter writing can be employed to develop a reflective space for autobiographical reflection. The letter featured here captures and demonstrates the shuffling, shifting, and shaping processes of the author’s researcher identity through letter writing, and is informed by the theoretical underpinnings of reflective practice. It records and investigates the experiences that the author underwent during a compulsory course in the first year of a doctoral program at a North American university. Three interrelated themes are identified in the letter: the researcher identity in crisis, the nature of research, and future researcher identity. It is concluded that letter writing can facilitate the self-evolution, self-introspection, self-awareness, and identity change that emerges with, and through, reflection. Letter writing as a reflective practice offers the benefits of developing self-knowledge, independent thought, critical thinking, and deconstructive understanding of one’s experiences.     

Perceptions of health care social workers in Ontario: challenges and facilitators to reflective practice

Background: Reflective practice in health care social work ensures that social workers provide effective and efficient services to clients as well as maintaining their mental and physical health. In this study, we aim to determine how health care social workers engage in and describe reflective practice and challenges related to their reflective practice in their work in the health care system.

Methods: We used the Reflective Dialogue Rating Scale (RDRS) developed by Marion Bogo et al. to structure qualitative face-to-face interviews with 23 health care social workers employed in a hospital in a large urban area in Ontario, Canada.

Results: Findings illustrated that all participants regularly engaged in reflective practice in order to carry out everyday social work activities, promote ethical practice, and to enhance the provision of services to their clients. The social worker participants consistently agreed that as a profession they faced challenges maintaining their knowledge of current research due to few opportunities for professional development, workload competing with educational opportunities, and a work climate that is not conducive to gaining professional development, thereby challenging reflective practice. Supportive working environments include: peer supervision, safe and private spaces to talk to colleagues, a supportive supervisor, and an overall positive organizational culture.

Discussion and conclusion: Reflective practice is a key component in health care social work. All 23 social workers stated that they used reflective techniques (such as peer supervision and debriefing) to deal with their own reactions and operated in a purposeful and intentional manner to form therapeutic relationships with clients. As such, participants stated that lifelong learning was paramount in providing quality care to clients.     

Vicarious traumatisation experiences among South African Police Service members in a rural setting: An exploratory study

The objective of this study was to explore the vicarious traumatisation experiences of South African Police Service members serving in a rural community. The participants consisted of 17 purposively selected police members (females = 4; age range 27 to 55; average years of police service = 10.6 years). Unstructured face-to-face interviews were conducted on the members’ experiences with trauma events where they were called upon to provide police services. Additionally, field notes, telephone follow-ups, and diaries were used to collect data from the members. The data were analysed using interpretative phenomenological approach guidelines. Findings show the police members to report their outlook on life to change from viewing work-life as routine and impersonal, to viewing it as involved and personal. The police members also reported psychological disorientation and being in a sense of stupor from exposure to traumatic cases. Finally, the police members self-reported empathetic experiences with the survivors as concerned citizen parents.     

Venturing into the visual voice: combining photos and interviews in phenomenological inquiry around marginalisation and chronic illness

In this article, we present a reflection on the research process of combining photographs with phenomenologically oriented interviews. Two studies in the field of chronic illness with marginalised individuals (lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans* people living with MS; men diagnosed with breast cancer) are employed to illustrate a range of conceptual, methodological and pragmatic issues. Both studies draw upon an integrative theoretical framework within a critical health psychology epistemological paradigm informed by phenomenological psychology and visual methodologies. The data collected for both studies have been analysed through interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). We offer some thoughts regarding certain challenges and opportunities of synergising verbal and visual data and illustrate our arguments through a series of examples from the two studies, which are critically discussed. We argue that qualitative research in psychology benefits from an enhanced multimethodological approach employing existential phenomenological psychology and visual methodologies, especially when exploring chronic illness in marginalised communities, and we outline benefits for the wider community of qualitative researchers in psychology.     

A Seat at the Table: Using Social Media as a Platform to Resolve Microaggressions Against Transgender Persons

Transgender, gender variant, and/or gender nonconforming persons are marginalized and pathologized in society and communities. The advent and widespread use of social media introduce an entirely new avenue of expression where cyber bullying and verbal assaults are common. Yet, social media also has the capacity to reach more people in more places, thus presenting a potentially powerful platform for advocacy. Grounded in digital critical participatory action research, the authors present a multimedia advocacy project that highlights advocacy strategies in which counselors can utilize social media to raise awareness, promote inclusion, and resolve microaggressions toward transgender persons.     

Reimagining gender in psychology: What can critical psychology offer?

In this article, I argue that gender is a complex sociocultural construct, yet how gender is accounted for in psychological research is limited. Specifically, psychologists conflate sex with gender, rely on quantifying gender differences and, by implication, conceptualise gender as merely a participant characteristic. To illustrate, I apply this viewpoint to the topic of gender differences in tobacco use/cessation using on a feminist quality appraisal tool. I show how these three issues promote the narrow study of sex/gender differences, despite problems surrounding this inquiry, and reduce insights into the intersection of gender and behaviour. To offer a way forward for psychology, I describe how a critical psychology perspective attends to the complexities of gender and its influence on behaviour. I showcase diverse ways of attending to gender as a sociocultural construct, inviting psychologists to engage with, and reflect on, their gender analyses.     

THE ROAD IS MADE BY WALKING: AN INTRODUCTION

We are living in a time of unprecedented challenges: human activity is now the primary driver shaping the planet and we are perilously close to breaching a variety of critical planetary boundaries—a prelude to the possible extinction of our species. How should we be thinking and acting—as persons, communities, institutions and societies—so as to best understand and respond to these challenges? What contribution can the field of science and religion make to develop the knowledge needed to negotiate the civilizational transition we face? Such questions were addressed through a series of dialogues at the 62nd annual conference of the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science in June of 2016—“How Can We Know? Co‐Creating Knowledge in Perilous Times.” This essay sets the background to these challenges and introduces the set of articles in this themed section.     

Popular problems

This article introduces a method to critical reviews and explores the ways in which problems have been formulated in knowledge production on career guidance in Denmark over a 10-year period from 2004 to 2014. The method draws upon the work of Bacchi focussing on the ‘What's the problem represented to be’ (WPR) approach. Forty-nine empirical studies on Danish youth career guidance were included in the study. An analysis of the issues in focus resulted in nine problem categories. One of these, ‘targeting’, is analysed using the WPR approach. Finally, the article concludes that the WPR approach provides a constructive basis for a critical analysis and discussion of the collective empirical knowledge production on career guidance, stimulating awareness of problems and potential solutions among the career guidance community.