Clients‟ experience of counselling within a narrative framework
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CHAPTER THREE
METHODOLOGY: A CREATIVE JOURNEY As the true method of Knowledge is Experiment, the true faculty of knowing must be the faculty which experiences. (Blake 1952:427) 3.1 Introduction This chapter will follow the development of the research as it evolved from all the voices that created it. The journal data provided by the participants and subsequent meetings with them, created conversations between us. These conversations encouraged the original heuristic bricolage to transform into a rich (Patton 1997) narrative. Alongside these dialogues were my internal conversations (Etherington 2001) created by the research and by the impact of personal life experiences: “In this way, therapeutic (and other) conversations do not only describe experience; they generate experience and are both unique in the moment and limited by cultural assumptions and possibilities of their contexts” (Speedy 2000; 629). Such experiences generated by conversations between me and the pilot study participants altered the possibilities of the study. Such unique experiences led to changes in the analysis and findings of the study while adding to the layered narrative that continued to emerge. From the recruitment of the participants through to the analysis and findings the ongoing conversations have been forming a poetic narrative. 69 3.2 Recruitment of participants Participants for the pilot and main study were found by contacting students (who were also counselling clients) undertaking foundation/certificate/diploma counselling courses at training establishments (appendix 1). Finding participants via this route rather than through counsellors was felt to be less disruptive of the counselling relationship. Another reason for accessing participants via training establishments was due to the difficulty of finding clients via other routes. It was also felt that individuals who were in the early stages of counselling training might have the commitment and interest needed to take part in the study. I did contact local counselling agencies but they were unsure about research involving clients and were not willing to let me leave information at their centres. The decision to explore containment and freedom through the experiences of counselling clients may have been influenced by the isolation I felt following trauma. Although I explored my own experiences through writing poetry there was no desire to use an autobiographical account. An autoethnographic study would have been all about my experience and such introspection did not “feel an appropriate substitute for data collection” (Delamont 2007; 2) which was what interested me. It also seems that I may have been a far too vulnerable observer (Behar 1996) to cope with the introspection that would have been needed for it may have added to my sense of isolation. Having spent so much time learning within my own internal world there was a strong desire to learn from others. The students‟ choice to take part in the study was personal in that there was no connection to training or counselling. It felt important that the participants valued their own autonomy 70 (Kockelmans 1981; Christians 2005) and used their own awareness about themselves. With the co-operation and permission of local training establishments a short presentation (appendix 4,) was given by me as the researcher to interested student groups who were enrolled on counselling training courses. Information advertising the presentations (appendix 2) was sent to training establishments so that students could choose whether or not to attend. Large numbers attended compared to those who chose to take part. The presentations were given in lunch breaks so as to remain as separate as possible from training. The aim of the presentations was to introduce students to the concept of research, the study itself, any ethical considerations and the participants‟ roles, including my role as the researcher. The students were assured that those who chose to take part could withdraw from the study at any time without any detriment to themselves. They were also given the letter of agreement (appendix 5) to take part in the study which was signed at the next meeting. Initially they were also assured of their anonymity in that the journals would be numbered and returned to me by post. They were informed that the study was researching into aspects of the experience of being a client in a counselling relationship. However the theme of containment, freedom and polarity as constructs in the client‟s internal world was not named in the pilot study. In the following main study the theme of the research was disclosed so that some comparison could be made between the two sets of data. The participants in the pilot study were informed that they would be told the theme after the collection of the completed data (appendix 7). This was in order to see if the concepts emerged spontaneously without prior direction, or whether they did not emerge. Otherwise the basic introduction and information given was the same in both studies. Those interested in taking part in the main study, attended three presentations on the theme to be certain that they acquired some understanding of it (appendix 10). After the presentations students were given details of how to 71 contact me if they were interested in taking part. They also had the opportunity to give me their details at the time if they wished to take part. 3.3 Data collection Although I had hoped for about ten participants just six students chose to take part in the pilot study. One student never managed to begin her journal and after meeting with me to discuss how she was feeling about this she chose to withdraw, so just five students took part. All those who chose to take part were women. By the time I was ready to implement the main study I was aware that another five participants would provide ample material as the analysis of the pilot study had enabled me to see that there was a huge amount of rich data (Patton 1997) in each journal. Initially eight students were interested in the main study but by the time the journal keeping commenced three had withdrawn. The reasons given for not continuing were concern over the time that might be needed as they felt it might interfere with their studies. Again all the participants were women and one of these was a participant from the pilot study who asked if she could continue with the research. She found it was extremely useful in understanding herself and processing her counselling. One participant was introduced to me through a counselling colleague. They were acquaintances who knew each other in a social setting. The acquaintance was briefly informed that a colleague was looking for people to take part in research when they were discussing the counselling she was having. Later she was given my phone number (with my permission) and contacted me about taking part in the research. I did not know her or even know of her until this time. We met at her home and I presented her with the same introduction as the other participants. She was very excited about taking part as counselling was a new and difficult experience for her and she felt that taking part would help her learn more about it. It felt good to have one participant who had no other connection to counselling other than that she was a client. 