Bibliography: leaves 195-200. / Fibromyalgia is a complex syndrome of diffuse pain associated with non-restorative sleep, fatigue, numerous tender points, depression and other conditions that often does not respond well to treatment posing a dilemma to health professionals. The aim of this study was to explore expressions of abandonment and rejection that emerged from group therapy with eleven fibromyalgia patients at the former Princess Alice Orthopaedic Hospital, Cape Town. It focused on abandonment/rejection by caregivers during childhood, death as a form of abandonment, abandonment/rejection in adulthood by family, spouse and family-in-law, by friends, colleagues and employers, by government and society, the hospital and doctors, and by fellow group members and the facilitator. The study is exploratory, interpretative and explanatory in nature with a purposive non-probability sample. The qualitative research method was used to gain insight into the subjective experiences of the lives and illness of the participants. The method of data collection was mainly the tape recorded and transcribed words of the participants over thirty-three group therapy sessions in eleven months and observations by the researcher as full participant observer. The data was sorted and analysed into emerging themes, patterns and categories. All participants had had repetitive experiences of abandonment/rejection, which they had denied, suppressed and avoided, as it was too painful. Due to a lack of inner and external resources, or any intervention, feelings of abandonment, fear and anger were internalized as an unresolved reservoir of emotional pain. This seemed to have escalated into an eventual expression of physical pain (somatisation). From the findings of this study, there appears to be a relationship between adverse psychosocial factors and stress, particularly experiences of abandonment/rejection and fibromyalgia. However, due to the qualitative nature and small sample, the findings cannot be extrapolated and generalized to the broader population of fibromyalgia patients, and quantitative studies are needed for verification.

The researcher is a social worker at a primary school in Cape Town. This school was previously reserved for white children during the apartheid era, but now provides education for a multi-racial group of children, who are predominantly of mixed race. The researcher became aware that incidents of bullying and learner conflict in the school took on a racial flavour at times, but that there was a tendency to deny that race was a difficulty with which the children struggled. She embarked on this research in order to examine the views and experiences of these learners with regards to race and prejudice. The researcher employed a qualitative research design and made use of a number of focus groups to gather data. These groups were run with Grade Four learners in the primary school, and explored their understanding of race, as well as their views of people from the different races that they identified. They were also asked about their own experiences of being treated in a negatively prejudiced way. The results show that while the children tended to be reluctant at first to speak about issues of race, many of them had very strong views about their own and other groups. Some children showed very strong prejudice towards people from out-groups, while others displayed strong own-group preference, with little out-group prejudice. On the whole, participants were very reluctant to speak of experiences of negative prejudice shown towards them. The report is concluded with some recommendations for further study into this area of South African children, race and prejudice, as well as some recommendations to the school where the study was conducted. KEYWORDS: Racism, Prejudice, Desegregated Schooling, Children, Post Apartheid Education, Contact Hypothesis, Social Identity Development Theory.