Narrative therapy provides an opportunity for children to identify what is important to them. The aim of therapy in this research is to open up space for Nguni speaking children, who in their culture, are not allowed to express their feelings freely. The researcher has found that stories allow children an opportunity to realise that they are all human and that we have come through a process where we have to acknowledge that our existence today is largely dependent on the fact that we are not denying our stories as Nguni speaking people. From looking at the results of study, it would appear that these children have benefited from the therapy sessions. From three clients a sense of pride and self-worth was often evident at the end of a session and the overall comment made was that each one felt far better than when they had started the sessions. / Educational Studies / M. Ed. (specialisation in Guidance and Counseling)

The research on "The healing touch of Nature in the context of pastoral therapy" illustrated the role of Nature in bringing healing to individual people in an urban context in South Africa. The role Nature plays in connecting the participants with God and how this positively affects their daily lives, has been central in the research. Through their interaction with Nature, the participants lead richer, more meaningful lives and experience a greater sense of well-being. Nature stimulates and elicits response as the digital world is set against the calm energy and "warmth of the earth". Through connection with God in Nature, the participants translate the healing metaphor into more tangible "language" – the "beautifying effect" of Nature. It is not the words that captivate, but the thoughts which the words carry. Mostly the research tells the story of the experiential knowledge of living in the intimate presence of God and the healing power of God‘s presence. This narrative is about a kind of knowing that can only come through Nature. The research offers a way of seeing Nature that could influence pastoral care today. / Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology / M. Th. (Practical Theology with specialisation in Pastoral Therapy)

The Cape Flats is characterised by widespread poverty, unemployment and frequent incidents of domestic and gang related violence. The presence of gangs in and around many of the schools in this area poses a serious problem for the community and the Western Cape Education Department. Schools are disrupted, while principals, teachers and learners are in constant fear and danger of gangsters' bullets. Families in these communities are exposed to chronic traumatisation from both gang and domestic violence. This qualitative study was concerned with exploring a narrative pastoral therapy approach to trauma counselling in schools. It focused specifically on crisis counselling as well as counselling with regard to loss and abuse. Informed by contextual and feminist theology, an action research model was used in this study. I documented my own developing practice by telling the stories of adults and children struggling against the trauma threatening to overwhelm their lives. / Practical Theology / M. Th. (Practical Theology -Pastoral Therapy)

Thesis in Afrikaans with summaries in Afrikaans and English. / Sosiale diskoerse kan moontlik 'n bepalende invloed op 'n individu se manier van lewe he. Hierdie studie bring enersyds, deur van die narratiewe gespreksbenadering gebruik te maak, 'n aantal diskoerse na vore wat op vyf wit Afrikaanssprekende mans in die Ned Geref Gemeente Vereeniging-Oos se manier van lewe 'n invloed gehad het of nog het. Die diskoerse wat deur die studie navore gebring word is: (a) 'n man is as broodwinner die primere versorger in die gesin; (b) 'n man is doelgerig en op sukses gefokus; (c) 'n man is dominant en aggressief; (d) 'n man fokus nie op emosies en verhoudings nie en (e) 'n man verander nie maklik nie. Andersyds toon die studie ook dat mans ten spyte van die sosiale diskoerse wat moontlik 'n invloed op hul lewens kon he, self alternatiewe wyses van manwees kon ontwikkel en dus nie noodwendig dlenooreenkomstig die sosiale diskoerse hoef te leef nie. / Social discourses may have a decisive influence on an individual's way of life. By means of a narrative conversational approach, this study introduces a number of discourses that had or still have an influence on five white Afrikaans-speaking men in the Dutch Reformed Congregation Vereeniging-East. The discourses are: (a) a man is as breadwinner the primary provider for the family; (b) a man is goal~oriented and focused on success; (c) a man is dominant and aggressive; (d) a man does not value emotions and relationships and (e) a man does not change easily. On the other hand the study indicates that men are able to develop alternative ways of being men in spite of social discourses influencing them. / Practical Theology / M.Th. (Pastoral Therapy)