72 At the initial meeting for those who had chosen to take part an outline of the procedure for the journal keeping that would form the raw data was explained (appendix 4). The data collection would last for fifteen weeks/counselling sessions in the pilot study, and up to forty in the main study, or when the participant felt comfortable ending the process, or they came to the end of their counselling. After each weekly counselling session an entry in the journal, reflecting on feelings from the session would be the initial contribution. Time was taken to look more precisely at the requirements of the journal keeping. They were asked to write just one phrase, or a few words to make up each line of the journal entries. The aim of this way of writing was to condense (Maltby 2003) participants‟ feelings after counselling sessions, so that the essence, or what was felt to be the most important memory of their sensations and images, was put into words, providing a sense of the lived experience (Ellis 1995; White and Epston 1990) of the client in therapy. It was suggested to participants that by condensing sensations and images in this way the process of writing would not take too much time. It was made clear that long factual accounts of the counselling sessions were not required. However the participants could choose how much to write in that there was no limit to the number of lines they could write for each journal entry. These directions on the format for each entry were also typed in the front of each journal (appendix 6) so that the participants always had this information to hand. Occasional meetings and/or telephone calls kept me in touch with the participants over the period of the journal keeping so that they did not feel too isolated to maintain interest in the study. During these phone calls the participants were asked how they were coping with keeping the journal. These phone calls were also made because of my awareness that such “therapeutic writing” might cause an “increase in low mood” (Wright 2005; 73 114). By keeping contact with the participants I was able to ascertain how they felt about the process of keeping the journal and if it was affecting their mood. If anyone had been adversely affected by keeping the journal I would have met with them and if necessary suggest they bring the writing to an end. They appreciated the contact and talking about how they were finding the journal keeping. Their enthusiasm seemed to reflect their commitment to their participation in the work, and also appeared to reflect that the journals became personal records. The journals may have been started to please me as the researcher, but as the weeks progressed they became an intimate aspect of the participants‟ lives. They found themselves wanting to write because they seemed to be discovering new information about themselves. Although writing as a way of collecting data was decided by my history of using writing I don‟t think any other method of collecting data would have provided the same content or context. Writing gave the participants their own space to reflexively look back on their counselling sessions staying with their own thoughts, even developing their own voices. In this sense participants used their own narratives to “reveal and revise” (Holman Jones 2005; 767) their own internal worlds. Their texts were not interrupted by an interviewer‟s questions, but only their own internal questions. This feels what is intrinsic to the work that they wrote their felt experience of counselling sessions in a condensed form that highlights the uniqueness of their experiences. Meetings were held at the end of the journal keeping in the pilot study, to inform the participants of the theme, and to enable feedback on the process of the journal keeping (appendix 7). There was interest in the outcome of the study and this led to the pilot study participants continuing 74 with the research process. They were interested in the analysis of their journals and after discussions with me they agreed to provide feedback on my analysis of them. After the analysis was completed individual meetings were arranged with the participants at their homes. It was felt that this provided a familiar and secure environment for the participants to read personal accounts about themselves. They were first given the „Introduction to the Theoretical Constructs‟ (appendix 10) paper to read to give them an understanding of how the analysis and categories had been arrived at. After this they read the analysis of their journal which was written alongside the copy of their original journal. While they were reading these papers I took notes on any comments they made, asking them to repeat what they had said if I was unsure of their comments. When they had finished reading I again checked out whether I had written their comments correctly. This aspect of the research was crucial to the organic growth of the project in that it became a collaboration (Chase 2005) as the participants influenced the process of the research by having their voices heard. The main study journals and analysis were much larger than the pilot study so it did not feel possible for me to be with the participants while they read them and gave feedback. They needed to take much more time for this process so after contacting them by phone I posted the analysis to them and arranged to meet them when they felt ready. They were also sent questions for feedback which they could answer on a separate sheet or write on the script (appendix 14). I felt quite anxious about