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Work with trauma in southern communities in Israel
Get PDFThis article is based on the author's interviews with specialist trauma practitioners offering systematically informed treatment to young families in the town and environs of Sderot, an Israeli city which for many years has borne the brunt of rocket barrages that periodically flare up in the region in the absence of any progress towards peaceful coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians living in the Gaza strip
Helping us heal; how creative life story work supports individuals and organisations to recover from trauma
No full textThis article discusses the implementation of a new creative life story work project within a statutory children’s services department of a UK Local Authority. The project looks to strengthen the use of life story work within statutory children’s social work teams, involving the introduction of a model developed by Professor Richard Rose. Staff training is provided, and creative life story groups with care experienced young people are led jointly by professional artists and children’s social care staff. As a social worker, I support the implementation of the project and offer any additional therapeutic support children attending the groups might need, including more in-depth individual therapeutic life story work. I explore here the dynamic nature of life story work in children’s social work, including a critical analysis of the use of self, and consider theoretical application and wider critiques of the model. I discuss some of the (often contested) literature in relation to trauma, before employing a psychosocial approach that draws on systemic and psychoanalytic theory in order to understand how creative life story work supports individuals and organisations in recovery from trauma and provides the potential to invite bigger questions in relation to how to reignite creativity and social pedagogy in social work practice
Pandemic: challenges in care and recovery
No full textOur experiences through the pandemic have to be viewed by reflecting on the year and a half that has been, but also what we have learnt through this experience, with a view to taking forward. The article intends to approach this topic, from a health and social care perspective coming from the author working in The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, a healthcare organisation, but also importantly, from a relational perspective in how we interact organisationally, as a health & social care system that is part of a wider society in this city, across the UK and the wider world. The article not only comments on systemic inequalities that have become stark in the pandemic, but also identifies corrosive and deliberate counter narratives to the themes of care and courage in this period. It concludes that the pre-existing silos of separation between the privileged and dispossessed have prevented survival and wellbeing in the wider society. The process of recovering from the pandemic is not just about the restoration of physical wellbeing but also the creation of healthier conditions in society that actively vitiate against the scourge of everyday sadism
Complex trauma: Working with other modalities within a psychoanalytic frame
No full textTwo clinical cases are used to describe how the use of trauma-focused treatment interventions—trauma-focused cognitive behavioural therapy (tf-CBT) and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR)—can be brought into a psychoanalytically informed trauma treatment when either an impasse is reached, or engagement is difficult. The chapter emphasizes the tightrope one inevitably walks when more active interventions are used and the possibility of enactments is heightened
The body as the new royal road to the unconscious
No full textAs a child psychotherapist, Music brings his understanding of the impact of trauma on the body and mind to describe how adaptations to psychoanalytic ways of working may be required. He draws on the work of Stephen Porges to emphasize the need to understand what is happening at a physiological level in the body when under threat. Using the concept of the window of tolerance, Music gives several clinical examples in his work with children, adolescents and adults to describe how bodily countertransference experiences are an important tool in this work
What are my experiences as a trainee Child Psychotherapist, setting up and facilitating a Work Discussion Group for clinical staff in a CAMHS setting
Get PDFThis study reports on my experience of setting up and facilitating a Work Discussion Group (WDG) offered to the clinical staff of a Crisis Service in a Child & Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) setting. The research describes and analyses my experience of what it was like to offer a WDG in an established team that had had no provision of this kind previously. A qualitative methodology was used, with the method of data analysis being Reflective Thematic Analysis (RTA), to analyse four significant sessions. The first session was the initial enquiry meeting with the Crisis Team and their managers; three direct WDG weekly sessions over the six-month intervention were also sampled. Establishing a WDG in a CAMHS Team that already had a strong culture of its own was a complex but rewarding learning experience. The importance of letting experiential learning evolve in an intimate manner was essential and required curiosity to become alive in the WDG. In my task as a facilitator, I had to understand the Clinicians’ defensive behaviour and for the Clinicians to feel understood and held without me becoming defensive. My training offered me a Psychoanalytic backbone to support new thinking within the WDG and to survive the initial feeling of hostility and rivalry from the Clinicians and lesser so from within myself. The WDG became more relevant after it had become established as it initially struggled to find a meaningful space within the CAMHS Crisis Team. The propensity for splitting and re-enactments due in part to the nature of crisis work was understood by moving beyond looking for logical meaning to bringing in thinking based on unconscious processes to add meaning to the clinical material that was presented. This added to the authenticity of the experience when discussing clinical material during each WDG session. In my experience, the WDG became a dynamic and authentic experience for the Clinicians. In my role as the facilitator, I needed to hold an internal experience in my mind of what a WDG involved in order for me not to get pulled into the busy culture of the CAMHS Crisis Team. Keywords: CAMHS; crisis team; staff reflexive practice; psychoanalytic work discussion grou