Dyadic Traumatic Reenactment: An Integration of Psychoanalytic Approaches to Working with Negative Interaction Cycles in Couple Therapy with Childhood Sexual Abuse Survivors

Childhood sexual abuse (CSA) survivors often face difficulties in their intimate relationships and struggle to engage in the process of couple therapy. Recent research has demonstrated that the negative interaction cycles of CSA survivors are more complex and entrenched than those of couples who do not present with a history of trauma (MacIntosh in J Couple Fam Psychoanal 3(2):188–207, 2013). This paper integrates the psychoanalytic concepts of repetition and enactment into the concept of the negative interaction cycle as articulated by Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), to provide an expanded understanding of these deeply entrenched dynamics in which the traumas of the past are embedded. The complex repetitions of early traumas in the negative interaction cycle of the couple are referred to as Dyadic Traumatic Reenactments (DTR). Two contrasting case studies are used to illustrate these concepts.     

Emotionally Focused Therapy for couples and childhood sexual abuse survivors

This study explored Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) for couples with childhood sexual abuse survivors (CSA) and their partners. Half of the couples in this study reported clinically significant increases in mean relationship satisfaction and clinically significant decreases in trauma symptoms, and thematic analyses identified numerous areas where trauma survivors were challenged in fully engaging in the therapy process. In particular, trauma symptoms such as affect dysregulation and hypervigilance were identified to play a role in the challenges that survivors experienced in fully engaging in the EFT process. Results of these thematic analyses yielded clinical recommendations for working with CSA survivors and their partners in EFT for traumatized couples. Recommendations for future study were articulated.     

A new approach to design and use of management information

Information, that is both accurate and timely, is probably the most important resource needed by managers to make sound decisions regarding the problems and issues facing their organizations. Unfortunately, sophisticated information systems often fail to meet this need. Managers complain that the data produced by information systems arrive too late, are too general and lack accuracy. Daft and MacIntosh studied the system problems of a number of organizations, discovering that understanding their work activities is critical to the design of successful information systems. The authors also considered the volume of information, preciseness of information and the way in which it is handled by users to develop a model describing information systems. The article illustrates how the model was applied successfully to four case situations.     

Mode 2 Management Research

The terminology of mode 2 knowledge production has become increasingly prominent in discussions on the nature and purpose of management research. This paper attempts to move our understanding of this terminology forward, by providing a detailed exposition of the five features of mode 2 knowledge production in the context of management research and by offering an empirical account of a research project conducted in mode 2. The paper relates the established problem–solving management research traditions of action research, cooperative inquiry, grounded theory and clinical method to the conceptual territory of mode 2. It then considers a specific form of knowledge production where all five features of mode 2 appear simultaneously. The paper demonstrates how the terminology of mode 2 might provide a useful basis for dialogue between management researchers from different methodological traditions. Moreover, the paper concludes that the specific form of mode 2 where all five features are present (called here 5mode2) does differ, in both its conduct and the character of its output, from any of the established approaches considered in this paper.