letting them do this alone because of the personal nature of the work but at the same time felt confident enough because of the positive responses I had received from the pilot study. Also the relationships that I had built up with the participants over more than two years led me to believe that they would manage the task. The meeting afterwards gave the 75 opportunity to discuss the process of their part in the research, to thank them for their contribution and to say goodbye. The findings poems that were written later were sent by post or email and in this way they were able to give their responses to them. 3.4 Autonomy of the participants I did not know the identities of the participants‟ counsellors and the counsellors only knew of the clients‟ involvement in the study if the participants told them. This study is about the client‟s subjective journey and if the participants were told to inform their counsellors their autonomy to make this decision for themselves would have been denied. None of the participants were overly critical of their counsellors but simply told the story of their counselling journey. Whether they told, or did not tell their counsellor about the journal keeping, they all found that writing the journals added to their experience of counselling. As the researcher, I was very aware of wanting to keep the equality of my relationship with all the participants in that I did not want to make personal choices for them. Stewart (2004) in an introduction to working with the arts in community settings suggests that the quality of relationships is part of reflective practice. She suggests that such a relationship needs to be one that: “respects autonomy and maintains professional distance, but at the same time fosters a unique kind of intimacy and trust.” (122) The trust I had for the participants to make their own choice felt crucial to maintaining such unique relationships. Although the counselling relationship intends to be equal between two individuals, there is no doubt that from the perspective of the client, it is often experienced as 76 being unequal in that the counsellor may be experienced as powerful (Lott 1999). By making their own choice as to whether or not to tell their counsellors about the study the participants maintained a sense of their own power to be competent clients and competent participants. It could be argued that by not informing counsellors of the participants‟ role in the study that the counselling relationship may be undermined. But if the participants had been told to inform their counsellors this would have undermined their autonomy. Perhaps it is important to recognise that both researchers and counsellors may often find themselves at odds in the dialogue between differing research methodological, and counselling assumptions (Reason and Rowan 1981). It seemed the autonomy of the clients was what the counselling centres I contacted did not understand. They felt counsellors should be informed by me if a client of theirs was taking part and I felt ethically unable to do this as it would have undermined the client‟s autonomy. All the participants valued their autonomy (Reason and Rowen 1981), and felt that it was their right to decide whether or not to tell their counsellors about the research. This was made clear in a discussion at the initial meeting. According to the participants who chose not to tell, they felt that the keeping of the journal was intimately their own. They were writing about their experience, in their time, outside of the counselling, and in that sense they felt it had nothing to do with the counsellor. This privacy felt important to them. They separated their personal experience of therapy from the person of the counsellor. Yet at the same time they all valued their counselling and saw it as a crucial aspect of change in their lives. Those participants who chose to tell their counsellors felt it important to disclose what they were doing. They said that the sharing of the information about what they were doing took only a few moments and according to the participants, was not referred to again. 77 3.5 Giving up anonymity Initially the participants in the pilot study had been offered anonymity in that I would not know who had written each journal. It was intended that the journals, upon completion, would be returned to me by post. However four of the participants in the pilot study insisted on handing their journals to me during the meeting which took place after the journals were completed. They had been asked to post them prior to the meeting but had chosen not to. Although I asked them not to hand me the journals but to post them in the envelopes provided after our meeting they made it clear they did not wish to do this. It seemed they wanted me, as the researcher to know that they were the authors of their work, rather than remaining unknown me. The fifth participant put a note in with her returned journal which she signed, thus she also chose to give up her anonymity. It feels important to emphasize that the participants gave up their anonymity. It was their choice and a very powerful way of expressing their autonomy (Elden 1981) which I felt ethically obliged to incorporate. This enabled a more equal relationship to be maintained as we became collaborators in trying to understand their stories (Polkinghorne 1988). Apart from wanting me to know that they were the authors of their work it seems there may have been an unconscious desire to continue with the study. It would have been a pitfall to ignore them for it enabled what was hidden in the initial design to emerge. Wanting to continue with their involvement in the work seemed to demonstrate their connection and commitment to the research and learning about themselves. As the work of the analysis progressed, I became aware that the participants‟ response to the analysis would confirm or deny the understanding/meanings that emerged from each analysis, and possibly verify some of the findings. This part of the design was then written into the main study contract (appendix 5). 