This article considers the place of qualitative research in psychoanalysis and child psychotherapy. It discusses why research methodology for many years occupied so small a place in these fields, and examines the cultural and social developments since the 1960s which have changed this situation, giving formal but also qualitative methods of research much greater significance. It reflects on the different pressures to develop explicit research methods which arise both from outside the psychoanalytic field, as a condition of its continued professional survival, and from within it, where its main aim is the development of fundamental psychoanalytic knowledge. It suggests that the conduct of mainly quantitative research into treatment outcomes is largely a response to these external pressures, whilst the main benefits to be gained from the development of qualitative research methods, such as Grounded Theory, are in facilitating the knowledge-generating capacities and achievements of child psychotherapists themselves. The paper describes Grounded Theory methods, and explains how they can be valuable in the recognition of hitherto unrecognised meanings and patterns as these are made visible in clinical practice. Finally, it briefly describes three examples of completed doctoral studies, all of which have added significantly to the knowledge-base of child psychotherapy, and which demonstrate how much can be accomplished using this method of research. 相似文献
This paper investigates how it is that a child has become an abuser, and by what means that process may be deconstructed. We know that abusers generally have a childhood history of abuse, though not necessarily sexual. Since not all children who have been traumatised repeat those patterns, and inflict abuse on others, then something must have happened for these particular children in response to their abuse. The author elaborates the view that there is no such thing, to paraphrase Winnicott, as ‘an abused child’ – no such child, that is, separate from the world of the relationships that formed him. He draws on the conceptualisation by Bentovim of an interlocking set of roles described as a ‘trauma organised system’; this notion reflects the fact that the child is a product not just of his specifically traumatic experiences but of a milieu in which power and control is exerted by someone who has typically succeeded in neutralising any caring function in a family in order to bring about the exploitation of a child. Clinical material is presented from the intensive psychotherapy of a nine-year-old boy, who happened also to be a refugee, for whom abusive family dynamics dominated his internal world. He was found to have identified with the abuser, his own father, in order to escape the pain of his victim self and was threatening to act this out in the treatment, making the therapist into a victim. Management of the treatment setting by the inclusion of a benign parental figure enabled the acting out to be contained. Symbolisation of the child’s inner conflicts became possible through play. As the abuser self was contained so the child’s victim experiences could be processed. The conclusion is drawn that engaging therapeutically with the residues of trauma from the beginning of treatment is essential in working with young people who have abused. 相似文献
Groups, particularly when immersed in an intractable intergroup conflict, place considerable value on protecting and defending their historical group narrative. However, some group members are more narrative‐protective than others. In Study 1, we introduce a new individual‐difference measure of motivation to achieve a Firmly Entrenched Narrative ClosurE (FENCE) and test it on several Israeli samples (N = 1132). In Study 2 (N = 120), we show that in‐group glorification, right‐wing political orientation, and right‐wing‐authoritarianism, but not attachment to the In‐group, nonspecific need for cognitive closure, or need for cognition, predict FENCE motivation and Behavioral Lack of Openness to Counternarratives (BLOC). In Studies 3 and 4, we show using international (N = 24) and Israeli (N = 78) samples that a belief in the zero‐sum nature of the conflict is related to FENCE and BLOC. In Study 5, we demonstrate that FENCE affects quality of recall of conflict information. The potential merit of FENCE in accounting for the variability among group members in protecting the group narrative is discussed. 相似文献