Expertosis: Is it Catching?

In this plenary address a therapist talks about her experiences of culture, gender, the loss of her daughter, and the impact this has had on her values and beliefs which are reflected in both her personal and professional life. Her paper challenges dominant discourses and the tyranny of expert knowledge.     

Memory,Mourning and Meaning in a Psychotherapist’s Life

In this paper the author, a psychotherapist specializing in bereavement, recounts her personal experiences of loss and the ways in which they intersect and inform her professional life. One clinical vignette explores how unresolved grief in a patient and anticipated grief in a therapist emerge in transference-counter-transference issues. Another vignette illustrates a way in which supportive therapy can open the door to intra-psychic work with the ill or dying patient and how psychoanalytically informed psychotherapy with the aged can help them to re-imagine their lives and to form different relationships, in their minds, with significant others in their past.     

DEVELOPMENTAL LESSONS OF SEASONED MARITAL AND FAMILY THERAPISTS: A QUALITATIVE INVESTIGATION

Little has been published regarding the development of therapists during their professional careers. This qualitative research study explored the development of seasoned marriage and family therapists (MFTs) in order to identify important events and themes in their personal and professional lives. The main developmental theme that emerged was the integration of their personal and professional selves. Information gained from this study might be useful in understanding the self of the therapist within training and supervision and might partially provide a map of the possible transitions facing MFTs along their developmental journey.     

The Impact of Family Therapists’ Adult Attachment Styles on Their Career Choice and Approach to Therapy: An Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis

Attachment theorists have highlighted the role of the therapist in providing a ‘secure base’ for therapy. This raises the question of how therapists with insecure as well as secure attachment styles manage the integration of their personal experience and their therapeutic work. This study explored the relationship between family therapists’ adult attachment styles, influences on their career choice and their approach to therapy. Participants’ (n = 11) attachment styles were previously assessed using the self-report Experiences in Close Relationship questionnaire. Three participants were assessed as having a ‘secure’ attachment style; three were ‘preoccupied’, three ‘fearful’ and two ‘dismissing’. They were interviewed about their practice and the impact of past or current relationships on their development as therapists. Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis was used to analyse the verbatim accounts into cluster of master themes and subthemes. The analysis identified two master themes: understanding one’s self and the impact of family of origin experiences, and the integration between personal experiences and therapeutic work. There were differences in responses relating to the therapists’ attachment styles. Therapists with ‘secure’ adult attachment styles were aware of their challenges and able to utilise their experiences in their practice and respond sensitively to their clients. Conversely, those with ‘insecure’ styles have difficulties in mentalisation and in using counter-transference responses in their practice. We suggest that family therapists, social workers and others engaged in therapeutic work with families should undertake an exploration of the ‘self’ of the therapist in the context of their own family relationships and adult attachment styles as part of their training and continuing professional development.     

Professional vs. personal factors related to physicians' attitudes toward drug testing

Questionnaires concerning attitudes toward alcohol and drug testing in the workplace, personal experiences with these substances, professional experiences in treating abuses, religious and political ideology and other personal and professional characteristics were completed by 303 internists, family physicians, gastroenterologists and psychiatrists. Drug testing was most favored by those who more strongly believed in the efficacy of treatment for abusers, the seriousness of the drug problem, the illegality of drug abuse and that marijuana use should not be permissible. Many other personal but almost no professional characteristics were correlated with attitudes toward drug testing. Physicians' opinions about drug testing strongly reflected personal ideologies rather than medical training or clinical experience.     

Intersecting Sexual,Gender, and Professional Identities Among Social Work Students: The Importance of Identity Integration

ABSTRACT

Discrimination toward lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) social work students can negatively affect academic performance and personal and professional identity development. Intersectionality is a conceptual approach that states that social identities interact to form different meanings and experiences from those that could be explained by a single identity. This study explored how the educational experiences of LGBTQ social work students in the United States and Canada influenced their professional and personal identities. Using an intersectional analysis, three major themes emerged: the need for social work programs to better promote LGBTQ identity and emerging social work professional identity integration, a lack of LGBTQ content in the curriculum, and unsupportive LGBTQ school climates. Implications for social work education are considered.     

The Resilient Survivor—A Student Social Worker's Journey

This article is intended to bridge the gap between the literature on the service user perspective, essential to social work training, and the personal experiences student social workers bring to their training. It argues that there is a need to recognise the personal and sometimes painful experiences student social workers may bring to their training and the potential impact they have on their social work education and future practice. Sexually abused as a child, the author is in a unique position as a first year social work student to explore and share the impact of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) on her social work education and how this has been managed. This article will chart a parallel journey of personal and professional development by exploring the importance of reflective thought on one's own personal experiences and discussing how these experiences can inform the professional knowledge, skills and value base. This article concludes that during personal and professional development potential issues or themes may arise. These include the blurring of personal/professional boundaries, the need for heightened self-awareness skills, the ability to use supervision appropriately and the potential to misuse personal insights.     

