Once known only as Bodybuilding and Women’s Bodybuilding, the sport has grown to include multiple competition categories that both limit and expand opportunities for female bodybuilders. While the creation of additional categories, such as Fitness, Figure, Bikini, and Physique, appears to make the sport more inclusive to more variations and interpretation of the feminine, muscular physique, it also creates more in-between spaces. This auto ethnographic research explores the ways that multiple female competition categories within the sport of Bodybuilding define, reinforce, and complicate the gendered experiences of female physique athletes, by bringing freak theory into conversation with body categories.

It is widely accepted that Higher Education should provide students with a challenging experience. Research on threshold concepts provides a framework for exploring challenging content within a discipline and has contributed to understanding how to support students with conceptual difficulties. However, less is known about how individual students experience challenge and difficulty in their academic studies, in particular how they respond and feel when they become stuck. This study explores students’ experience of challenge, difficulty and stuckness, how they responded and managed challenges and any associated feelings. The study, carried out in a university in the Southwest of England, used a Qualitative Longitudinal Research design to follow 16 students through the second year of a degree for Allied Health Professionals. Data were collected using the semi-structured and email interview methods. Data were analysed longitudinally and cross-sectionally using a constant comparison process. The findings and discussion are presented using a ‘natural’ style which aims to capture the student journey over the academic year. The study found that some form of challenge, difficulty or stuckness was commonplace in the students’ educational experience. The value of challenges which create uncertainty in education is recognised, particularly where students are grappling with boundaries around knowledge. Variation in students’ experiences was partly explained by their ‘spiky profiles’ (influencing factors such as prior education and work experience) and partly by differences in factors relating to strategy use. The students were creative and resourceful in developing a range of specific and generic strategies in several areas: the use of time and space; the management of expectations and acceptance of feelings; and monitoring and reflection. The study adds to current understanding of stuckness through an examination of the liminal spaces students encountered. The discussion argues for a more nuanced and holistic approach to understanding students’ engagement with a complex cycle of challenges and strategy use, which creates a range of expectations, tensions, feelings and opportunities. It identifies implications for Higher Education practice and calls for an understanding of the impact and interconnectedness of factors influencing students. It stresses the importance of providing structures for students to explore how they learn and develop their academic practice, in addition to discipline specific knowledge and skills.

This study wants to investigate internal driving forces of employees who want a career change, what type of career-related support they need to move forward, and how this support can be made available, as well as their thoughts on the potential of career-interventions supporting the career-health of employees. Peavy’s socio-dynamic counseling theory, Antonovsky’s SOC and previous studies on career-counselling and health build the theoretical framework for the study. The CIP-theory was used as a methodological tool to generate empirical evidence. Eight semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with an interview guide built on SOC’s comprehensibility, manageability and meaningfulness. Results show that these employees experience some negative health-effects and difficulties to proceed on their own, hence describes a need for support at different stages of the process. All participants mention meaningfulness as an important driving-force and they express a wish for conversational support to investigate what could be meaningful for them. / Syftet med studien är att undersöka drivkrafter hos anställda som önskar en karriärrelaterad förändring, vilket karriärrelaterat stöd dessa anställda upplever sig ha behov av för att komma vidare och hur stödet kan tillgängliggöras, samt deras tankar kring karriärvägledningens potential för främjandet av karriärhälsa. Peavys konstruktivistiska vägledningsteori och Antonovskys KASAM har använts som teoretiskt ramverk tillsammans med tidigare forskning kring vägledning och hälsa. CIP-teorin har använts som metodologiskt verktyg för att generera empiri i denna kvalitativa intervjustudie. Åtta semistrukturerade intervjuer har genomförts med hjälp av en intervjuguide skapad utifrån KASAMs tre begrepp begriplighet, hanterbarhet och meningsfullhet. Resultaten visar att anställda som önskar förändring kan uppleva negativa hälsoeffekter och svårigheter att på egen hand ta sig vidare och beskriver behov av stöd under olika faser av beslutsprocessen. Samtliga deltagare nämner meningsfullhet som en drivkraft och de önskar samtalsstöd i utforskandet av vad som skulle kunna vara meningsfullt för just dem.

The study undertook to explore the notion of stuckness within interpersonal and intrapersonal relationship dynamics. Stuckness has different presentations and can pertain to an individual’s’ inability to move beyond a particular challenge, or find resolution to one or more persistent problems. Alternatively, the stymied dynamic could manifest as a person becoming consistently highly activated or triggered. This has negative ramifications, within both interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships. Therapeutically, psychological stuckness is frequently encountered, and a lack of resolution of past trauma, is speculated as being a contributory factor. A qualitative, explorative research study was conducted over a period of one year, to collect data. The research design consisted of five case studies of participants who engaged in approximately one year of therapy. Participants were seen fortnightly, by a clinical psychologist, who is also the researcher of the study. The notes taken in the therapy sessions, as well as other qualitative methods, were utilised to collect the data. The data was analysed for themes formulated by the researcher, which themes correlated with the principles of the two schools of thought applied in the study. Logotherapy and somatic experiencing are the therapeutic interventions, which were included in the research method. These approaches were utilised in an endeavour to explore their efficacy, in resolving stuckness, speculated as being due to unprocessed trauma. Participation in the study was voluntary and boundaries of ethical codes, as well as values of psychotherapeutic therapy adhered to. There was no monetary exchange for the therapy received, and no costs incurred to the participants, in the research study. The presence of a long-standing persistent problem, or issue (stuckness) that had belied resolution, was the main criteria for inclusion in the study. The research explored the possible association between unresolved trauma, as well as various types of interpersonal, and intrapersonal stuckness. Impulsivity, explosive tempers, irrationality, emotionality and bizarre acting out behaviours, are some of the presentations, that the study speculated, as being due to unprocessed traumatic energy. A contribution of this research is that there is an absence of any prior studies conducted which explores stuckness and its correlation with unresolved trauma. In addition, no other research assessing the combined, top-down, and bottom-up efficacy of the therapeutic approaches of logotherapy and somatic experiencing were sourced. Payne, et al. (2015 b) state that they could not find evidence of more than five papers which provided case studies on somatic experiencing as a trauma intervention. The number of studies undertaken on somatic experiencing in general, is also significantly limited (Changaris, 2010; Samardzic, 2010). This adds to the value, meaning and purpose of this research, as it is a unique endeavour, motivated by the researcher’s intention to add more value to individuals’ lives, especially when the presenting problem, appears to be unfathomable stuckness. In an absence of any understanding for the reasons for such stuckness, these people may experience significant distress at being stymied, within the self, or in relation to others, as well as feel at a loss for any possible recourse. This study could prompt other researchers to conduct similar investigations, not only of the combined body-based, and cognitive psychotherapuetic interventions, but also of the link between stymied interpersonal, as well as intrapersonal relationship dynamics, and trauma. The application of a mind, body and soul approach in the study, through the inclusion of logotherapy, is also relevant. In reviewing the direction of psychological fields, one can detect that the trends are towards constructs such as meditation, enlightenment, consciousness, meaning, purpose, mindfulness, presence, and spiritual identity. Individuals are seeking more enlightenment, and want to explore more of the noetic dimension, which I believe psychotherapy has to include, in order to meet the needs of an evolving society. / Psychology / D.Phil. (Psychology)