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Abstract:
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This auto-ethnographic study (i.e. an autobiographical genre of writing and research,
written in the first-person voice, where the workings of self are expressed both
cognitively and emotionally) qualitatively explores the changing assumptions of a
training therapist. It shows how various therapies were negotiated during the training
period, and explores how meaning was constructed according to basic, underlying
epistemological assumptions. Significant experiences and therapies are presented,
showing how the therapist's most basic, linear assumptions, were directly challenged by
eco-systemic training. The study produces an in-depth, thick description of both the
emotional and the cognitive journey of a training therapist, and traces the therapist's
movement away from the stability and certainty of a linear epistemological 'way of
knowing' to the instability and uncertainty characteristic of an eco-systemic 'way of
knowing'. Conclusions are idiosyncratic and are not intended for generalization. |
