Young women's accounts of intimate partner violence during adolescence and subsequent recovery processes: An interpretative phenomenological analysis

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below. Copyright @ 2011 The British Psychological Society.Objective. Previous qualitative research into the experience of intimate partner violence (IPV) has largely focused upon mature women's accounts. The objectives of this interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) were to explore three young women's understandings of why they had been vulnerable to IPV in mid-to-late adolescence, their experiences of IPV, and their recovery processes. Design. This study followed guidelines for IPA, largely focusing upon shared aspects of the experience of IPV as narrated by three young women who considered that they had since recovered from the experience. Method. Semi-structured interviews explored participants’ retrospective understandings of how they had become entrapped in a long-term abusive relationship in adolescence, how IPV had affected them at the time, and the processes that they had found helpful to recover well-being. Findings. Participants largely attributed their vulnerability to IPV to feeling confused about feelings and relationships, disconnected, and powerless in early adolescence. IPV was described as escalating insidiously, rendering participants confined, anxious and powerless, ensnaring them in their partner's family, marginalized in their own families, and undermining their identities. Recovery processes began with pivotal moments. Participants described repairing identity through engaging in age-appropriate activities, extricating self from the partner's family, and rebuilding family relationships. Conclusions. Participants described experiences of IPV and recovery in adolescence that differed in some ways from those previously identified in adult women and were interpreted using theories of adolescent identity development and attachment

Secrets about biological parentage: experiences of concealment and revelation; a qualitative study

This qualitative study investigated the experiences of twelve adults who discovered new information about the identity of one or both parents in adolescence or later. Some had grown up in adoptive or step-families; others had been conceived using donated sperm. Participants were interviewed once about their experiences when the information was revealed, and the effect they perceived it had over time. The transcribed interviews were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (Smith, Jarman & Osborn, 1999). The findings indicated that for many participants the impact of unplanned revelations was considerable, and the emotional repercussions often persisted for many years. The information affected participant's perceptions of their sense of self, and who they were in relation to others. The effects of this appeared to reverberate through many parts of the family system. It was suggested that concealment may have affected early parent-child relationships and contributed to feelings of difference or not belonging. The secret was perceived to have affected family communication before the revelation, and this was often difficult afterwards. Findings were considered in relation to identity development, attachment theory and social constructionist perspectives. A tentative model of the processes by which people integrate this information was proposed. Suggestions were made regarding therapeutic work with individuals and families after revelations of this nature, and those considering the opening of such secrets. Further research in this area is indicated and is particularly relevant to families created through gamete donation

A Thousand and One Nights between Orient and Occident

No other country is influenced in its political, social and cultural structures by both western and eastern mentality such as Lebanon, and hardly any other country has such a pivotal function. In this mediator function it can be compared with a literary work, that merits its role in world literature as hardly any other piece of literature in regard to the co-operation of Orient and Occident. I am thinking of the collection of "A Thousand and One Nights", or with its original title "Alf Laila wa-Laila"

Secrets and disclosure in donor conception

This paper considers the disclosure, sharing and exchange of information on being donor conceived within families, drawing on data from a study undertaken with donor-conceived adults registered with UK Donor Link (a voluntary DNA-linking register). It considers the narratives of how respondents found out they were donor-conceived and what events triggered disclosure of this information. It goes on to examine the role secrecy played in their family life and uses the concept of ‘display’ to explore how it affected their relationships with their immediate and extended family. Secrets are notoriously ‘leaky’ and we found complex patterns of knowing and uncertainty about whom in the family knew that the person was donor-conceived. We argue that what is kept secret and from whom provides insights into the multifaceted web of social relationships that can be created by donor-conception, and how knowledge can be managed and controlled in attempts to display and maintain family narratives of biogenetic connection

\u3cem\u3eTestimony\u3c/em\u3e, \u3cem\u3eRefuge\u3c/em\u3e, and the Sense of Place: A Conversation with Terry Tempest Williams

This interview with Terry Tempest Williams is part of a series of conversations with contemporary western writers about the ethical and cultural implications of nature writing