This dissertation is concerned with pastoral care with men in the Anglican Church. It is grounded in the rapidly changing post-apartheid years in the East Rand region of South Africa. It seeks to explore through participatory action research the negative effects of patriarchy as a discourse of power and entitlement on the lives of men of differing cultures in South Africa as victims and perpetrators of abuse. It also seeks to explore ways of pastorally caring with men through the creation of participative care groups that enable personal stories of men to be told, invitations to responsibility for abuse made, and the negative effects of patriarchal cultural and theological discourse deconstructed, and alternate understandings of masculinity constructed and performed. The work is done from a contextual theology, pro-feminist perspective, and collaborating with postmodern philosophers Derrida and Foucault, the social anthropologist Bruner and the narrative therapists White, Epston and Jenkins. / Practical Theology / M. Th. (Practical Theology, Specialisation in Pastoral Therapy

This qualitative action research was activated at the junction between three sites of operation of modern power: the site of the woman in the family, religious and cultural power discourses and the professional discourses of therapy. Using an action research design for this study focused the research on reaping benefits in real terms for the research participants. The researcher applied a postStructuralist, feminist and narrative approach to the phenomenon of failed personhood as manifested in the lives of two White Afrikaans women. Narrative therapy methodologiElS, steeped in a religious studies ethic were valuable guides on the therapy-as-research journeys, ensuring the exposure and deconstruction of dominant cultural and religious power discourses. In the course of the therapeutic and research journeys, various narrative therapy methodologies were used with positive effect on the life world of the participants. These methodologies included the externalisation of problems and the discovery of unique outcomes that constitute alternative, preferred life stories that contradict problem-saturated life stories of failed personhood. The research participants engaged in individual and communal conversations, relanguaging their self-narratives and religious narratives as part of the coconstruction of their preferred identities of moral agency and hope. Support networks were created for the research participants, Mara and Grace, to strengthen their new self- and religious narratives and to dislodge the power of the normative cultural and religious discourses of rugged individualism. In one instance, the researcher incorporated the healing power of South African bush veld, by inviting a group of women on a series of expeditions into the wilderness as part of Mara's journey. fn Grace's narrative, we utilised the modern technologies of the internet to connect her with a virtual response team and the Anti-Anorexia/Anti-Bulimia League. Storytelling and reflecting conversations formed the basis of the therapy-asresearch processes. The research participants extended therapy conversations beyond the therapy room, by actively participating in their therapy-as-research journeys. In line with narrative approaches, the researcher encouraged them to honour their skills and knowledges on their journeys: Mara extended her therapy by making resistance quilts while Grace assimilated her art, poetry and resistance writing into her healing process. / Religious Studies and Arabic / D. Litt. et Phil. (Religious Studies)

The study describes the counselling journey undertaken with 270 patients at the Family Medicine Clinic at Kalafong Hospital in Atteridgeville, Tshwane, between June 2000 and December 2003. Of these patients 75% were women, 74% were black and 97% Christian, with half of them belonging to born-again churches. A majority of the patients (52%) were unemployed and the others employed in minimum salary jobs. A third of the patients had attemped suicide at least once before, and a third had lost at least one close family member. With these patients a narrative pastoral counselling practice was established. Narrative counselling was practised as a MEET process in which the patients' problem-saturated stories were mapped and their problems externalised; they were empowered through the deconstruction of religious problem discourses, and their alternative stories were thickened by means of religious practices. This was a pastoral practice with a focus on religious discourses as problem discourses, and on the deconstruction of these discourses towards alternatives stories of faith. The first aim of the study was to describe the faces of religious problem discourses. They are (1) power discourses that hold patients captive in divinely sanctions hierarchies of gender and class, (2) body discourses that alienated patients from their bodies, (3) identity discourses that placed the religious identities of patients in conflict with their other identities, and (4) otherness discourses that created barriers between patients and God. The second aim of the study was to describe the externalised faces of the problems ruining the patients' lives. Here Losses, Loneliness and Lack of money were described as problems causing amongst patients feelings of worthlessness, depression, paralysis, body aches and many more. The third aim of the study was to describe the characteristics of the narrative pastoral counselling practice that has been established. This practice (1) negotiates healing between binaries such as Western/African, culture and dogma/lived experience; patient passivity/patient agency; (2) respects the indigenous knowledge of patients as it is embodied in township spiritualities; and (3) aims at introducing patients to a community of care as well as a new community of discourse where they can experience spiritual healing. / Practical Theology / D. Th. (Practical Theology)

