1,720,986 research outputs found
The Push or Pull of Romantic Relationships for Women with an Insecure Attachment Style: A Hermeneutic Literature Review
No full textThe increasing public awareness of attachment theory and the impact of insecure attachment on romantic relationships highlights the importance of gaining insight into the implications of one’s attachment style. This insight can aid insecurely attached adults in comprehending their behaviour, interpersonal connections, and the influence of their attachment styles on their romantic relationships. The current dissertation has a particular interest and focuses on insecure attachment in adult women and its impact on romantic relationships. Using a hermeneutic methodology, a hermeneutic literature review was conducted to investigate the research question, “What are the implications of insecure attachment in adult women in romantic relationships?”.
The literature review findings revealed that romantic love is theorised as an attachment process. The adult attachment behavioural model posits that insecurely attached adults avoid pain, abandonment, intimacy, and vulnerability by deactivating or hyperactivating their attachment behavioural system. Due to their increased susceptibility to narcissism and lower self-esteem, people insecurely attached employ particular defense mechanisms to mitigate their behaviour. In women, insecure attachment is linked to negatively affecting sexual behaviour, functioning, and dynamics. This research can help mental health professionals understand insecure women, increase clients’ awareness of how attachment styles affect interpersonal and intrapersonal dynamics, and reassure insecurely attached women in romantic relationships that they are not alone in their experiences
Poetry and Suffering of the Psyche: A Hermeneutic Literature Review of the Works of the Poet Yun Dong-ju
No full textIn this dissertation, I explore the relationship between poetry as an art form and the human experience of psychological suffering through closely examining the works of Korean poet Yun Dong-ju. Many ancient cultures associate poetry with medicine and healing. In the modern world, poetry is recognised as a valuable tool for therapeutic purposes and is utilised by various mental health professions. A hermeneutic methodology guides the conduct of a nuanced hermeneutic literature review in which I focus on Yun Dong-ju's poetry, prose, and related literature discussing his life and work. Through this review, I explore various facets of poetry.
The review reveals several functions of poetry in relation to Yun Dong-ju's psychological suffering. One significant function, referred to as 'personal myth,' involves the use of 'poetic language,' consisting of metaphors, analogies, and symbols. For Yun Dong-ju, poetry serves as a means to explore and construct his inner narrative about self. This process leads him to a deeper understanding of his internality, fostering psychological growth and a sense of healing. It seems that the construction of his own 'personal myth' nurtures the generation of meaning about his sufferings, enabling him to counter existential crises. Through this review, it is revealed that poetry can provide a safe container, enabling the expression and navigation of nuanced and subjective emotional realities linked to the excruciating sense of psychological suffering. The findings suggest that the core potency of poetry lies in the pursuit of meaning, even in the face of adversity and meaninglessness, and particularly in the context of individual psychological suffering. Furthermore, it is discovered that poetry has the potential to address collective trauma and promote collective healing, bridging divides within individuals with diverse cultural, historical, and ancestral backgrounds.
The findings of this research reveal significant potentials for the use of poetry in the fields of psychotherapy and mental health, both for individual trauma and collective/intergenerational trauma within individuals. It is also implied that the effectiveness and potency of poetry in therapy may closely relate to the therapist’s subjectivity, temperament, value systems, and their alignment with the therapist’s creativity and artistic mode of being. Thus, the therapist’s own subjectivity can function as a poetic presence, even without the explicit use of poetry in therapy. Furthermore, poetry may help bridge cultural gaps in multicultural contexts, like Aotearoa New Zealand, by enabling nuanced understandings of individual emotions and fostering a sense of cultural safety. Overall, what is revealed is that for the practice of psychotherapy, poetry can facilitate nuanced emotional attunement between therapist and client
Skin Deep: Client Tattoos in Psychotherapy
No full textHistorically, within psychological fields including psychotherapy, tattoos have often been written about as an indicator of deviance, psychopathology, or personality disorder, and have been viewed as a form of self-harm or mutilation. With reactions and perceptions towards tattooing evolving, this research project explores the way that psychotherapists make sense of client tattoos within their clinical work and writing, through conducting a thematic analysis of 65 psychotherapy related articles published since the year 2000. This analysis identified four themes within the literature which focus on the function of tattoos as an object; being tattooed as an act of mastery; tattoos as a way to relate and be related to; and the non-meanings, implied meanings, and indiscriminate meanings of tattoos. In identifying and discussing these themes, this research aims to expand existing thought on the potential clinical significance of client tattoos and broaden the ways that therapists engage with and make sense of them in collaboration with those whose bodies they are on
Paranoia and sexual orientation: A hermeneutic literature review
No full textThe relationship between paranoia and sexual orientation has a long and controversial history in psychoanalytic thinking. It has shifted from a position of early linkage and pathologisation, a subsequent rejection of that link citing societal homophobia, followed by more recent attempts at possible conceptual synthesis. Through the process of a hermeneutic literature review, I explore the different ways this linkage has been thought about over time. I then present my understandings and new insights into how best to work with paranoid LGBTQ+ clients and explore the ethical challenges involved in theorising about and working with marginalised and vulnerable client groups
Born Too Soon: The Enduring Effects of a Premature Birth on the Psyche. A Hermeneutic Literature Review
No full textPremature babies suffer intrusive and painful medical procedures. They often teeter on the precipice of life and death and are subjected to lengthy separations from their mothers in life-saving, but contact-limiting, incubators. It is unbearable to imagine their experiences of helplessness, terror and dread, as they struggle with physical and emotional pain.
