The purpose of the present study was to explore the lived experience of friendships among women who were living with bulimia during adolescence. Researchers have found that friendships are influential to the complex and multi-factoral etiology of bulimia. Friendships influence adolescent girls’ self-esteem, body image, dieting, body dissatisfaction, and eating disorder symptoms, through bullying and peer teasing, appearance conversations, and group dieting. While living with bulimia, women have reported interpersonal problems, such as feeling unsupported within their relationships, having fewer friends compared to women who have not lived with bulimia, and isolating themselves from others. There has been limited exploration surrounding the experiences of friendships while living with bulimia, particularly during adolescence. Interpretative phenomenological analysis guided the exploration of three young women’s experience of friendships while they lived with bulimia during adolescence. These women ranged in age from 21 to 25 years. They were recruited via purposive sampling and data were generated through photo elicitation and in-depth interviews. The analyzed data formed one over-arching theme: Tension, which appeared throughout the three super-ordinate themes: The Self-in-Relation to Friends while Living with Bulimia, Friendships in the Shadow of Bulimia, and Internal Conflicts in the Relational Self. These themes were discussed within the context of the current literature followed by recommendations for future research, considerations for mental health professionals, and a conclusion, which included words of wisdom from the participants.

A critical feminist discursive approach was used to explore how and to what ends women organized their talk about female genitals. Exploration and interpretation of how the eight women in this research used talk to orient their constructed positions for female genitals, within the dyad conversational sessions, was informed by the analytic concepts of interpretative repertoires, subject positioning and ideological dilemmas. Findings indicated that these women repeatedly drew on socially available information (e.g., fictional and non-fictional literature, media, family and friend, empirical research) regarding female genitals during their dyad discussions. Shared components in the womens accounts were organized into two opposing interpretative repertoires consistent with those identified in a selection of reviewed textual resources: powerful female genital repertoire and powerless female genital repertoire. The participants drew on both these repertoires when arguing and defending multiple, and often contradictory, subject positions on this topic. Although the women discursively demonstrated a strong pull toward a position that aligned with the powerful repertoire, their powerful subject positions were tenuous. This tenuousness may have been due to the sensitive nature of this topic, the rhetorical demands of the research conversations, and/or the untenability of an extremist position in either of the powerful or powerless female genital repertoires. Further, these women did not construct any new information in their talk regarding female genitals, thus suggesting that the female genital repertoires are discursively pervasive and constraining. This research contributes to our knowledge of talk regarding female genitals by illustrating how and to what ends women choose to organize, interpret and exclusively use existing discourses on this topic.

Managers and organizational stakeholders are confronted by a range of stimuli, emotions, events, data, paradoxes and ambiguities in endeavouring to understand and make sense of change and the performance of their organizations. However, there is virtually no literature available on sensemaking within organizational performance. Historically sensemaking literature has focused on unusual events, disasters and high reliability settings but there is now a sizeable body addressing sensemaking in strategic organizational change. This literature has been systematically reviewed because of its proximity to organizational performance and in order to assess how sensemaking in organizational performance could be in investigated. Sensemaking in individuals is triggered by the unusual and confounding and is concerned with how people construct meaning from this. While sensegiving is about the role played by leaders, or stakeholders, in generating, articulating and “selling” a construction or interpretation of events emerging from their own sensemaking process. “Mindfulness” can be thought of as how sensemaking is realised and is about responding rather than reacting while using information, attentiveness and clues to make sense of what is happening. The sensemaking studies reviewed are dominated by work with middle managers who are seen by the authors as key organizational change agents. Organizational actors come to sensemaking through mental maps, or schemata that can be re-configured through the sensemaking process often as a way of addressing paradox or equivocation. The view of sensemaking as inter-subjective, discursive and narrative dominates giving scope to managers to facilitate the process. Sensegiving and sensemaking intertwine dialectically in a process which sees sensemaking informing sensegiving and vice versa. There is insufficient information on mindfulness and change to be able to assess it. In conclusion there are sufficient similarities between the processes of organizational change and organizational performance management to warrant its investigation from an inter-subjective, discursive and narrative sensemaking perspective.