78 3.6 Investigating new horizons: the analysis Initially I read the journals in their original form. They were then typed out to make hard copies which were done as accurately as possible copying both lower and upper case lettering and any other marks or punctuation on the scripts. In this way the printed copies were kept as close to the originals as possible (appendix 13). The journals were then read several times while I dwelt on the content and made notes so that any initial impressions and responses were recorded. I did this until I felt that an overall understanding or feeling about each one had been achieved. It was reading that enabled me to step into the shoes (Ellis and Flaherty 1992) of the participants and to almost read behind the words to find what was hidden within them. Reading in this way is perhaps more like reading or writing poetry in that it is essentially daydreaming (Bachelard 1994). This imaginative type of analysis perhaps allowed entry into unconscious messages hidden in the text. It illustrates the similar characteristics between poetry and counselling where transference for example may be understood as a special type of metaphor (Holmes 1985) rather than only a theoretical concept. The symbolism of words was intuitively grasped as they were investigated as holders of emotional meaning (Meltzer 1997). The pilot study analysis was simple in comparison to the main study; simple in the sense that I was more focussed on searching for the concepts of containment and freedom than analysing the text. By looking for words that suggested, either emotional stillness, tension or movement, different aspects of containment and freedom were discovered and this lead to the emergence of the theoretical construct. Lines in the journal were highlighted in different colours in order to differentiate between the emerging categories (appendix 13). Similarities between words used in 79 the journals helped define the categories as well as contributing to the emerging relationship between the categories which is looked at in detail in chapter 4. As with discourse analysis the intention is to filter out the categories with the most “explanatory potential” (Clarkson 1998; 131) about the opposition between containment and freedom. Following on from my initial reading and note taking in the main study I began a more formal analysis attempting to make sense of the images created in each journal. My experience had grown through the process of analysing the pilot study and I was aware that these much longer narratives might need to be analysed differently. I was more certain of the existence of the concepts because they had been present in the pilot narratives. I took into account the way a journal was written. The visual impact of one completely written in higher case lettering had a very different impact from those less formally written. I looked for recurring themes in each narrative and changes in the emotions that were aroused within me. I was also more aware of the impact of metaphors as these had proved revealing in the pilot study. This process felt like decoding, or discovering what was hidden within the words. My emotional responses were an integral part of the process for it was these embodied responses that aided the overall understanding of each narrative. “Focusing closer and closer” (Bolton 2005; 7) into the internal worlds of the participants led to an often surprising accuracy of understanding. This reflexive way of analysing enabled a discovery of different selves (Speedy 2005) or voices within each narrative. Such conversations within each narrative created conversations within me and seem to fit: “within poststructuralist understandings about the fluidity and multiplicity of selves and identities.” (Speedy 2004; 26). As much as possible everything that could be taken into account was used in the analysis. Marks and drawings on the text were taken into consideration for it felt 80 that nothing was “too trivial or insignificant” (Bolton 2005; 7) in that whatever was on the page may have significance to the writer. Only after the initial analysis of each narrative was complete did I begin linking this to the constructs that emerged from the pilot study. With a good understanding of the texts I felt more equipped to begin this process. When it felt difficult to establish which category was the most appropriate for a journal entry I discovered by staying with the process that a relationship is formed. It is a relationship between the journal entry, the interpretation and the construct category. By subjectively entering into the analysis a feeling sense is gained of the client‟s internal state at the time of writing. This is weighed alongside previous entries and the whole context of the journal narrative. There is then a need to objectively look at all the information in order to decide on the appropriate category. The main study produced an image of each participant‟s journal in the form of a finding poem. Another tragedy, a crisis created by loss in my own life impacted on the study which came to an abrupt halt. Months later when I attempted to return to the work I found myself unable to write up the findings of the analysis. Yet this crisis became: “a turning point, a moment when conflict must be dealt with even if we cannot resolve it. It is a tension that opens a space of indeterminacy, threatens to destabilize social structures, and enables a creative uncertainty” (Holman Jones 2005; 766). A new dialogue with myself was created by this further grief which brought a fresh challenge as I struggled to find a way back to the research, for I felt the study would be lost. Through the tension of not knowing how to return to the study, a new creative space emerged within me. This 81 confirmed the understanding that there had always been an autoethnographic element to the research. It grew out of personal process and trauma and in this sense had always been connected to death. Now death was in the foreground again and a supervisor enabled me to see that I had always been writing about death. The real death of others, and the many deaths of different selves (Etherington 2004) both within me and within the lives of the participants. This form of autoethnography is: “research, writing, and method that connect the autobiographical and personal to the cultural and social. This form usually features concrete action, emotion, embodiment, self-consciousness, and introspection” (Ellis 2004; xix). Without making connections between my life experiences and the research to the participants and their narratives the action of writing the findings as poetry (Holman Jones 2005; Etherington 2004) may not have been realized. 