1 / 18

A Story to Live and Work By

A Story to Live and Work By. Religion and spirituality in the self-narratives of Scottish Counsellors Alette Willis , PhD, Postdoctoral Research Fellow The Theology and Therapy Project, School of Divinity www.theologyandtherapy.div.ed.ac.uk. Social Work Seminar, 27 March 2012.

eliana-mckee
Download Presentation

A Story to Live and Work By

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. A Story to Live and Work By Religion and spirituality in the self-narratives of Scottish Counsellors Alette Willis, PhD, Postdoctoral Research Fellow The Theology and Therapy Project, School of Divinity www.theologyandtherapy.div.ed.ac.uk Social Work Seminar, 27 March 2012

  2. Outline of Seminar • Introduction • Theology and Therapy Project • Importance of Stories to Live By • Reading and Witnessing Others’ Stories to Live By • Discussion • Summary and Conclusions

  3. Introduction • Counsellors and Social Workers use practical personal knowledge in their professional work • PPK draws on self • Experiences • Stories attached to experiences • Impacted by societal stories • Story to Live By = professional self • Stories Matter

  4. Project Aims to understand the ways psychotherapy, Christianity, and a new language of “spirituality” intertwined post 1945 focusing on Scotland, but connecting to the UK how did psychotherapy in post-war Scotland borrow and adapt Christian ideas and practices? how did Christianity in post-war Scotland adopt and translate psychotherapeutic ideas and practices? how was the Scottish fusion of psychotherapy and Christianity exported to England?

  5. Scope and Funding Two and a half-year project Funded by Religion & Society Programme, Arts and Humanities Research Council Economic and Social Research Council Archival research Oral Histories (15+1)

  6. Why Oral Histories? Growth of counselling and psychotherapy in Scotland 1960s, 1970s, 1980s not a great deal of the everyday written down key people involved in their 60s, 70s, 80s Valuing of individual lives Self as fundamentally embedded in culture and society Narrative

  7. Counselling Organizations Related in Some Way to Churches • Scottish Marriage Care • Catholic Marriage Advisory Council • Catholic • The Tom Allan Centre (Glasgow) • Church of Scotland • Davidson Clinic (Edinburgh) • Senior church figures on board of governors (Church of Scotland, Episcopal and Catholic)

  8. Religion and spirituality in the lives of key peopleWinifred Rushforth “psychotherapeutic treatment can bring about miracles of healing which are the fulfilment of Divine purpose” Davidson Clinic, became Wellspring

  9. Counselling Ideas in Pastoral Care • Dr Frank Lake (English) Clinical Theology • Practical Theology (New College, University of Edinburgh) • Transactional Analysis in Church of Scotland small group work • SIHR consulting to Scottish Episcopal Synod

  10. Why do Our Findings Matter? • Increasing dominance of medicalized story of counselling and psychotherapy • Clients bring religion and spirituality to therapy room • Therapists bring religion and spirituality to therapy room • People draw on narrative resources in developing Stories to Live By

  11. Follow-on Project Aims • To engage in knowledge exchange around the findings of our project with counsellors, pastoral care workers and other interested groups • How might our findings be useful to individual counsellors and pastoral care workers? • How might reframing the storied lives of individuals challenge, change or shape broader social discourses?

  12. Professional Identity and Story • “A Story to Live By”, Connelly and Clandinin • Knowledge used in practice is closely tied to personal identity • The self as means and tool of professional practice • Phronetic (Aristotle via Flyvbjerg), experiential knowledge (rather than technical) • Narrative knowledge

  13. Narrative Knowing • Told in a present context drawing selectively on past experience pointing to some desired future • Events become experience through their incorporation into narratives • Integral to ethical decision making: what should I do?

  14. Narrative Identity • The self comes into being with question: what ought I to do? (Frank) • Dialogical (even if imagined) • Must be intelligible in the context • Narrative resources • Societal stories matter • Talk therapies work with narrative selves • “Narrative Therapy” • Practical personal knowledge is storied and tied to narrative selves

  15. Narrative Knowledge Exchange • Narrative engages emotions and empathy • Thinking with rather than about others’ self-narratives • Vs monologues and mergers • Amplifies alternate practical personal knowledge

  16. Stories to Live By of Scottish Counsellors • 16 oral histories • Counsellors and Psychotherapists • Members of clergy • Counsellors and psychotherapists • Story of professional origins • Experiences of practice • Conflicts with externally imposed storylines • Exits and/or intentions for future • Particular context was a study of religion, spirituality and development of counselling

  17. Stories to Live By • Molly • Ken • Mary

  18. Questions (Narrative Therapy) • what captures my attention and/or my imagination? • What is it in particular that captures my attention or imagination? • What images of people's lives, identities, relationships, and the world are evoked? • To which areas of my current life do these images and events relate, and in what ways? • Do any experiences or events in my past resonate with these images? In what specific ways? • In what ways am I “becoming other than who I was” by re-engaging with my own life and work in dialogue with this story?

More Related