David McCormack

Trína chéile: Reflections on journaling in the border country of doctoral research

Abstract In this paper I reflect autoethnographically on my experiences of writing as part of a professional doctorate. I draw on the research journals that I kept during a particularly challenging time in the dissertation process and in particular on the method of journal writing that I used to help me through this time. This storied account offers an insight into the experience of being trina chéile, or all over the place, in the border country of adult learning. The discovery of negative capability and metaphoric sensibility emerge as significant supports on the journey. Encountering the work of Cixous during the dissertation and the work of Milner after its completion were key aspects of the thinking process. In this way writing is seen as a method of self-support in the border country of dissertation writing, one that supports emergent learning and that acts as an epistemological resource in using writing processes that are congruent with the discipline of adult education.

Doing practice-based research in therapy: a reflexive approach

that the reviewer would have wanted, I was somewhat surprised at some absences – especially, those of Merleau-Ponty, Levinas and Hans Cohn and other prominent therapy writers within the existential-phenomenological tradition (like Irvin Yalom, Ernesto Spinelli and Emmy van Deurzen). There was some sense here, perhaps, of Jungian analysis and psychoanalytic approaches ‘colonising’ existential approaches without perhaps paying sufficient attention to, or offering appropriate recognition of, the considerable extant literature on existential therapy. It is also somewhat difficult to understand how the humanistic psychology tradition, which has been so influential on so many orientations within the therapy world, can have been virtually sidelined and ignored (albeit with a few exceptions, noted earlier). The one clear exception is Stephen Gross’s chapter on the I–Thou relationship, where he refreshingly states that ‘it is approached here from an essentially humanistic perspective’ (p. 37). Another concern was that a few of the references were missing (e.g., references for citations on pp. 90 and 171). Also, I feel that it would have helped to have paid more attention to punctuation, especially the use of commas. But these relatively minor issues should not detract from the quality of this book. Co-editor Christine Driver’s hope for the book is that it will help us grapple with the complexity and importance of our ‘being of being’, placing the study of being and ontology in a more central place within therapeutic work (p. 7). In an age in which symptom alleviation and correcting ‘faulty thinking’ are again tragically on the rise, this is indeed a vital cultural task, and this book does a very good job indeed at showing how the concerns of therapy at its best go way beyond symptom alleviation and normalisation – and, indeed, beyond understanding merely in terms of (counter-)transference and unconscious communication (p. 7). And if anything, Driver is perhaps underselling her case in arguing that, ‘Being is... a dynamic...; [and] if we are to understand the other,... awareness of our engagement with the dimensions of being is important’ (p. 5). I would say it is essential; and this book is one that should surely find its way on to the reading lists of all non-partisan therapy trainings and university programmes.

Reflective writing in counselling and psychotherapy

useful and theoretically correct analysis of dealing therapeutically with male-to-female transsexuals with multiple non-dominant identity statuses, such as LGBTI people living in rural communities, or who are also adolescent, etc. The chapter concludes with some individual exercises and a valuable chapter summary. The prophetic but cautious intention of this book is illustrated in the author’s general conclusion, which includes the phrase ‘not all LGBTI people need to hide any longer’ (p. 226). He quotes Pedersen (1999) who opines that in a fourth wave of psychology a new sexual and gender revolution is well underway, a postmodern version of the sexual revolution of the mid-twentieth century. He refers to the ‘unduly harsh’ prejudice experienced by LGBTI people, and condemns this with the ringing and almost biblical condemnation: ‘Destroying the spirit of a person is the gravest sin of all’ (p. 227). Alderson ends with a provocative statement that I regard with respect. It is the daunting consideration that ‘each person belongs to at least 1000 cultures’ (p. 230). His book is an attempt to dare to dip into the complexity of such a momentous task of understanding and respectful intervention. So what of this reviewer’s dilemma outlined at the start of this review? I continue to be concerned about the tight structuring of this encyclopaedic effort to appeal, inform, teach and challenge. I understand the demands that publishers make about formulae. My misgiving is still live, however. An insistence on consistency throughout the book mitigates in my opinion against the author’s wish to view the phenomena from a constructivist position. Like so many university courses that deal with postmodernism, the context for this teaching and learning is most decidedly modernist! Notwithstanding this limitation, close inspection of this text makes me want to recommend it to all who wish to go further than good intentions with their LGBTI clients, colleagues and all the families involved.