3.7 Poetry as findings Poems written by reflecting on another‟s work are known as „ekphrasic works‟, which are meditations on others‟ creative acts (Scott 1994; xi). According to Holman Jones: “ekphrasis describes our attempts to translate and transmute an experience to text and text to experience” (2005; 769). In this way my meditative writing up the findings as poetry attempts to give the reader or listener 82 an experience of the participants‟ lived experience. The poems are written using many of the participants‟ words and phrases and intend to honour them and their contribution. They are also written to evoke feeling in the reader, to give an experience which may be that of the participant, of me as the researcher and even an experience of you the reader depending on how you relate to the work. Richardson states: “Poems are consciously constructed to evoke emotion through literary devices such as sound patterns, rhythms, imagery, and page layout, Even if the prosodic mind resists, the body responds to poetry. It is felt. To paraphrase Robert Frost, poetry is the shortest emotional path between two people” (2003; 189). It is hoped that this felt embodiment (Meldrum 1993; Etherington 2004) of the themes of the research and the experience of the participants will be experienced in the reader as opposed to being only understood. I have come to realize the impossibility of proving something that I believe to be true, like the concepts in this study. Truth is limiting because what else would there be to discover if the truth is found. But perhaps it is possible to feel the embodied concepts, through the poems, and open doors to how such embodied knowledge can be represented? In covering a wide range of research projects Bondi et al (2002) state: “All assume that knowledge is embodied; that is, that knowledge is produced by corporealized subjectivities. All assume that those bodily subjects are positioned in extraordinarily complex articulations of identity, including gender. And all assume that those identities are relational; we are always located in relation to others, not 83 least to those we research” (253). Perhaps the knowledge that was originally embodied in the participants‟ narratives may be transferred through our relationships into the findings poems where together their knowledge and mine unite in the writing. Understanding how writing poetry can make aspects of the unknown accessible and knowable through metaphor and symbols (Waddell 2003) aids the journey towards understanding, and finding meaning in the data. For example, the processes outside the awareness of clients, may limit the value of research into the client‟s experience (McLeod 2001b). However the process of keeping a journal, over lengthy periods of time, which uses the reflexivity of both participants and researcher, may make possible the apprehension of such unknown processes. The subjective, reflexive, and poetic stance, used in analysing the data allows me to make a personal relationship (Etherington 2001) to the research. This personal connection is felt physically in my body as I embody feelings that erupt from within the data and translate these into poetry. Neuroscience informs us that “Every emotion is a biological dynamic” (Maturana and Varela 1987; 247). Because feeling is based in the body, there is a physical reaction to the data, followed by the action of writing. In this way, the hidden or unknown processes of the participants are revealed to, or in, me as the researcher. There are many overlapping areas of interest between counselling processes and the world of poetry for both attach “unusual attention to the nuances of language” (Canham and Satyamurti 2003; 2). It is the engagement with internal and external experience (Waddell 2003), and the meeting ground between them, which is relevant to this research process. 84 The lived experience of each participant‟s narrative (White and Epston 1990) enables the voices of each participant to be heard. Such narrative data is a reminder that it is each participant, each client who is the expert (Rogers 1951) on themselves and this enables me to suspend any ideas of expertise (Etherington 2001). Narrative research provides a way of collecting and analysing people‟s stories (Etherington 2002; Chase 2005). The stories the participants bring to this study are of their experience of counselling, which not only cover the timespan of the journals but incorporate aspects of their history, their lives before being a client. According to Foucault (1970), because man has: “a language, he can constitute a whole symbolic universe for himself, within which he has a relation to his past, to things, to other men and on the basis of which he is able equally to build something like a body of knowledge (in particular that knowledge of himself, of which the human sciences outline one of the possible forms.” (383) In this way it was hoped that the language of the journal data would provide a view of the culture and relationships in which each story is embedded (Polkinghorne 1985) and may enable common themes to emerge among the journals. Analysis can then be based on notions that arise from the data, and notions taken from previously known theory (Etherington 2002). With all these elements of language, story, embodiment, metaphor and literary devices combined the findings poems attempt to create a sense of the lived experience of each participant. 3.8 A narrative journey: Methodology The original heuristic (Moustakas 1990) orientation of this journey into uncharted territory grew 85 from self presenting states (Hess 1988) and enabled ethical approval to be gained from the University of Hertfordshire. In the latter stages narrative inquiry provided a growing understanding of the auto/ethnographic processes (Holman Jones 2005) that were intrinsic from the start of the research process. I was discovering that narrative inquiry offers “a rich but diffuse tradition” (Chase 2005; 651) as life experiences, the data, the work, and the participants interacted with, and upon me as researcher (Strauss 1987). Personal experience created this research and such individual experience became an intrinsic aspect of the methodology, for it incorporates my experience and that of the participants. Combining aspects of personal learning to create a research project that would add to knowledge in the world of counselling created a dilemma in finding a methodology that fitted the forming design. The heuristic voice as implemented by Moustakas (1990) appeared to suit the work because it is founded on personal experience: “Qualitative depictions that are at the heart and depths of a person‟s experience - depictions of