The juice is in the detail : An affordance-based view of talking therapies

The burgeoning interest in enactive paradigms of perception and cognition offers an opportunity to reconsider how we conceive psychotherapy – ‘talking cures’ as functioning. In the past many therapy modes have focused on the over-riding importance of giving insight to the patient; knowing what caused the ‘illness’ provides a solid way to deal with it. Over the past half-century, more pragmatic forms of therapy focusing on behaviour change through adjusted thinking (cognitive behavioural therapy) have become commonplace. But what does it mean to ‘change our thinking’ from an enactive perspective? If perception and cognition are direct engagement with the environment, what is changed by a therapeutic conversation? One answer lies in the idea of affordances (Gibson, 1979) – the relationships between features of the environment and the abilities of the animal/person to interact with them. Recent views of affordances as dynamic (Chemero, 2009) make even clearer the ways in which these factors may change and evolve. The paper compares an affordance based view with practical examples from solution-focused brief therapy (SFBT), where recent developments have pointed to the power of developing detailed descriptions of ‘better futures’ and ‘past instances’ (Shennan & Iveson, 2011). In such detailed conversations, everyday and overlooked events such as hugging a loved one when they return from work can become significant possibilities for building recovery. The paper will show examples and how such detailed descriptions can develop new affordances for clients. One key aspect is how these features emerge and are developed during the therapeutic conversation. Do they come from the therapist or the client? How can the therapist help the client develop new affordances that are relevant without intervening with their own ideas about ‘what ought to happen’? The ways in which conversations about affordances can be seen to connect to strong and modest ideas of narrative development will also be explored briefly.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Solution Focused Work as an Aesthetic

The current paper looks at Solution Focused (SF) work in a novel way – as an aesthetic (what makes it beautiful?) as opposed to a method (how do you do it?). This term comes from the art world, where different schools of painting can be described as having different aesthetics. Starting with a definition of the term, I propose five elements of an SF aesthetic: brevity, client autonomy, radical acceptance, staying at the surface and valuing small differences. While these are not present in every piece of SF work, they are things that we strive for, qualities that bring me (at least) satisfaction, cheer and reasons to continue to support, promote and develop SF

Public History in Aotearoa New Zealand

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Grass or Trees? Performance of riparian buffers under natural rainfall conditions, Australia

Riparian vegetation can trap sediment and nutrients derived from hillslopes. Most research into the effectiveness of riparian buffers has been experimental and little quantitative data exists on performance under natural field conditions. This study reports on grass and tree buffer performance under natural rainfall conditions in two contrasting Australian environments. Buffers receiving runoff from hillslopes cropped with bananas were monitored over a 4-year period in the wet topics of Far North Queensland (FNQ). Runoff, bedload and suspended loads were measured leaving the crop and leaving 15 m wide dense grass and remnant rainforest riparian buffers. The grass buffer was able to trap \u3e80% of incoming bedload and between 30 and 50% of the suspended sediment and nutrient loads. An adjacent rainforest buffer acted as a temporary store of bedload, and a source area for suspended material. Grass and plantation Eucalyptus globulus buffers receiving runoff from grazed pasture were monitored over a 4-year period in a Mediterranean environment of SW Western Australia. Subsurface flow dominated nutrient and sediment transport in this location. A key result was the seasonal difference between the grass and E. globulus buffers. Sediment and nutrient transport occurred throughout the year in the E. globulus buffer, but only in the winter in the grass buffer. Half the annual loads moving within the E. globulus buffer were transported during intense summer storms. This study demonstrates the benefits of grass buffers, particularly on sloping tropical cropped land and identifies limitations on the effectiveness of tree buffers, although these may have ecological benefits