Understanding professionals' experiences of endings

Section A: This literature review explored professionals’ experiences of therapeutic endings. 11 qualitative papers were identified through systematic searches and analysed using thematic synthesis. Findings were grouped into six themes: contextual influences, navigating the ending, emotional responses to ending, protective strategies, learning and reflection and after the ending. Findings emphasised significance of the therapeutic relationship which meant endings could be associated with a range of emotions.Implications for research and practice are considered. Section B: This project explored social workers’ experiences of endings when working with children looked after (CLA). Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight social workers and analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Results from the data are organised into five group experiential themes: the importance of therelationship, managing the pain of ending, an opportunity to repair past trauma, confidence and trust in the transition and the role of the organisation. Each theme included interrelated subthemes.Findings highlighted participants understood the significance of endings and hoped to provide CLA with good experiences that may be reparative. Contextual challenges could hinder this and resulted in difficult emotions and associated defences. Research and clinical implications are discussed

Negotiating Discursive Constructions of Belly Dancing in New Zealand and Australian Dance Communities

The belly dancing subject is contained within dominant historical, Orientalist and essentialist discourses. An existing body of literature examines the belly dancer as ‘subject of’ and ‘subject to’ social and gendered discourses within social contexts. However, the literature has failed to address the question of relationships between three spheres of meaning in belly dancing, these being 1) the social sphere and discourses of the social world; 2) the individual and personal sphere; and 3) the spiritual and inspirational sphere. Nor have previous studies examined how effectively women are able to articulate their experiences of these relationships within the available discourses. This research covers new academic ground by taking a more holistic approach to the exploration of experiences of the dance. An investigation into the meanings and relationships that 26 women from New Zealand and Australia attached to their experiences of belly dancing required the use of a combined theoretical paradigm to provide greater scope for the consideration of individual experiences of belly dancing. Therefore I developed a Poststructuralist, phenomenological and hermeneutical theoretical paradigm which allowed for examination of subjective experiences and consideration of the meanings that individual subjects may make of those experiences. As the women began to describe their experiences of belly dancing, dominant themes emerged relating to women’s perceptions of belly dancing, their experience of belly dancing in performance, their embodiment of belly dancing, and their resistance to the dominant discursive constructions. Analysis of the interview material indicates that these women situated themselves ‘within’ the experience of belly dancing and many offered novel descriptions of those experiences, defining an emerging personal sphere as distinct from the established discursively constructed understandings available within the public sphere. Participants’ literal explanations of their own experiences often included faltering or tentative attempts at articulating their experiences, and frequently gave way to spiritual and inspiration meanings and descriptions of altered states of awareness. These results may suggest that the established dominant discourses within the wider social sphere were insufficient in terms of providing terms and concepts with which dancers could adequately express their feelings, understandings, sensations and experiences. Furthermore, the women’s novel descriptions reveal previously unexplored spiritual and inspirational meanings and relationships to their experiences of this dance form, indicating an emerging spiritual or inspirational sphere. This research thus provides an opportunity for the discovery of new understandings of women’s experiences, as women who belly dance

Neon Genesis Evangelion and Struggles in Growing Up

This thesis is an exploration of how the popular 1995 anime series, Neon Genesis Evangelion, portrays what it is like for Japanese teenagers to grow up and find their place in the world. It is a close look at two of the main characters’ identity and relationship developments through the lens of research in the cultural psychology of Japanese youth. In the analysis, special emphasis is placed on the characters’ concrete struggles, movement in identity development stages, and the role of relationships and interdependence in their identity development