Play and metaphor in clinical supervision: keeping creativity alive

This article explores the use of play and metaphor in clinical supervision. The intention is not to attempt to cover the whole area of play, or the use of metaphor in clinical supervision, but rather to highlight particular aspects of their respective roles in the service of learning about therapeutic work. The relevance of the arts - especially the visual arts - in relation to this is also discussed. A number of brief clinical vignettes are included by way of illustration. All names, and some identifying details, have been changed to preserve confidentiality. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

How children become invisible in child protection work: findings from research into day to day social work practice

It is well known that in cases in which abused children have died, social workers and other professionals did not relate to them effectively—the phenomenon now known as the ‘invisible child’. Much less well understood is how often and why such invisibility occurs where there has not been a major inquiry or scandal and this paper draws on research which observed day-to-day encounters between social workers, children and families. In most of the practice, children were seen and related to but, in a small number of home visits, social workers were not child-focused. The paper provides a detailed analysis of those cases and shows how social workers were overcome by the emotional intensity of the work and complex interactions with angry, resistant parents and family friends. Workers were also affected by organisational culture, time limits on their work and insufficient support to enable them to contain their feelings and think clearly. The powerful impact of unbearable levels of complexity and anxiety on social workers requires much greater recognition. Sociological, psycho-dynamic and systemic theories are drawn upon to establish how workers need to be helped to think clearly about children and relate to them in the close, intimate ways that are required to keep them safe

Framing research on school principals' identities

This paper provides a basis for a tentative framework for guiding future research into principals’ identity construction and development. It is situated in the context of persisting emphases placed by government policies on the need for technocratic competencies in principals as a means of demonstrating success defined largely as compliance with demands for the improvement in student test scores. Often this emphasis is at the expense of forwarding a broader view of the need, alongside these, for clear educational values, beliefs and practices that are associated with these. The framework is informed by the theoretical work of Wenger and Bourdieu as well as recent empirical research on the part played by professional identity and emotions in school leadership. In the paper, we highlight different lines of inquiry and the issues they raise for researchers. We argue that the constructions of school leadership identities are located in time, space and place, and emotions reflect complex leadership identities situated within social hierarchies which are part of wider structures and social relations of power and control

Anxiety and human resource development: possibilities for cultivating negative capability

Our article focuses on anxiety, which is an integral but still often ignored aspect of human resource development (HRD). The context of our study is a particular HRD intervention in Higher Education (HE): the part‐time MBA, and here for a group of managers who had taken less‐typical routes into HE and for whom anxiety was often heightened. Drawing on interviews with 20 students, we offer three contributions. First, we provide in‐depth understandings of the manifestations of anxiety in MBA programs highlighting their location in self‐other relations, and so progress understandings of anxiety as a social phenomenon. Second, we provide insights into how these self‐other relations simultaneously play an integral role in the development of a capacity for “negative capability”: that is an ability to recognize the anxiety of not knowing inherent to the learning environment, and with trusted others to contain it, until it has informed us to allow for the emergence of new insights and learning. Third, we illustrate the ways in which this capacity can also be mobilized in students' everyday managerial work by providing a starting point for public reflection. We suggest that these contributions offer promise for advancing critical forms of HRD

Experiencing endings and beginnings

Throughout life we undergo many changes in our circumstances, beginnings and endings of relationships, gains and losses. This book highlights the emotional turmoil which, to a greater or lesser extent, accompanies these changes. It considers the nature of the anxieties aroused by a new situation and the ending of a previous state at various stages in life. Endings and beginnings are shown to be closely related, for every new situation entered into, more often than not, involves having to let go of some of the advantages of the previous one as well as losing what is familiar and facing fear of the unknown. The author shows how all these aspects of change evoke primitive anxieties, stemming from our earliest experiences of coming into this world. While beginning life outside holds the promise of a wider, more enriching existence it involves the loss of the known, relative safety of life inside mother's body. Moreover, the human newborn is at first utterly helpless, totally dependent on others to keep him alive. It leaves him terrified of being abandoned and left to die. The loss of what is familiar, the fear of the unknown as well as the fear of being unable to manage on our own remain in the depth of our psyche throughout life and are re-evoked at times of life-changing events and to some extent by any ending and beginning. The book stresses the importance of examining the way these anxieties are dealt with by different individuals and those who look after them and what promotes or undermines mental, emotional and spiritual growth. Freud, as well as stressing the importance of the "work of mourning" when someone we love and/or depend on dies, drew attention to the fact that mourning occurs in other situations, such as losing one's country, or an ideal. The author describes how bereavement affects young children, adolescents, young and old people. She also looks at all the ordinary endings in life such as the separation from mother when the child begins to go to nursery, leaving home to go to college, losing one's place of work at retirement, losing one's youth. She stresses how important it is to prepare and work through these and other losses for it is only if we continue to value and internalise the good aspects of the experiences we have had - rather than remain angry about what we have lost - that we are able to internalise and carry them within our heart and mind to sustain us through life, and remain open to appreciate the preciousness of living in the present