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Is gratitude the secret of happiness? I spent a month finding out
No full textIt has become a hugely popular concept in positive psychology and self-help, but is feeling grateful really a panacea? One writer sets aside her scepticism and opens up her gratitude journal
Relational supervision as a tool to prevent early school leaving (ESL): Collaborative working to promote reflection and learning about oneself-in-role
Get PDFIn 2017, 66,000 people aged 16-17 years in the UK were not in education, employment or training
(NEET). This was 5% of all 16-17 year olds. Studies that have explored preventing young people from
becoming NEET emphasise the importance of consistent and positive relationships in programmes led
by accessible, approachable and relatable adults. Many young people who leave school early or who
are at risk of doing so are particularly vulnerable. This may be because of physical health problems,
caring responsibilities, difficult family circumstances, mental health needs and/or special educational
needs and disabilities (SEND). These young people’s lived experience is often very painful for the staff
working with them to bear. Supportive and reflective spaces for these adults to acknowledge and
process distressing feelings that are stirred up when doing this work are required. However, the current
turbulent social-political and professional context in the UK, along with the historical place of supervision
for teachers, often means such spaces are rare. This workshop is an attempt to explore some of the
challenges facing teachers, and to offer one potential approach to facilitate practitioners reflecting on
their practice, to learn about themselves and the work they do and ultimately to be sufficiently supported
to provide the kinds of relationships with young people that enable educational access, participation and
achievement
Commentary on chapter 7 [Mentalization-based couple therapy]
No full textPsychoanalytic practice suggests that what is required is for the clinician to tolerate their countertransference experience, giving the patient the opportunity to be in the presence of an object that can contain and reflect on disturbing mental states. Much practice in mentalization-based treatment (MBT) is based on this understanding and, together with an equivalent approach in the traditional psychoanalytic practice, gives the patient the experience of being understood, rather than prematurely being expected to understand themselves. The mutual emotional experience of the clinical encounter between patient and therapist, referred to technically as the transference–countertransference relationship, is of course informed in some part by the internal world of the therapist. Both a psychoanalytic approach and an MBT approach are challenged to contain and mentalize two disturbed and disturbing minds, unconsciously organised to recreate in others, partner and therapist, toxic and disturbed mental states
The experiences of school staff who work with emotionally based school non-attendance: A psycho-social exploration
Get PDFThis psycho-social study explored the experiences of school staff who have worked with emotionally based school non-attendance. There is a paucity of qualitative accounts of school staff’s views in this area. Existing research focuses predominantly on the causes, risk and protective factors and the management of school non-attendance. Six participants took part in two interviews where psychoanalytically informed approaches were employed. This included the Grid Elaboration Method and Free Association Narrative Interviewing. The interview transcripts were analysed using Thematic Analysis, which illuminated five overarching themes: relationships between home and school; school factor s; conceptualisation and impact of school non - attendance; tasks and challenges of adolescence and individual journeys and emotions. The themes are discussed in relation to existing research and psychological theory. Consideration is given to the implications for the role of the Educational Psychologist in working with emotionally based school non-attendance. Strengths and limitations of the current study are discussed and ideas for future research are proposed
Home educating children with special educational needs - an exploration of how mothers experience this unique learning relationship
Get PDFThis research explores how mothers home educating a child with special educational needs (SEN) experience their relationship with their child. As home education is gaining in popularity it is important to understand this learning relationship in more detail, particularly as the profession of educational psychology is largely driven by knowledge of more traditional educational settings. A review of the literature indicated that there is minimal existing research examining this particular relationship, with even less exploring the experiences of mothers home educating children with SEN. As the research is exploratory in nature a qualitative approach was taken with interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) as the choice of methodology. Six mothers home educating children with SEN were recruited to take part. Each was interviewed individually using an unstructured approach and audio records of these interviews were transcribed and analysed following the guidelines outlined by Smith, Flowers and Larkin (2009). Results indicated six overarching themes within the mothers’ experiences; (1) Empowering Child, (2) Attunement and Connection, (3) The Super Mother, (4) Threats: Past, Present and Future, (5) Transformation and Growth and (6) Issues of Control. The findings are discussed in relation to existing literature and implications for educational psychologists are explored. Intersectionality is proposed as a useful theoretical context from which to apply the findings. It encourages the professional to examine the learning relationship as it is experienced rather than through the lens of inaccurate stereotypes or assumptions thereby helping to avoid oppressive practices as emphasised in professional guidance and literature. It is suggested that transferability to real life case work within the context of intersectionality can be facilitated by the Home Education Learning Relationship Framework (HELRF), created to provide a clear, visual illustration of the overarching themes and the role of the professional. Limitations of the findings and the research process itself are discussed and avenues for future research identified
Violent child, desperate parents. 14 Mar 2018, Channel 5
No full textPioneering child psychologist Laverne Antrobus takes on some of the UK's most vioent and difficult children
Bringing death home: Towards a deeper understanding of the implications of The End of Life Care Strategy for those individuals and organisations providing care in non-specialist settings
Get PDFMy research uses a psychosocial approach to reach a deeper understanding of the
experience of those providing end of life care in non-specialist settings and places this
experience within the wider landscape of contemporary developments in care provision,
with particular reference to the End of Life Care Strategy introduced by the Department
of Health in 2008. One intention of the strategy is to ensure that those at the end of life
have greater choice about where to die, including the option of remaining in a homely
environment. An initial hypothesis was that the End of Life Care Strategy does not
appear to adequately address the psychological and emotional impact of engaging in the
kind of care it proposes. More specifically the view that death is the subject that we are
most defended against as human beings, particularly in contemporary western society, is
based on psychoanalytic considerations of our relationship with death and has
implications and consequences for the individuals and organisations concerned.