situations, events, conversations, relationships, feelings, thoughts, values and beliefs” (1990; 38). This also suits the journal data which provides an in-depth depiction of the counselling journey from the experience of the participants. However unlike Moustakas‟ work which concentrates on the emergence of essence, this study is also a search for the oppositional forces felt to be inherent in personal growth. It written in my voice yet includes the voices of the participants. To hold together the participants‟ and my subjectivity as well as the related themes of the concepts it seems that a firm yet pliable framework is needed. Such opposition in qualitative research is 86 described by Elliot and Williams (2001) as “the ultimate paradox” (183) for they suggest that research must follow rules in a field where no rules exist. It is no wonder that I struggled to find a methodology and a voice that fitted a design that unfolded (Patton 1997) as the study progressed. To cope with the various emerging aspects I attempted to become an heuristic bricoleur (Etherington 2001; McLeod 2001; West 2001) as the forming design was pieced together, but without realizing it I was actually becoming a narrator. Elliott and Williams (2001) make it clear that some qualitative research “cannot be tightly planned in advance” (181) as such work unfolds. But perhaps such work also has its design enfolded within it and remaining open to the research process allows it to emerge. Yet even as a narrative inquiry this study is not straightforward. Ely et al (1991) point out that the qualitative researcher has to be flexible enough to adapt to change which makes sense of the changes brought about in this study because of the participants giving up their anonymity. Also I made changes because of personal life experiences that impacted on the work. The participants also enabled me to learn from them as I did when unravelling the meanings hidden in the metaphors they used: “Narrative enquirers are receptive to learning from the participants as the expert on themselves, paying close attention to the power dynamics in the relationship, and attempting to suspend notions of expertise” (Etherington 2001; 121). Having the participants respond to my analysis of their journals needed me to remain aware that they were the experts on themselves. These narratives between myself and the participants, the 87 narratives formed within me from these sources, with the inclusion of my own narratives influenced my understanding as researcher. Gee (1991) points out that “the meaning of story is rooted in history and the social group, not just in the personal mind” (8). I was learning that the story of this research is rooted in all our histories, not just in my mind, but in the participants‟ histories and in the larger history of counselling. The process of creating a narrative by listening carefully to participants influenced my ability to begin to make sense (Josselson and Lieblich 1995) of the story of this narrative and the emergent findings. This collaborative (Angrosino 2005) life of the study enabled the growth of myself as researcher, and the growth of participants as their experiences were valued and used. This co-operative way of working felt more real to me in that my relationship with the participants was already one of ethical care (Olesen 2005) considering the personal stories which they shared. According to Riessman (2001) storytelling is collaborative and “a relational activity that gathers others to listen and empathize” (Riessman 2001; 679). Listening to the participant‟s stories as I read their journals drew out empathy from me which influenced my relationship with them in that I embodied their emotions and valued not just their contribution but them as individuals. The sense of creating a narrative in one voice, which held so many other voices only began to emerge as I came towards the end of the work and could look back at the journey to see and understand the narrative process. The benefit of initially creating a bricolage is that it increased my understanding of research and also demonstrated that qualitative methodologies overlap and evolve from experience. As Chase (2005) suggests narrative inquiry may “be characterized as an amalgam of interdisciplinary analytic lenses, diverse disciplinary approaches and both traditional and innovative methods” (651). The diversity within this research is due in part to beginning 88 with an heuristic bricolage and the discipline of reflexivity that constantly encouraged me to re- experience and re-think the developing processes. Through this amalgamated process the work has come to have an intertwined mix of artistic and scientific expression giving it an evolving form which seems to be acquired through interaction with the data (Strauss 1987). Reflexivity (Alvesson and Skoldberg 2000; Etherington 2004) was new to me in the sense that it was discovered as an aspect of research through reading. But it was not new in the sense that it was a tool I used regularly as a counsellor and poet. The reflexive aspect of this study is about my self awareness and the participants‟ self awareness. But it is also more than self awareness in that such reflexivity: “creates a dynamic process of interaction within and between our selves and our participants, and the data that inform decisions, actions and interpretations at all stages of research” (Etherington 2004; 36). This dynamic interaction was felt when the pilot study participants chose to give up their anonymity and continue with the study. Their actions influenced decisions about the progress of the research. Reflexivity appears intertwined throughout this study particularly within the poetic stance created by the method of data collection that promoted reflexivity in the participants. Studying the client‟s experience of counselling is a difficult but important part of counselling research (Toukmanian and Rennie 1992; Rennie 1998; Lott 1999). It was essential to value the participants‟ integrity and their lived experience (Ellis and Flaherty 1992) of being a client, in accordance with the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy code of ethics (2005) 89 and practice. Valuing such subjectivity was a continual struggle as I attempted to put myself in the shoes of the other while constantly returning to my own subjective stance. The creation of such an intersubjective (Perakyla 2005) conversation is a constant of this research. This also highlights the impact of the participants on