A critical feminist discursive approach was used to explore how and to what ends women organized their talk about female genitals. Exploration and interpretation of how the eight women in this research used talk to orient their constructed positions for female genitals, within the dyad conversational sessions, was informed by the analytic concepts of interpretative repertoires, subject positioning and ideological dilemmas. Findings indicated that these women repeatedly drew on socially available information (e.g., fictional and non-fictional literature, media, family and friend, empirical research) regarding female genitals during their dyad discussions. Shared components in the womens accounts were organized into two opposing interpretative repertoires consistent with those identified in a selection of reviewed textual resources: powerful female genital repertoire and powerless female genital repertoire. The participants drew on both these repertoires when arguing and defending multiple, and often contradictory, subject positions on this topic. Although the women discursively demonstrated a strong pull toward a position that aligned with the powerful repertoire, their powerful subject positions were tenuous. This tenuousness may have been due to the sensitive nature of this topic, the rhetorical demands of the research conversations, and/or the untenability of an extremist position in either of the powerful or powerless female genital repertoires. Further, these women did not construct any new information in their talk regarding female genitals, thus suggesting that the female genital repertoires are discursively pervasive and constraining. This research contributes to our knowledge of talk regarding female genitals by illustrating how and to what ends women choose to organize, interpret and exclusively use existing discourses on this topic.

No description available.

The lived experiences of professional orchestral musicians are under-­‐researched by scholars in both music and psychology, who are interested in the world of the professional orchestra and the careers of classical musicians. Framed within a Social Constructionist paradigm, the research in this thesis is concerned with investigating the subjective meanings and individual experiences of a group of ten classical orchestral musicians. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was the methodological framework chosen to design and analyse a set of open-­‐ ended interviews with the musicians, which allowed reflexivity and flexibility throughout the research process. Three superordinate themes were identified from a close reading and IPA analysis of the interview data: ‘Musical Foundations’, ‘Struggle: “The Never Ending Quest”’ and ‘Thank You For The Music’. ‘Musical Foundations’ examines the process of musical identity construction for the ten participants, from its early beginnings in childhood, through adolescence and their time in the professional orchestra. Different facets of musical identity construction are outlined and becoming an orchestral musician is viewed as essentially a social process shaped by social interactions, building on a sense of possessing certain ‘innate’ characteristics. ‘Struggle: ‘The Never Ending Quest”’ illustrates the challenges the musicians encountered within the profession and the impact that being a professional orchestral musician had on other aspects of their lives (e.g. personal and social). The fear and conflict the ten musicians experienced is outlined and how the musicians coped and ‘survived’ within the professional orchestra is demonstrated. In addition, the central importance of the identity of ‘orchestral musician’ within the participants’ lives is illustrated. The last theme, ‘Thank You For The Music’ outlines why the musicians continued within the profession despite the struggles summarised by the previous theme. This chapter highlights the autonomy and control the musicians felt they gained within their orchestras and the physiological and emotional connections they experienced with both the profession and classic music itself. Common to all three superordinate themes is their reported power struggle between the musicians and the orchestra, and between the individual and the collective. Another common issue was how central the identity of ‘orchestral musician’ was for all participants, impacting all aspects of their lives. The professional musicians constructed, negotiated and maintained their musical identities in accordance with both their own expectations and those of the classical music genre itself. The research in this thesis raises awareness of the importance of the orchestral musician identity in the musicians’ lives and how an understanding of this can help gain an insight into other aspects of the participants’ lives. Recommendations are made for further research regarding: the lived experiences of classical music students, investigation of current teaching practices in conservatoires and further exploration of the professional structures within an orchestra.

The present study examined client perspectives on recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). It aimed to investigate recovery meant to people diagnosed with BPD, whether people at the advanced stages of Dialectical Behavioural Therapy (DBT) considered themselves to be in recovery and what are the specific elements of therapeutic treatment that facilitate or hinder recovery from BPD, from a client perspective.

