This book examines developments in qualitative psychotherapeutic research. It focuses on different methods and aspects of clinical practice. These range from the experiences of service users and clinicians, examining in detail different aspects of how therapy gets done in practice, to critiquing the politics and ideologies of psychotherapy practice. It aims to reflect the diversity that characterises this developing field and to represent practice-based research carried out in different clinical settings, from different perspectives and in different sociocultural contexts.
The wide range of research projects presented arise from a network of clinicians and psychotherapy researchers who have established an international transdisciplinary forum for dedicated qualitative research on a range of topics in the field of mental health, using a variety of methodologies and theoretical approaches. In the spirit of dialogue, this book further provides chapters written by key practitioners in the field of qualitative research in mental health discussing these contributions.
This book was originally published as a special issue of the European Journal of Psychotherapy & Counselling.
Table of Contents:
Introduction Part I 1. Interventions in everyday lives: How clients use psychotherapy outside their sessions 2. Eating disorders in the course of life: A qualitative approach to vital change 3. Exploring the meaning in meaningful coincidences: An interpretative phenomenological analysis of synchronicity in therapy 4. Mirroring patients – or not. A study of general practitioners and psychiatrists and their interactions with patients with depression 5. The person-centred approach as an ideological discourse: a discourse analysis of person-centred counsellors’ accounts on their way of being 6. Reading qualitative research 7. Whose voice are we hearing, really? Part II 8. Therapeutic community for children with diagnosis of psychosis: What place for parents? The relation between subject and the institutional ‘Other’ 9. Hurting and healing in therapeutic environments: How can we understand the role of the relational context? 10. Mental health care and educational actions: From institutional exclusion to subjective development 11. Displaying agency problems at the outset of psychotherapy 12. How do people cope with post traumatic distress after an accident? The role of psychological, social and spiritual coping in Malaysian Muslim patients 13. Communities, psychotherapeutic innovation and the diversity of international qualitative research in mental health 14. Everyday life, manifesto-writing and the texture of human agency Part III 15. ‘Not dead … abandoned’ – a clinical case study of childhood and combat-related trauma 16. A shift in narratives: From ‘attachment’ to ‘belonging’ in therapeutic work with adoptive families. A single case study 17. Critical incidents in mental health units may be better understood and managed with a Freudian/Lacanian psychoanalytic framework 18. The impact of professional role on working with risk in a home treatment team 19. From victimhood to sisterhood part II – Exploring the possibilities of transformation and solidarity in qualitative research 20. ‘Let me in! A comment on insider research’ 21. The researcher in the field – some notes on qualitative research in mental health
About the Author :
Del Loewenthal is Professor of Psychotherapy and Counselling and Director of the Research Centre for Therapeutic Education at the University of Roehampton, London, UK. He is an existential-analytic psychotherapist, photographer and chartered psychologist, with a particular interest in phenomenology. His books include Existential Psychotherapy and Counselling after Postmodernism (Routledge, 2017).
Evrinomy Avdi is Associate Professor in Clinical Psychology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. She is a clinical psychologist, dramatherapist and psychodynamic psychotherapist. Her research interests lie in discursive approaches to psychotherapy research and the exploration of the links between deconstructive research and clinical practice.