me as the researcher (Bondi 2005) and my impact on them as creativity was inspired by our relationships. Part of the impact of the research relationships was discovering that narrative is a “meaning making system that makes sense out of the chaotic mass of perceptions and experiences” (Josselson 1995; 33) created by all the voices involved. This fits with my personal narrative of poetry created following trauma in that I was making sense through narrative. In the same way containment, freedom and polarity are experienced within the text as the phenomena they appear to be, or are, in each participant‟s experience as well as in my philosophical engagement in the study. An underlying sense in this research philosophy is that meaning has to be lived, and “the narrative form constitutes human reality into wholes, manifests human values and bestows meaning on life” (Polkinghorne 1988; 159) that is not just understood in the way of knowing something. Frankl (1984:11) suggests that meaning is found “in suffering”. If suffering is seen as lived experience then suffering may reside in, and be felt in living, and through this meaning may come into being. Castoriadis (1997) sees the psyche as existing in meaning which is created by the external world: “for the psyche, the „outside world‟ is the social world, that the psyche is in and through meaning, and that the social world permits it to create a meaning for it” (368). 90 Meaning then seems to be brought into existence, into the internal world of the individual through their experience with the external world. Meaning has to be brought into my experience as the researcher so that it is felt, as well as understood, before an explanation of that meaning is possible. It is here perhaps that the researcher, poet, scientist and artist, meet, which may be seen as another way of describing the creative depictions of experience (which I have certainly discovered) in narrative research During the writing up of the findings tragedy impacted on my life again when a young man who had become a son to me was killed in a road traffic accident. I found myself working in and with my grief. This highlights the reality that my life impacts upon the work for: “Qualitative writing by its nature involves the Self too intimately to ignore wounds, scars, and hard-won understandings that are to some degree part of our baggage” (Ely et al 1997; 331). Initially this loss brought a halt to the work. But just as Payne found “self reflection, personal therapy, and supervision” (Payne 1992; 74) enabled her to access a greater range of feeling, so my use of reflexivity and supervision enabled me to be aware of my need to hold onto the study. The paradox here is that I had to let go of the work in order to hold onto it (Rowen and Reason 1981). This letting go is recorded in my journal: Here is my wasteland Encroached upon By loss There is no space My dwelling place Is 91 Full of emptiness And I hide Here. Acknowledging I was hiding from myself enabled a return to the work. But in allowing myself the space to write I was perhaps also encouraging inspiration from a period of rest (Meekums 1993). Resting and reflexive writing promoted change as I discovered the possibility of writing up the journal stories and original analysis as poems. Without the grief it feels I might not have discovered this way of working. I could only cite methodological reasons for writing the findings poems but this would be a half truth or a “half tale” (Charmaz and Mitchell (1997; 212) and deny the reader full knowledge of the research story. The complex construction of this story using mine and the participants‟ voices involves each of us in the process of exploration. To make this exploration whole as opposed to a half truth Walsh suggests that “the unmet challenge for qualitative researchers is to document this process in an open and honest way” (1996; 383). By including the impact of my experiences in the text I may make myself vulnerable (Behar 1996) but it feels congruent that in order to understand how I interpret others‟ stories, I have to understand and interpret my story (Chase 2005). This in turn gives context and enables the reader to understand how the interpretations of all the stories are connected. As qualitative research moves more into the realms of the personal (Ellis and Flaherty 1992; Etherington 2001; Solms and Turnbull 2002; Marshall 2004), the origins of this work gains relevance. If ideas are conceived (Trahar 2002) in the mind and lived experience of the researcher, then it may be crucial to the research process, to understand how that idea came into being. In other words what caused a question to be asked, how is an idea born, where does it come from (Marshall 2004)? If credence is to be given to the researcher‟s personal investment in 92 the work, then the ground of such subjective history needs to be acknowledged and incorporated into the research process. Richardson (1992) changed her way of writing sociological interviews. She brought together the poetic and the sociological because of personal feelings about the passivity of the work which rarely touched her emotionality. She wanted sociological research that she would “want to read and want to write” (132), while still being of benefit to those it intended to inform and those it informed upon. Therefore it seems similarly appropriate to feel, that in counselling research, the roots and reasons for selecting a narrative methodology needs to be integral to the process of the work. As a psychodynamic counsellor I attempt to enable clients to make sense of their present, and promote change, by understanding how the past impacts upon the present. In the same way it is my past which led, or gave birth to, research. If the purpose of counselling research is to be defined as “the reconstruction of therapeutic practice” (McLeod 1999; 2001) then the origin of a study is integral to the work. Researching from such a personal framework however creates a need to be, “critical, challenging and developmental rather than self satisfied” (Marshall 2004; 2). My closeness to the work may be seen as biased and overly subjective but this is why the developmental process needs to be incorporated into the narrative. My passion for the concepts is not wrong because I had personal experience of them (Muncey 2005) but rather such passion enables the lived experience of others to be heard. Understanding something of the personal history that created this narrative situates my