The self of the therapist as recursion : connecting the head and the heart

Abstract

The theoretical and methodological assumptions of this research imply a move away from a positivist empiricist approach with its reliance on the real, the measurable and the predictable towards an interactive and collaborative methodology situated in a constructivist and social epistemology. This thesis comprises a recursive intervention in the researching therapist's life. The author sets out on a voyage of self-research to investigate her "choreography of coexistence" (Maturana & Varela, 1987, p.248), due to curiosity about personal and professional impact. The purpose is to create a map of relational modes that in itself creates shifts: in the therapist. This invention-orientated research creates the context of the researcher and moves through processes: the writing of autobiography, detailed contextual description, the interpreting of feedback, and deconstruction. The contents that pour forth are many different narratives tracking the evolvement of the self in the original family, through further definition in new relationships and the expansion of roles in many professional systems both with clients and colleagues. " Extracts from conversations provide new perspectives and feedback about impact. Thus a continual 'provoking of voices' becomes a thesis theme that highlights the researcher's structure, organisation and interpersonal processes. An emancipatory and developmental process is documented through the researching therapist's positioning as actor, observer and then critic in relationship to the data. Patterns and themes emerge that facilitate both self- differentiation and connectedness and many new head-heart connections. This new knowledge could enable the professional's skilful and intuitive use of self. The self comes into being as it reflects itself, ·so a recursive process evolves where looking at the self operates on the products of its own operations. This is an active process, where the researching therapist constructs an experiential reality. Given the accountability that accrues from constructing such a reality, a focus on pragmatic, aesthetic and ethical criteria is incorporated. This research, like the practice of therapy, is a departure from attempts to demonstrate what is already known to modes of research that are recursive and improvisational.