To date, there have been no studies utilizing a narrative bereavement model for students impacted by suicide, in a group counseling setting. The present project intends to fill a gap in the literature. We sought to answer the research question, “Do narrative lines of inquiry, specifically re-membering conversations, help to ameliorate the pain of a loved one’s death by suicide?” We hypothesized that re-membering conversations would help to reduce pain, based on the premise that re-membering conversations reconnect the bereaved to the life of their deceased loved one, using a narrative which allows the life, values, thoughts, and wishes of the deceased to be brought forward and reincorporated into the life and future of the bereaved. The present research project consisted of a five-week bereavement group for college students impacted by the suicide of a friend or loved one. The group was structured like a case study in that we conducted a counseling group while collecting research data. Therefore, it was both research-oriented and therapeutic in nature. A sample of convenience was used to recruit and screen previously bereaved college students from a large state university in southern California. The group members self-selected and identified as having been affected by the suicide of a loved one. Each session lasted approximately 120 minutes. Research data consisted of open-ended questions, which were previously prepared by the researchers. This data was collected through audio recorders, transcribed and organized according to related themes. Benefits of the project include: decreased emotional pain due to the suicide, group camaraderie, reconnection with a deceased loved one, and hopefulness for future. The overall findings seem to suggest the following: The deceased always play a role in how we come to understand our own identity. Bringing other people’s voices into the room, whether living or dead, lightens the burden of grief. Having never met the person does not prohibit the living from having a relationship with the dead. Removing places for the deceased loved one to live on only increases pain. The present project seems to support the hypothesis that re-membering conversations help to ameliorate the pain associated with the death of a loved one by suicide. Future research may include quantitative data collection, random samples, larger sample size and varying demographics. Other studies could involve using control groups and then comparing those results with the counseled group. The anecdotal evidence found in the present research project seems to support the further study of the use of re-membering conversations with those bereaved by suicide.

This dissertation documents the joys and terrors of caring for my father throughout my twenties and early thirties. The story is autoethnographic and demonstrates the value of narrative research in fostering understandings of self, other, and the world around us. I call this reflexive practice of writing narrative education because as I engaged in it, I learned what it means to care, and how mental health and illness factor into the ways in which care is expressed and provided in my own relationships and beyond. In addition, throughout the story I was a member of the academic community, which makes caring more than an act or behavior, but a concept to unpack, an ideograph. This dissertation begins with the goal to write my story and learn from it so others might learn from it as well. While the narrative portion of my dissertation focuses on story and the craft of creative nonfiction, the final chapters present a discussion of narrative ethics and the writing process. I also delve into concepts of care, family, and community to shed light on the narrative and create a space for reflection.

The aim of this dissertation is to develop and illustrate a spiritually centered narrative method for transforming disorder into agency and action. I use my own position as a second-generation Hispanic female immigrant to show how training in a spiritual practice that mirrors my ancestral traditions helped me productively move through a sense of displacement, illness, and lack of purpose. My research includes travel to Havana, Cuba, and immersion in a five-week shamanic counseling training program in Tampa, Florida, during which I learned how to narrate my experiences as I engaged in shamanic journeying. As I reflect on these experiences, I explore three questions: How can second-generation immigrants 1) overcome family histories of displacement to create a sense of home? 2) engage in self-care practices that promote healing and nourishing relationships? and 3) create healthy identities and a sense of purpose within their communities? Through the process of writing my own story, I move from individual pathology toward communal creativity and tap into the burgeoning activist movement of bruja feminism.

Thesis (MA(Counselling Psychology)--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 71-75).

This study presents an empirical, qualitative investigation of transformations as they occurred in the participants' language during a fiction reading and discussion group in a community mental health setting. Session transcripts have been analyzed from the perspective of researcher as literary critic and through the Deleuzian lens of rhizomatic assemblages (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980/2005). This nonlinear, non-hierarchical and non-referential approach re-imagins the relationship among readers, texts and authors. Three themes follow from the rhizomatic perspective on transcript data. <br>The first of these, Assemblage, details the ways that participants engage in and with fictional story-worlds. This engagement is such that text, readers, author, and other elements of context join together in chains or blocks of becoming. These becomings rely on the mimetic structure of the fictional texts that simulates 'real life' experiences for readers. This special kind of engagement leads to transformations of linguistic forms, images and concepts. <br>Transformations addressed in the next segment, De-formations, include analysis of mental health talk as it encounters the poetic story world in our sessions. One result of this encounter is the vernacularization of mental health talk. Elements of clinical, usually diagnostic, language introduced in our sessions are transformed in the direction of more colloquial and 'plain-language' use. This result suggests that fiction reading moves mental health consumers away from the problem-saturated language of mental health discourse (White & Epston, 1990) that too often reifies and reinforces illness and dis-ease rather than supporting wellness. <br>The final section, Re-narration, examines implications of transformations in participants' language for narrative identity, that is, participants' self-understanding and re-contextualization in light of their encounters with the fictional story-world (Ricoeur, 2005). It is possible to discern nascent or potential changes in narrative identity in the language of discussants and to speculate on what changes participants may carry forward into their lives beyond the reading and discussion group. <br>Finally, implications are discussed for re-understanding the therapist as literary critic and for the development of locally produced bodies of literary criticism as work appropriate to community mental health providers and clients. Also, affinities between literary therapy, bibliotherapy and narrative therapy are discussed. / McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts / Clinical Psychology / PhD / Dissertation

Thesis (MA(Counselling Psychology))-University of Pretoria, 2006. / Abstract in English. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (PhD(Prakt. Teol.)--University of Pretoria, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 224-241).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Abilene Christian University, 2007. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 94-96).

Thesis (Ph.D.(Educational Psychology))--University of Pretoria, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references.

The high incidence of cancer and the accompanying medical and psychological effects thereof make exploring cancer patients' experiences regarding their illness potentially valuable. The aim of this study was to qualitatively explore cancer patients' illness experiences during a listening group intervention. Secondary analysis was done on data previously collected by Strydom (2006), for his study on "Cancer patients' and non-cancer patients' experiences of the listening group technique." The use of this post-modernist approach, in which the individual is seen as the expert in his/her own life, makes the data gathered by Strydom (2006) eminently suitable for gaining a true understanding of cancer patients' illness experiences. Analysis of the data yielded twelve prevalent themes namely, support, perspectives and experiences in medical context, perspectives on life and death, emotional experiences, religion, role of knowledge and information pertaining to cancer, finances, concern for others, loss, desire for survival, humour, and physical symptoms. In an attempt to make sense of these themes a framework suggesting moderating factors that would influence cancer patients' illness experiences and outcomes, is proposed. Due to the rising number of cancer survivors and the fact that finishing the treatment seldom indicates the end of the cancer experience, it is suggested that further research regarding the development of a survivorship care programme within the South African context be undertaken. / Thesis (M.A. (Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2009.