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How do members of a multidisciplinary team involved in running a therapeutic playgroup understand their role in the work?
Get PDFThe aim of this study is to investigate how a multidisciplinary Therapeutic
Playgroup within a Children’s Centre functions, and the role of a child
psychotherapist working in that setting. The playgroup studied is located in a
deprived local urban community with a large population of young children. The
founding members of the service recognised that historically there had been a
low take up rate of professional services for young children.
When an experienced and long-serving child psychotherapist left the service,
the team requested that a child psychotherapist replace her, and I joined the
team, while still in my fourth year of training. Reflecting on my own experience,
and what I learned about my predecessor’s contribution, I became interested in
the specific role of a child psychotherapist in this setting.
I investigated how the Therapeutic Playgroup operated, what were the origins
and the history of the model, and how this had developed over time. I used a
qualitative approach; this included interviewing staff members and recording my
observations of their work. I became a participant-observer, continuing my
professional work in the service, but with an additional research agenda.
During the data collection, the Children’s Centre, and the Therapeutic Playgroup
within which it was situated, was confronted with diminishing budgets,
redundancies and uncertainty surrounding whether it would remain open. The
impact of these changes on the staff group is explored in the study.
Researching how the team had operated during less turbulent times revealed a
leadership function in operation. The team consisted of people who were
committed and who invested in the ‘mission’ of the institution. From the data,
ideas are formed about a type of emotional ‘experience’ that a child
psychotherapist can provide, which describes a distinctive professional
contribution to this work
A troubled family therapist undercover: Some reflections on working with 'troubled families' in a statutory agency
No full textAntisocial personality disorder: New directions
No full textAntisocial personality disorder is a complex condition carrying high rates of comorbidity and mortality for individuals as well as harmful consequences for their families and society. Despite the publication of National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines for the disorder, the evidence base and provision of effective treatments remain inadequate, and the belief that the condition is untreatable remains widespread among psychiatrists and other professionals. This article highlights current diagnostic controversies and summarises the evidence for conceptualising antisocial personality disorder as a disorder of attachment. Informed by this developmental perspective, we provide a framework for the management and treatment of adults with antisocial personality disorder, highlighting the importance of creating a safe setting and recommending adaptations of therapeutic technique to facilitate the engagement of this ‘treatment-rejecting’ patient population. We conclude with an outline of the current government policy on the treatment of high-risk offenders with personality disorder
Detecting therapeutic improvement early in therapy: Validation of the SCORE-15 index of family functioning and change
No full textThe SCORE index of family functioning and change is an established measure, with strong psychometric properties, of the quality of family life. We report the sensitivity to therapeutic change of the short form, the SCORE-15. Data are reported from 584 participants aged above 11 years, representing 239 families. All couples and families had been referred for systemic couples and family therapy, completing the form at start of the first session and close to the fourth. The SCORE-15 is shown to be acceptable with strong consistency and reliability. Change over only three sessions was highly statistically significant. Further validation is provided by improvements in quantified scores correlating significantly with independent measures provided by family members and by their therapists. The SCORE-15 is a proven measure of therapy and of therapeutic change in family functioning. It is therefore a routinely usable tool applicable to service evaluation, quality improvement, and to support clinical practice.
Practitioner Points
•The SCORE provides practitioners with brief descriptions of varied aspects of family interaction that have proven significance for many families who present for therapy.
•SCORE-15 can be used with confidence to monitor and report proven indicators of progress in systemic therapy.
•Because SCORE identifies clinically significant issues of family interaction it has many potential uses in therapy.
•There are many new possibilities for therapists to undertake collaborative research
Hamlet in analysis: Horatio's story - A trial of faith
No full textReview: This is no mere parody it is a confession, a treatise, and a very, very clever tragi-farce, which is as funny as it is serious, and serious as it is funny. There is a living, breathing countertransference exploration throughout this fictitious analysis of an all-too-recognizable late-twentieth century young adult, Hamlet Dane, and his alter-ego analyst, Dr Horacio. Hamlet in Analysis explores, amongst other things, the cracks and gaps between analytic theory and practice through the candid, private thoughts of our analyst-narrator, whose constantly self-limited 'philosophy' is pierced, rankled, ruptured, and herniated by his young patient, provoking an ongoing challenge to his own sanity. But it contains 'the best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem unlimited'. --Neil Maizels, psychoanalytic psychotherapist, Melbourne, Australia
Bravo! Bravo! I felt like saying after finishing this wonderful performance, an amazing tour de force in which we are led through a modern-day Hamlet's psychoanalysis (Kleinian, via Meltzer, with Bion part of the brew) with Horatio, the psychoanalyst. What is at stake is further birth and growth of psychoanalysis, creativity and personality, marked by necessary failure, which, at times, fuels glimpses of more possibilities. Meg Harris Williams draws on rich cultural associations as she shines her light on aesthetic dimensions of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic dimensions in the heart of art. A book that not only crosses disciplines, but also alchemically mixes them and brings us closer to our own experience. --Michael Eigen, PhD, author of Contact With the Depths and The Birth of Experienc
Occupational segregation and psychological gender differences: How empathizing and systemizing help explain the distribution of men and women into (some) occupations
No full textThe proportion of men and women workers varies among occupation types. There are several factors that may contribute to occupational segregation by gender. Using a large U.S. sample (n = 2149), we examine the extent to which occupational segregation can be attributed to gender differences in empathizing and systematizing: Psychological dimensions which theorists argue represent meaningful differences between men and women. Of the eight occupational categories for which employee gender and occupation type were associated at the p < .01 level, four of these – Construction, Professional/Scientific/Technical fields, Management, and Education – were partially mediated by systemizing and/or empathizing scores, which typically accounted for 10–20% of the observed gender differences. For other areas, like Health, gender differences were not mediated by either measure