With feeling: Writing emotion into counselling and psychotherapy research

Abstract

Counsellors and psychotherapists bring unique knowledge to the field of research about the necessity for empathic connection to access participants’ lived experience, and about the co‐construction of knowledge by participant and researcher. The current study formed part of a broader study of the professional identity of social workers as counsellors and psychotherapists and the development of their practice‐based wisdom. Specifically, this study explored social workers’ narratives about critical incidents in their practice with particular reference to analysing the emotional experience of practitioners and the emotional response of the researcher. The sample comprised 18 clinical social workers who practised as therapists. They were purposively selected from professional associations and networks. Two semi‐structured one‐hour interviews were conducted with each participant, using professional biography and critical incident interviewing techniques. Interviews were transcribed, coded, and analysed using the NVivo software program, which facilitates a grounded theory qualitative analysis. The findings presented are from analysis of two participants’ interviews, which yielded rich emotional content in relation to both participant and researcher. The study concludes that revealing the researcher's identificatory processes, resulting from participants’ narratives, leads to a more truthful and accountable description of data collection and analysis in qualitative research and highlights how the researcher co‐constructs the data during data collection and analysis. This article advocates accepting subjectivity as an inevitable aspect of research and argues for the need to write subjectivity into research reports.

The Role of Managers in Critical Incident Stress Management Programmes: A Qualitative Study of New Zealand Social Workers

“…They discovered that whilst involving participants in an extended reflection on their most difficult practice scenarios, the participants came to view these practice experiences more positively. In a similar way, a critical incident approach asks participants about practice experiences that were interpreted as difficult at the time and then allows perceptions of the work to be examined (Lewis, 2008). I was also interested in the impact of these experiences on the social worker's careers and lives more broadly in subsequent years following the critical event.…”

Reflecting on death: The emotionality of the research encounter

“…Essentially, it is about critical selfreflection (see Rolls & Relf, 2006, for a very accessible account of two researchers undertaking this). In recent publications, researchers have mused on how reflexivity is often related to gender (Lewis, 2008) and reflected on the importance of projecting the 'right' image in research (see Oritz, 2005). Others, such as Allan (2006), have been very honest about how their research made them feel: in her case about her own infertility.…”

Reflecting on death: The emotionality of the research encounter

“…Essentially, it is about critical self-reflection (see Rolls and Relf, 2006 for a very accessible account of two researcher's undertaking this). In recent publications, researchers have mused on how reflexivity is often related to gender (Lewis, 2008) and reflected on the importance of projecting the 'right' image in research (see Ortiz, 2005). Others, such as Allan (2006), have been very honest about how their research made them feel: in her case about her own infertility.…”