The Cultural Imperatives of Professionalism: Who's Protecting Whom?

What does it mean to be a professional therapist? This paper explores some of the personal and cultural pressures that influence how we see ourselves as professional therapists. It then explores how these pressures impact upon our capacity to protect children and ourselves.     

Spontaneous self disclosures in psychotherapy

The closeness and intensity of feeling that develops between therapist and patient raises complex issues related to the therapist's neutrality, the transference, the countertransference, the therapeutic alliance, and the very essence of the curative aspects of the relationship. The issue of the relationship of self disclosure and the evolving transference, countertransference complex is discussed. It is suggested that on some occasions, the pressure a therapist feels to spontaneously disclose something intimately personal is an indication that the therapeutic role has become reversed and the therapist is using the process to heal a vulnerability in himself or herself. The patient unconsciously participates in the interest of safeguarding the treatment process. In such instances the self disclosure need not interfere with the evolving transference. It may lead to great spontaneity in the process and to opening areas of affect previously unreachable. Self disclosures cannot be viewed as technical innovations to avoid stalemates in clinical practice. Rather, they are facts of our clinical life, facts that must be explained and understood rather than judged and condemned.     

Gender Socialization,Countertransference and the Treatment of Men with Eating Disorders

Knowledge about the treatment of eating disorders is largely based on the experience of women with these disorders. The motivations, beliefs, vulnerabilities and developmental factors that cause and perpetuate eating disorders in men are often gendered. Engaging men in therapy and helping them build and sustain motivation requires therapeutic sensitivity to the impact of these gendered factors. Therapists’ sensitivity to these factors inevitably activates personal experiences with gender and provides an important source of information about patients’ experiences. This article focuses on how gender socialization and internalized views of masculinity affect client, therapist and the co-created therapeutic relationship. Male and female therapists can use awareness of gender influences to improve their ability to detect and communicate their gendered countertransference reactions. The article concludes with a discussion of how gendered assumptions and emotional reactions can affect treatment team interactions and treatment program protocols.     

RESOLVING ETHICAL CONCERNS IN CLINICAL PRACTIVE: TOWARD A PRAGMATIC MODEL*

A pragmatic model is proposed for use in resolving ethical concerns and dilemmas in clinical practice. It encompasses five decision bases that therapists may draw on for the kind of comprehensive analysis that is necessary for reaching a defensible decision. The decision bases are: (a) theories of ethics; (b) professional codes of ethics; (c) professional theoretical premises; (d) the sociologal context; and (e) the personal/professional identity. The model is applied to five actual cases offered by several therapist who experienced ethical concerns with them. The case analyses demonstrate the model's utility for decision making and for prevention of ethical problems.     

Camp experiences in the lives of adolescents with serious illnesses

This study explored the experiences of a summer camp for adolescents with serious illnesses and included interview responses from campers with different types of serious illnesses. Twenty-four youth aged 14–15 with cancer, sickle cell disease, HIV/AIDS, or metabolic diseases provided videotaped interviews that were analyzed using an interpretative phenomenological approach, and frequencies of responses per theme and diagnosis were computed. Camp experiences varied across diagnostic groups and featured: a sense of belonging, enjoyment, being myself, positive affect, camp programming, adult staff, personal growth, and escape. Some qualitative variations existed between diagnosis groups. Campers with cancer perceived camp as a place for sense of belonging, personal growth, and escape. Campers with HIV/AIDS perceived camp as an opportunity for a sense of belonging, being myself, camp programming, and escape. Campers with sickle cell disease perceived camp as a place for enjoyment, adult staff, being myself, personal growth, and escape. Campers with metabolic diseases perceived camp as a place for personal growth and positive affect. Professionals caring for youth with serious illnesses should consider adding camp to the list of interventions to promote children's well-being. Future research should include more youth and illness types.     

How Do the Professional Lives of Family Therapists Affect their Private Relationships: A Qualitative Study

This article is based on a qualitative research project about how the professional lives of family therapists affect their private relationships. The overarching research question was: How does your professional work as a family therapist affect your private relationships? To answer this question, semi‐structured qualitative interviews were conducted with four therapists from two different Family Counseling Services. Through the use of interpretative phenomenological analysis, three main findings were identified: (1) family therapists’ knowledge and values are a basis for interpersonal encounters; (2) participants describe resonance in relation to clients’ stories; and (3) therapists can be challenged in managing confidential knowledge particularly where they belong to the same communities as clients. The study also explores societal expectations and discourses that accompany the role of therapist, which can affect therapists’ freedom of movement in their private lives. These issues are discussed in relation to family therapy theory and relevant research.     