College women's drinking rates are increasing, yet there is limited research on what is contributing to this phenomenon. In this study, the authors explored a fuller picture of how college women experience and perceive drinking situations. Qualitative data from 2 focus groups of high-risk and low-risk drinkers were analyzed with interpretative phenomenological analysis. Similarities and contrasts are discussed, implications for college counselors are highlighted, and areas for future research are recommended.

Patienter som genomgått kirurgi på grund av övre gastrointestinal (GI) cancer drabbas oftast av olika postoperativa besvär som starkt påverkar patientens livssituation. Syftet: Att undersöka hur patienter som opererats för en misstänkt eller diagnostiserad övre GI-cancer upplever den tidiga postoperativa tiden i hemmet innan första återbesöket. Metod: Kvalitativ metod med tolkande fenomenologisk ansats. Tio patienter intervjuades och den transkriberade texten analyserades enligt Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Resultat: Fem överordnade teman framträdde: mat och ätande, kroppsfunktioner, återhämtning, stöd och oro inför framtiden. Informanterna upplevde att de hade en helt ny livssituation att anpassa sig till. Maten och ätandet var ett stort problem som de hade svårt att hantera, likaså var tröttheten dominerande. De flesta upplevde ett gott stöd från sina anhöriga men de saknade stöd från professionen. Informanterna uttalade önskemål om kontinuerlig kontakt med sjukvården som initieras av densamma. Konklusion: Patienter som opererats på grund av övre GI-cancer befinner sig i en mycket sårbar tid i livet och behovet av stöd är av största betydelse. Riktad information till både patient och anhöriga preoperativt, samt kontinuerlig och strukturerad uppföljning av kontaktsjuksköterska och dietist postoperativt behövs för att kunna förbättra livskvaliteten, öka välbefinnandet och samtidigt höja kvaliteten på vården för dessa patienter.

Socialstyrelsen rekommenderar interpersonell psykoterapi för ungdomar (IPT-A) vid behandling för egentlig depression bland ungdomar. Samtidigt finns det begränsad forskning kring denna metod i en svensk kontext. Denna studie är en del av ett större forskningsprojekt om IPT-A och ämnar utforska ungdomars erfarenhet av att ha genomgått en IPT-A- behandling och hur de ser på sin framtid efter avslutandet av psykoterapin. Data har insamlats från fyra deltagare i åldern femton till sexton år via semistrukturerade intervjuer och har analyserats genom interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). Analysen ledde fram till tre huvudteman: det terapeutiska samtalet, ökad agens och externa faktorer. Ungdomarna värdesatte erfarenheten att få tala ut med någon som de upplevde som professionell. Vidare upplevde ungdomarna att det de har fått ut mest av psykoterapin är en mer förståelse för sig själva och en ökad förmåga att förändra sina omständigheter. Ungdomarna tillskrev psykofarmaka olika roller för deras förbättrade psykiska mående samt beskrev skolan och familjen som faktorer som färgade deras upplevelse av psykoterapin. / Socialstyrelsen recommends interpersonal psychotherapy for adolescents (IPT-A) as treatment for major depression among adolescents. At the same time, there is limited research on this method in a swedish context. This study is part of a larger research project on IPT-A and aims to explore the adolescents’ experience of having undergone IPT-A treatment and how they see their future post treatment. Data has been collected from four participants aged fifteen to sixteen years via semi-structured interviews and has been analyzed through interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA). The analysis led to three main themes: the therapeutic conversation, increased agency and external factors. The adolescents valued the experience of being able to talk to someone they perceived as a professional. Furthermore, the adolescents felt that what they had gained most out of the psychotherapy was a greater understanding of themselves and an increased ability to change their circumstances. The adolescents attributed different roles to psychotropic drugs for their improved psychological well-being and described school and family as factors that affected their experience of psychotherapy.