The self of the therapist is widely recognised as being a crucial component in the therapeutic relationship. However, comparatively little is known about the therapist as a person, or of how life-changing events in therapists’ personal lives may impact on their professional identity and practice. The aim of this phenomenological study was to explore the impact of traumatic bereavement on the personal and professional lives of qualified humanistic therapists in order to shed further light on this under-researched area. Underpinned by a phenomenological-hermeneutic philosophy, Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was selected as the methodology most appropriate to reveal participants’ lived experience. Purposive sampling was used to recruit a homogenous sample of eight humanistic therapists who had experienced traumatic bereavement while practising. Data comprised interview transcripts, participants’ reflective writing and researcher field notes. IPA’s idiographic approach facilitated the creation of a detailed and nuanced thematic analysis of the phenomenon, grounded in participants’ voices. Five super-ordinate themes were created from the interpretative phenomenological analysis, each of which provides a complementary ‘lens’ through which to view participants’ holistic experience: ‘Significance of context’, ‘Confronting a changed reality’, ‘Re-learning the world’, ‘Facing professional challenges’ and ‘Personal and professional reciprocity’. Findings reveal the unique contextual and multi-faceted nature of traumatic bereavement, and suggest that this experience can profoundly impact on therapists’ personal and social identities and beliefs. The professional challenges faced by grieving therapists are also highlighted. Findings illustrate that through a reciprocal process of personal and professional integration, the experience of facing, and living through grief, can lead to therapists’ increased self-knowledge, understanding, empathy and authenticity that informs and enhances their therapeutic practice. Supportive supervision and continued self-reflection are evidenced as significant mediating factors. The research demonstrates that the process of integrating the experience of traumatic bereavement into the therapist’s personal and professional life is a continuing and oscillating process. It is crucial that therapists carrying this burden have opportunities to reflect on this process in supportive supervisory relationships in order to pre-empt and ameliorate difficulties they may face in client work. A greater understanding of therapist bereavement is needed across the profession.

Medically Unexplained Symptoms (MUS) are bodily symptoms for which no organic cause has been identified, and which result in significant levels of psychological distress and functional impairment. MUS are thought to be highly prevalent in primary care settings, and have considerable costs to society. Despite evidence of overlapping psychological and physical presentations, MUS are not well understood or treated in culture that predominantly views the body through the lenses of dualism and mechanistic reductionism. An alternative 'interactive' view of the body as playing a more dynamic role is elaborated through George Kelly's (1955) Personal Construct Psychology. The author draws upon Lin & Payne's (2014) 'frozen construing' theory, and empirical literature on relationships between identity and MUS, to suggest that for people with MUS, the symptomatic body is distressing because the person is struggling to integrate its meaning with their identity. It is hypothesized that embodied processes, that may actually protect the self (and others who share a construct system with that person) from events which threaten to dramatically alter how the self is construed, are difficult to understand because of their preverbal nature. Hence symptoms, and the body itself, are dissociated from the person's more elaborated verbal self-constructions. Several hypotheses relating to this suggestion were tested using a modified form of the repertory grid technique that was designed to explore construct systems of both mind and body, for self and others. Twenty participants with MUS, recruited from the community, completed the repertory grid interviews and measures of depression, anxiety and symptom severity, which were correlated with relevant repertory grid indices to test hypotheses. Findings indicated that symptom constructs, contrary to expectations, were well integrated into participants' construct systems. The alleviation of psychological distress was significantly associated with increased perceived distance between the self in general and the self when symptoms are worst (a relationship which appeared to be independent of severity of symptoms), providing evidence of a process of dissociation that protected the current self from assimilating the undesirable characteristics that were associated with the symptom. The way in which the self when symptoms are worst is construed appeared to influence levels of distress, with more predictive power than several other indices. The study also found evidence for some participants of hypothesized relationships between desired aspects of the current self and symptoms, that would imply that symptom disappearance would actually threaten a desirable aspect of how the self is construed. Content analysis of these constructs revealed (as predicted) that such desirable aspects of self tended to relate to being responsible and sensitive to the needs of others, and were elaborated through bodily constructs in a way that suggested that they were not well integrated with the primary ways that these participants made sense of their identity. For these particular participants, discrepancies between the ideals that they had for themselves, and how they would like to be seen by others, were associated with increased depression. Several participants were identified whose constructions of self and others were dominated by constructs relating to both mental and physical strength and weakness. These participants appeared to be struggling to find coherent meaning for themselves as the result of symptoms, which were regarded as invalidating a pre-symptom construal of themselves as being 'strong'. There seemed to be a continuum of being a 'body for others' on the one hand, a previously 'strong person' on the other, and a person who is 'strong for others' in the middle. Implications for clinical practice are discussed. Although the findings of the current study are limited by a small sample size, it appears that exploring the meaning of the body in the construction of self helps to elaborate the meaning of the body and symptoms in a verbal, expressible form. This process is likely to be helpful to those who struggle to find meanings for their symptoms both in their own construct systems and in a society that objectifies the body.

Delivered through the medium of a Community of Philosophical Inquiry, this thesis outlines the experience of engaging prisoners in philosophical conversation, thereby articulat-ing the relevance of this type of education for those in long-term confinement. The research, which took place in two prisons, explores the role of prison education, community dialogue and active philosophising in encouraging personal development. With similar populations but contrasting characters, HMPs Grendon and Full Sutton provided the backdrop to grounded, ethnographically-led research. The research design reflects the exploratory nature of the approach. Derek Layder’s adaptive theory has provided a methodological framework, whilst the theoretical framework draws on desistance literature, prison sociology, and philosophical pedagogy to enhance and develop understanding of the emergent themes. However, as a criminological piece of research, it sits within the criminological, and more specifically, prison sociological paradigm. The thesis culminates in a discussion of personal development that articulates the role of education in developing growth identities among prisoner-participants. The research de-scribes the role of philosophical dialogue in developing trust and relationships between and among the participants; the relevance of this type of education to prisoners’ psychological wellbeing; and the significance of the subject-matter to participants’ perspectives. The thesis argues that prison promotes the formation of a hyper-masculine ‘survival’ identity. It goes on to argue that education, and more specifically philosophy education, can play a role in culti-vating growth identities that encourage personal exploration, self-reflection, and development of new interests and skills among prisoners.

This undergraduate thesis is an examination of the works of Odorannus (c. 985-c. 1046), a monk of the abbey of Saint Pierre-le-Vif in Sens, France. A prominent monk in his community, Odorannus was involved in constructing and celebrating his monastery's prosperity and identity. At times, however, he was at variance with his brethren, even experiencing a brief period in exile. This essay explores aspects of Odorannus' compilation, a collection which the monk himself gathered together in his old age, in terms of the dynamic relationship between self and community in a Benedictine monastery of the central Middle Ages.