A Critical Imaginal Hermeneutics Approach to Explore Unconscious Influences on Professional Practices: A Ricoeur and Jung Partnership

Professional relationships are at the heart of professional practice. Qualitative studies exploring professional practice relationships are typically positioned in either the social constructivist (interpretive) paradigm where the aim is to explore actors’ subjective understandings of their relationships and relational practices, or in the critical paradigm where the aim is to reveal objective unconscious structures and hidden power plays influencing actors’ practices. This paper introduces critical imaginal hermeneutics as a systemic philosophical and methodological approach situated on the juncture of the social constructivist and critical paradigms where the dual aim is to explore both actors’ subjective understanding and meaning-making processes associated with their relational practices as well as explore objective unconscious structures and power relations influencing their relational practices. At the core of this approach is a Critical Imaginal Hermeneutic Spiral – a methodological guide for text construction and interpretation processes developed by partnering Paul Ricoeur’s critical hermeneutics and Carl Jung’s imaginal arts-based approach. The spiral was developed, employed, and coined as part of the first author’s doctoral thesis exploring clinical play therapists’ relational practices with parents. It incorporates the Bourdieu and Jung thought partnership explored by the authors in another paper in this volume. The approach provides a systemic guide for developing practitioners’ critical reflexivity regarding personal, social, and collective unconscious influences on their relational practices, and in turn minimising the unconscious influences that undermine the quality of professional practice relationships

Bourdieu and Jung: A Thought Partnership to Explore Personal, Social, and Collective Unconscious Influences on Professional Practices

This paper introduces a thought partnership between Pierre Bourdieu and Carl Jung used to explore clinical play therapists’ understanding and critical reflexivity of unconscious influences on their relational practices with parents. The partnership is situated within a broader methodological partnership between Paul Ricoeur and Jung discussed by the authors in another paper in this issue. The purpose of the Bourdieu and Jung partnership is to design a comprehensive theoretical tool kit that enables the exploration of the interrelated nature of personal, social, and collective unconscious influences on professional practices. The paper discusses seven Bourdieusian and ten Jungian thinking tools and how they were brought together within a critical imaginal hermeneutic approach drawn from the first author’s doctoral study. The application of the conceptual partnership to the study’s text sets is then discussed to provide an in-depth structural analysis of the study’s phenomenon. The results highlight how the application of the thinking tools provide a critical and systemic awareness of how personal, social, and collective unconscious influences shape professional practices. Implications for professional practice are discussed as well as the role the Bourdieusian and Jungian thinking tools can play in enhancing the fundamental aims of qualitative research, particularly critical inquiry

Music Therapy Supports Children with Neurological Diseases during Physical Therapy Interventions

Recent research found evidence supporting music therapy for children with neurological diseases during their hospitalized neurological early rehabilitation to promote their development during physical therapy. We hypothesized that live music therapy might improve vital signs during a physical therapy session. Seventeen children received live music therapy during the physical therapy session twice a week. Two more physical therapy sessions per week were held without music therapy. Heart rate, respiratory rate and oxygen saturation were recorded from 15 min before to 15 min after the therapy sessions. Physical therapy interventions showed changes in heart rate, respiratory rate and oxygen saturation between, before and after the sessions with or without music therapy. Live music therapy was effective for the vital signs during the intervention. We observed significantly lower heart and respiratory rates and higher oxygen saturation during physical therapy intervention with live music therapy in general (mean differences −8.0 beats per min; −0.8 breaths per min and +0.6%). When physical therapy was applied without music therapy children’s heart rates increased by 8.5 beats per min and respiratory rates increased by 1.0 breaths per min. Live music therapy leads to a decrease in heart and respiratory rates and an increase in oxygen saturation in children with neurological diseases during physical therapy with live music therapy. Music therapy supports the children in physical therapy interventions during their hospitalization