A free association narrative approach was used to gather data from a small number of
carers from care home settings. The data is presented in the form of case studies, end of
life stories and a cross-case analysis, revealing emotional complexity and the
significance of the relationship each carer has with death and dying. Identifying a range
of unconscious defences in response to the carers' close proximity to death and dying I
found evidence of a deep engagement with caring at the end of life, confirming personal
and professional experience of a third tragic position elaborated within the thesis. Other
findings include evidence of a strong vocational commitment to caring at the end of life,
a powerful intertwining of personal and professional experience and a deep engagement
with the emotional aspects of caring. The findings inform a number of
recommendations
Observing the nature and trajectory of infant defences against disturbing mothering on a mother and baby unit
Get PDFIntroduction and aims:
Mental health vulnerability emerges out of the interaction between the quality of early relationships and genetic inheritance. The quality of early relationships is strongly influenced by the mother’s unconscious memories of her first relationships: Fraiberg’s (1980) Ghosts in the Nursery. We propose that the intergenerational transmission of mental health vulnerability is largely mediated by such unconscious, internal-world phenomena.Genetic inheritance, historical relationships and internal world phenomena are all hidden from direct observation. However, psychoanalytic clinical practice has established that the quality of historical relationships and the way that they interact with temperament through the prism of our unconscious internal worlds to shape a relational interaction in the present, can be inferred. Close observation of mother-infant interactions, and observation of what impact these interactions have on the observer utilises the psychoanalytic technique of analysing the counter-transference to gain access to the unconscious phantasies of the observed.We argue that the earliest perceptions are inchoate and coloured by phantasy distortions. This is what lends Fraiberg’s (1980) ‘ghosts in the nursery’ their phantom quality. We seek to capture the moments when an unwell mother is being haunted by such figures from her own infancy and then trace how they come to take up residence, and new forms, in the internal world of her baby. The secondary aim of this study was to explore whether an infant observation approach can be captured in a standardised (or standardisable) rating scale without blunting the very sensitivity we hope to capture. The methodological challenge of creating a tool that respects the complexity of transference phenomena, without becoming too cumbersome to use, was only partially met.
Methods:
This study uses a two-pronged approach. One prong is designed to capture qualitative data in the form of transcripts of observation write-ups and further reflections on those transcripts. The second prong is designed to capture some of the complexity of this data quantitatively in a Psychoanalytic Infant Observation Scale (PIOS).A psychoanalytic infant observation of videotaped interactions on a mother and baby unit were written-up, including the observer’s counter-transference experience.A senior parent-infant psychotherapist used the transcripts to make a clinical formulation and treatment plan for the pairs. Comparison with another well-evidenced assessment tool was possible because Care Index ratings were available for our pairs. In order to distill the rich qualitative data
iiiinto quantitative data that could be readily compared with the Care Index scores, an Infant Observation Scale was developed and applied to the transcripts.
Results:
The transcripts were rich in clinical deductions about the internal world of mother and infant, although there were more inferences made about maternal than infant defences.The Parent-infant psychotherapist felt confident making a formulation based on the transcripts and his treatment plans concurred with those indicated by the Care-index rating.
When qualitative data was rendered as numerical scores on clinically derived scaled items, there was a good fit with the Care Index ratings for the same parent-infant pairs.
Conclusions:
Psychoanalytic infant observation can identify certain internal world phenomena. These are phantasy distortions impacting on interactions and various infantile defences, including manic, second skin, dissociative and narcissistic. These were not directly observable but inferred from countertransference experience and observable behaviours. Psychoanalytic infant observation Psychoanalytic infant observation is clinically useful for formulating parent-infant relational difficulties. In this early development of an Infant Observation Scale, the measure’s validity and reliability were found to be good. The particular strength of psychoanalytic infant observation is the use of transference phenomena to inform an understanding of unconscious processes and this study suggests that with further work it might be possible to develop and standardise a scale to capture and measure that phenomena
Laverne Antrobus on Woman's Hour. Discussion about the impact of household conflict on children. 22 Nov 2018, BBC Radio 4 [Starts at 12:20]
No full textRegular conflict is a household can impact not only family relationships, but a child’s overall well-being. Children who grow up witnessing their parents constantly arguing are more likely to suffer from mental illnesses and poor life skills. What does the research around this say and what can we learn from it? Donna Molloy is the Director of Policy and Practice at the Early Intervention Foundation. Laverne Antrobus is a consultant and educational psychologist for The Tavistock and Portman NHS clinic