voice (Hertz 1997) in order to give the potential audience the opportunity to understand my perspective. As the trauma that conceived the work, still impacts upon my life, it seems reasonable to assume that it will have some impact upon the research process. This is my truth (Douglass and Moustakas 1985) and although truth may be “a continually evolving concept” 93 (Muncey 2006) which evolves with this research, with it I am enabled to engage more fully with the research process. But if this truth is cut off from the research process, the knowledge formed from within that process will not create a comprehensive knowledge (Douglass and Moustakas 1985). This is perhaps why, without realizing it at the time, that I became a participant researcher. This “reciprocal process whereby each party educates the other” (Miller and Crabtree 2005; 615) came naturally to me as a counselling practitioner and it seems I transferred this way of working to research. As I moved from practitioner to researcher (Payne 1993) I became aware of the impact of the research on my practice and of the impact of my practice on the research. My attention to the use and meaning of words in the research has heightened my sensitivity to the individuality of meaning with clients, in training with students and with colleagues. Yet my desire to learn more about individual clients and their process reminds me that I have always been investigating meaning. This makes sense of the idea that a „synthesis‟ (Payne 1993; 27) occurs between research and practice where each may influence and interrelate with the other. In desiring to understand my process as a client in counselling and my process through more recent grief other personal dimensions are added to the relational context of the research. These interrelationships need to be held in awareness as they may influence meaning within the research. They also reflect the interrelationships within the research between content and context between “tellers and listeners” (Riessman 2001; 697) or readers, which help different meanings to emerge. This seems to link to Payne‟s contradictions which suggest that: “There are multiple realities not just different views of one reality, and that what is 94 real is actually different depending on one‟s perspective and ability to perceive different worlds of experience.” (1993; 30-32) Just as different realities exist so it seems possible that multiple meanings may be interpreted from different perspectives and from interrelationships. In this way content and context each affect the other reminding me that holding different perspectives in awareness and the ability to reflect on my process need to be a constant in the research. Bond (2002) reveals the difficulty of writing multi-layered texts as he explores lived experience as narrative research. He suggests: “The systematic use of narrative opens up the possibility of studying lived experience more directly and creates challenges in how to communicate new insight to the reader” (137). Investigating meaning as a researcher, practitioner, as a former client and using my lived experience alongside the lived experience and narrative of the participants creates a multi- layered narrative that may produce multiple perceptions/meanings. Investigating meaning also fits with the narrative methodology in that “all forms of narrative share the fundamental interest in making sense of experience, the interest in constructing and communicating meaning” (Chase 2003; 273). Making sense of their counselling is what clients do in between sessions, either consciously or unconsciously. Offering participants the opportunity to write about this process encourages their ability to make sense while contributing to this research which adds meaning to all our journeys. 95 3.9. Conclusion This chapter has mapped out the journey of starting from personal experience and attempted to bring the poet alongside the researcher. The research design needed to fit the prospective journey and to foresee the whole journey in advance was not possible. If the integrity and autonomy of the original participants had not been valued the journey may have been short and incomplete. By listening to the pilot study participants my understanding of the research process grew alongside the study. In this sense the lived experience of taking part in the research became part of the participants‟ collaboration in the study. Perhaps it is the autonomy of the research itself that explains the process of the methodology. It is as if the life or energy of the project is illuminated in its inherent richness through the reflexive narrative that emerged from the study itself. The complexity of a many layered narrative creates an in depth account of the client‟s experience of counselling. The small number of samples are in themselves many layered narratives which tell individual stories full of information about the internal processes of a client in counselling. The poetic stance of the narratives fills them with the richness of metaphor as the conscious and unconscious seem to write together. If writing and reading poetry are aids to the therapeutic process (Morrison 1987) within counselling (as well as being aids to expressing and understanding opposition) then perhaps this aesthetic agent should be more widely recognised in the world of narrative research. Opposition appears to be used by the poet to express the inexpressible and the participants seem to have been enabled to do the same as they display containment, freedom and polarity in the lived experience of their narratives. Using poetic skills perhaps offers a subjective science (Solms and Turnbull 2002) that may help unravel the 96 experience of the client‟s inner world. Within this context where poetry and counselling meet the strength of my own voice gained precedence as I realized that this is a narrative mainly in one voice. My identity as a woman with a distinctive voice is revealed in this overall narrative. As Bamberg states: “Narratives, irrespective of whether they deal with one‟s life or an episode or event in the life of someone else always reveal the speaker‟s identity” (2004; 223) However it took the whole process of the research for me to be able to either think or write this. It seems my knowledge of myself has grown through the process of the study as it has made me as much as I have made it. Yüklə 1,47 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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