This research project arose from my journeys with Protestant Christian women who were living in sexually unhappy marriages. In South African Protestant faith communities there is the expectation that Christian marriages will experience sexual fulfilment. For many Christian women however, sexual unhappiness becomes their reality. Sexuality is cocooned in silence not only within the church, but also in many Christian marriages. This leaves many Christian women (and men) with little or no recourse to address sexually unhappy marriages. My research journey briefly explored the social construction of sexuality within the history of Christianity to see which discourses underpin current constructions of White Christian female sexuality. This participatory feminist action research journey centralised the voices of present-day contexts: Protestant Christian women, as well as clergy, were invited to share their understandings and interpretations of matrimony and sexual practices in relation to their faith. With the help of narrative therapeutic practices, some of the dominant social and religious discourses that constitute White Christian female sexuality were explored, deconstructed and challenged. This research journey aimed to penetrate this silence and to invite Christian women, who are living in sexually unhappy marriages, to share their experiences. This exploration included the faith predicaments and relational complexities, challenges and dilemmas Protestant Christian women experience when living in sexually unhappy marriages. This feminist-grounded action research explored the effects and consequences which living in sexually unhappy marriages held for the cosearchers. / Practical Theology / D.Th. (Specialisation in Pastoral Therapy)

The study describes the counselling journey undertaken with 270 patients at the Family Medicine Clinic at Kalafong Hospital in Atteridgeville, Tshwane, between June 2000 and December 2003. Of these patients 75% were women, 74% were black and 97% Christian, with half of them belonging to born-again churches. A majority of the patients (52%) were unemployed and the others employed in minimum salary jobs. A third of the patients had attemped suicide at least once before, and a third had lost at least one close family member. With these patients a narrative pastoral counselling practice was established. Narrative counselling was practised as a MEET process in which the patients' problem-saturated stories were mapped and their problems externalised; they were empowered through the deconstruction of religious problem discourses, and their alternative stories were thickened by means of religious practices. This was a pastoral practice with a focus on religious discourses as problem discourses, and on the deconstruction of these discourses towards alternatives stories of faith. The first aim of the study was to describe the faces of religious problem discourses. They are (1) power discourses that hold patients captive in divinely sanctions hierarchies of gender and class, (2) body discourses that alienated patients from their bodies, (3) identity discourses that placed the religious identities of patients in conflict with their other identities, and (4) otherness discourses that created barriers between patients and God. The second aim of the study was to describe the externalised faces of the problems ruining the patients' lives. Here Losses, Loneliness and Lack of money were described as problems causing amongst patients feelings of worthlessness, depression, paralysis, body aches and many more. The third aim of the study was to describe the characteristics of the narrative pastoral counselling practice that has been established. This practice (1) negotiates healing between binaries such as Western/African, culture and dogma/lived experience; patient passivity/patient agency; (2) respects the indigenous knowledge of patients as it is embodied in township spiritualities; and (3) aims at introducing patients to a community of care as well as a new community of discourse where they can experience spiritual healing. / Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology / D. Th. (Practical Theology)

This Qualitative research investigated and explored using a Narrative approach with teachers to find ways to improve the quality of teachers’ lives through the use of stories in Pastoral Counselling. A small group of teachers from a local primary school were invited to share their stories as a means to explore care and support actions for other teachers in the South African context. Statistics seem to point to a crisis in the South African education system, especially regarding the well-being of teachers. Various factors contribute to this including issues of diversity in the teaching context and challenges posed by inclusive education. It is my belief that a Narrative approach can assist Practical Theology to make a significant contribution towards helping struggling teachers nurture resilience and create more meaningful lives. Narrative Inquiry, a relatively new Qualitative methodology, was used to study the teachers’ experiences. This required a “collaboration between researcher and participants” which happened over time, in a particular context (Beaumont Primary School in Somerset West) and in social interactions with the research participants: a small group of teachers from Beaumont Primary School. African and South African views were investigated. Data collection methods included: interviewing; attentive listening; and observation, through which stories (data) was collected from the focus group. After analysing and interpreting the research data, an integrated Narrative Pastoral model was constructed which could assist Practical Theology and Pastoral Counselling to better equip teachers to deal with the challenges they are facing. It is hoped that this model will ultimately help the teachers involved in this research project to grow into integrated, whole (quality) beings who can make a difference where they work and live. The vision is that this model can also be implemented in the rest of South Africa’s teacher population. / Practical Theology / D. Th. (Practical Theology)