This study uses a hermeneutic literature review process to explore psychoanalytic literature that has clinically and/or conceptually made a connection between premature birth experiences and ongoing implications for the psyche.
This study found that adults who had experienced a premature birth as an infant often appear to have a persistence of unhealed, nonsymbolised, nonverbalised trauma and a self that has creatively adapted to its early environment of deprivation. The psyche appears to be haunted by feelings of overwhelming helplessness, hopelessness, terror and dread. The structure of the psyche can be affected and rendered vulnerable to future traumas. In the face of this difficult early life start, the developing self struggles to depend on others, instead finding alternative ways to gain comfort. Ongoing development of the inner self suffers from the need to over-adapt to the environment, which then impedes the adult capacity to reflect, think and make meaning. These creative adaptations distort the developing psyche and affect the capacity to feel truly alive. Throughout the study, I reflect on my subjectivity and progressive understandings. I use these, alongside my embodied responses, to form my interpretive lens: that premature birth could be understood as an experience of torture.
In our current socio-cultural context, these enduring effects on the psyche appear to go widely unacknowledged as the prevailing narrative appears to be that babies do not have the capacity to remember. I argue that this narrative is able to evolve, and that the provision of a framework to think about the premature baby’s experience is needed.
This study contributes to an emerging body of literature on the lasting impacts of birth experiences. The implications of these findings are useful to psychotherapy practitioners and other professionals working with children, adults and families who have been through the experience of a premature birth. It may provide nurses, doctors and medical staff in hospital environments with a different way of understanding their infant patients and help to strengthen the bridge between psychotherapy and the medical world
The Therapist’s Experience and Understanding of Their Client’s Secrets: A Hermeneutic Phenomenological Inquiry
No full textSecrets and secrecy are ubiquitous phenomena that are also encountered in therapeutic relationships, with some studies indicating that over half of all clients have kept secrets from their psychological therapists. Despite psychoanalytic literature theorizing about the client’s secrets and secrecy, I found little was written from the experiential perspectives of psychotherapists. To address this gap in the literature the study explored how psychotherapists experienced and understood their client’s secrets. Hermeneutic phenomenological methodology/methods were utilized and I interviewed three psychotherapists and one psychologist. These participants discussed their clinical experiences and meaning makings when working with client secrets that had involved sexual abuses. An analysis of the interview transcripts found two experiential themes. Firstly, the Black Hole theme involved the therapists’ inability to make meanings or know their clients’ concealed secrets. Secondly, the Penumbrae involved a collection of obscure sensate and bodily experiences that gave these therapists an experiential knowing of aspects of their client’s secrets and secrecy, whilst the secret paradoxically remained concealed and untold (until later in the work). I found that the therapists thought that secrets were, 1) hidden and buried in parts of the client’s self, 2) both protective and threatening, and 3) aspects of their selves had an influence on their clients’ secret telling and secret withholding. These subthemes comprised a theme of the therapists’ understandings of client secrets. Analysis of the interview transcripts and a deeper level of interpretation across the texts gave rise to a theme of predation and innocence, and I called this relational configuration the ‘wolf and the lamb.’ This study suggests that the therapists’ emotional, sensate and visceral responses may indicate the presence of concealed secrets. I hope this study contributes to future research on this complex and intriguing topic
Sexual Fantasy: A Hermeneutic Literature Review
No full textFreud (1900/1977, 1905/1977) based his theories of unconscious and psychosexual development on the link between the undischarged libidinal (sexual) tensions and neurosis. He postulated that when a conscious imaginary wish fulfilment (fantasy) was unacceptable to the fantasiser, it became repressed. Thus, it can be argued that the study of sexual fantasies laid the foundation for the birth of psychoanalysis. Freud’s suggestion about the universality of libidinal impulses has been supported by contemporary empirical research which reveals that 90-97% of people experience sexual fantasies (Kahr, 2007; Lehmiller, 2018; Leitenberg & Henning, 1995). The purpose of this hermeneutic literature review was to explore how literature from empirical sex research, psychoanalysis and psychotherapy might shed light on understandings of the meanings and use of sexual fantasy in the psychotherapeutic context.
