Changing the assumptions of a training therapist : an auto-ethnographic study

Abstract

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.