Caring: commitment to excellence or condemnation to conformity?

The art of caring to alleviate illness and to promote health is nursing's unique commitment to society and the health-care industry. How this practice is implemented dictates the success or failure of prescribed strategies. In addition, the way in which caring is implemented defines emotional maturity on both a personal and professional level. Several goals to rehabilitate the psychologically codependent person include: Developing an awareness of the origins of codependency and how early family experiences affect subsequent behavior and beliefs about oneself; Identifying the personal price and payoffs for continuing codependent behaviors; The ability to openly express personal needs, wishes, feelings, and opinions while respecting the rights of others; Learning to discriminate between loving/caring and the destructive control of codependency; and The ability to take responsibility for another rather than being responsible to another. Codependent behaviors are prevalent within professional nursing practice, as evidenced by examples provided from three specialty areas in nursing and the fact that women (who are traditionally assigned the cultural role of caring) constitute the majority of professional nurses. Therefore, it is a professional challenge to each nurse to ascertain whether practices are functional or dysfunctional: is the professional interpretation of caring a commitment to excellence or a condemnation to conformity in the unique delivery of health-care practice?     

Hispanic Women Managers and Professionals: Reflections on Life and Work

Much of the research on professional and managerial women actually describes the experiences of White women, excluding those of other racial and ethnic backgrounds. This exploratory qualitative study focuses on the life and work experiences of Hispanic women in managerial and professional positions and how those experiences influence their career possibilities. Data from individual interviews of first‐, second‐ and third‐generation Hispanic women in the USA are used to illustrate a framework of career possibilities that reflects both cultural and personal perspectives. Implications for further study are addressed.     

Practice educators’ experiences of facilitating and assessing student values and ethics learning: constructing dialogue

This study explored the experiences of practice educators in facilitating and assessing student values and ethics learning. Three practice educators in the North of England were invited to explore their experiences through semi-structured, in-depth interviews. Responses were coded using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Interventions to manage discontinuities between students’ personal and professional values were explored alongside the rationale for holding these two as separate entities. Using a pedagogically informed concept of professional self-location, findings that illustrate both difficulties and successes with these strategies are presented within two major themes, Conceptualisations of Personal and Professional Values, and Constructing Dialogue. The critical functions that dialogic learning serves in the practice educator repertoire are discussed, along with recommendations for the training, support and continuous professional development of practice educators.     

The Anatomy of Hope

Hope and despair are antonyms that describe a person's emotional state, determine whether one receives a psychiatric label, and whether one experiences others as potentially loving or threatening. Patients come to the therapist, bereft of a sense of self-esteem and personal potency, seeking the gift of hope which the therapist, who treasures life, is uniquely qualified to give. The cultivation of hope and the abolition of despair are prime ingredients in psychotherapy, yet have received little attention in the therapeutic literature. This article examines the nature and origin of hope and despair.     

Role of rural camps in nurturing field practicum: narrative from a faculty of social work,Delhi, India

Rural camps are an integral part of practice learning for most schools of social work in India. The paper locates the relevance of rural camps in social work education and unveils its pedagogy and broad learning framework. Based on the experiential account of the author in a rural camp as a teacher educator, the paper situates the role of camps in professional development of social work students and how it enables to bridge the gaps between academic knowledge base and the complex realities of practice. The unique standpoint of the paper is the students’ account of their experiences, challenges faced and its impact on their personal and professional growth.     

User Involvement in Therapy: Couples' and Family Therapists’ Lived Experiences with the Inclusion of a Feedback Procedure in Clinical Practice

User involvement in therapy includes some form of feedback from the clients. The feedback guides the therapist and the clients toward a best possible result through a best possible therapy process. In recent years many different procedures for collecting feedback have been developed. In a previous study presented in this journal we explored the expectations therapists had before including the comprehensive clinical feedback procedure, Systemic Therapy Inventory of Change (STIC), in their clinical practices. Our aim with this present study is to explore couples' and family therapists’ experiences with STIC from the perspective of user involvement. We found that the term ‘using STIC’ represented many different variations both between therapists and between the families each therapist worked with. Likewise user involvement, combined with a feedback procedure like STIC, was also a many faceted area. We discuss how therapists’ experiences may relate to the different aspects of user involvement in therapy.