The synthesis of findings revealed that sexual fantasy is often constituted by images and scenarios that differ from heteronormative and mononormative western socio-cultural expectations of sexual practices and forms of desire. Sexual fantasies were found to cause anxiety, guilt, fear, and shame in the fantasiser. These disturbing feelings often prevented the fantasiser from looking at their fantasies with their sexual partner/s, and even themselves, resulting in silence around sexual fantasy. While sexual fantasy was theorised to hold invaluable information about the person’s unique psychology, attachment history, early experiences and internalised object relations, there appeared to be less clinical emphasis on the importance of verbalising, processing and understanding the meaning of sexual fantasy in psychotherapeutic context. The key theme identified that sexual fantasy can bring emotional transformation and healing, if explored and integrated into the psyche. These new understandings may help psychotherapists and other mental health professionals to use their client’s sexual fantasy as a therapeutic intervention, similar to the interpretation of dreams
Sexual Fantasy: A Hermeneutic Literature Review
No full textFreud (1900/1977, 1905/1977) based his theories of unconscious and psychosexual development on the link between the undischarged libidinal (sexual) tensions and neurosis. He postulated that when a conscious imaginary wish fulfilment (fantasy) was unacceptable to the fantasiser, it became repressed. Thus, it can be argued that the study of sexual fantasies laid the foundation for the birth of psychoanalysis. Freud’s suggestion about the universality of libidinal impulses has been supported by contemporary empirical research which reveals that 90-97% of people experience sexual fantasies (Kahr, 2007; Lehmiller, 2018; Leitenberg & Henning, 1995). The purpose of this hermeneutic literature review was to explore how literature from empirical sex research, psychoanalysis and psychotherapy might shed light on understandings of the meanings and use of sexual fantasy in the psychotherapeutic context.
The synthesis of findings revealed that sexual fantasy is often constituted by images and scenarios that differ from heteronormative and mononormative western socio-cultural expectations of sexual practices and forms of desire. Sexual fantasies were found to cause anxiety, guilt, fear, and shame in the fantasiser. These disturbing feelings often prevented the fantasiser from looking at their fantasies with their sexual partner/s, and even themselves, resulting in silence around sexual fantasy. While sexual fantasy was theorised to hold invaluable information about the person’s unique psychology, attachment history, early experiences and internalised object relations, there appeared to be less clinical emphasis on the importance of verbalising, processing and understanding the meaning of sexual fantasy in psychotherapeutic context. The key theme identified that sexual fantasy can bring emotional transformation and healing, if explored and integrated into the psyche. These new understandings may help psychotherapists and other mental health professionals to use their client’s sexual fantasy as a therapeutic intervention, similar to the interpretation of dreams
Paranoia and Sexual Orientation: A Hermeneutic Literature Review
No full textThe relationship between paranoia and sexual orientation has a long and controversial history in psychoanalytic thinking. It has shifted from a position of early linkage and pathologisation, a subsequent rejection of that link citing societal homophobia, followed by more recent attempts at possible conceptual synthesis. Through the process of a hermeneutic literature review, I explore the different ways this linkage has been thought about over time. I then present my understandings and new insights into how best to work with paranoid LGBTQ+ clients and explore the ethical challenges involved in theorising about and working with marginalised and vulnerable client groups
What Does the Psychotherapeutic Literature Reveal About Therapist's Experiential Responses to Working in Psychotherapy With Trans- Clients?
No full text“Transgender is a phenomenon that remains misunderstood, controversial, and anxiety-provoking in the culture at large, especially in the field of psychoanalysis” (Pula, 2015, p. 809)
The aim of this research is to search for understanding to support clinicians who might be grappling with the complexity of working therapeutically with trans- clients. Using a hermeneutic methodology this dissertation seeks to uncover what the psychotherapeutic literature reveals about therapists’ experiential responses when working with trans- clients.
A hermeneutic review of the literature explores authors’ qualitative observations and conceptual reflections on the nature of the experience of clinicians working with trans- clients. The research reveals the dearth of material that describes the experiential response of the therapist working with this client group. This study identifies a strong argument for further research which encourages participation from trans- clinicians and trans- clients, and the increasing need for trans-affirmative training for clinicians.
The literature revealed an intersubjective world of experiencing which is deeply complex and interwoven between therapist and client. The literature foregrounds the perplexing and disturbing space in which the therapists find themselves. The troubling role of the gatekeeper is identified and thought is given to the way in which this role may impact on the experiential responses of the therapist. The importance of the therapist’s somatic responses in the work is considered. A key theme identified across the literature is the imperative for therapists to hold a responsive, reflective space in which to process their troubling and disorientating experiential responses in their therapeutic work with trans-clients
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