Increasing violence in the work environment created a need for an effective intervention to debrief traumatised workers. The aim of this study is to compile a profile of an effective trauma debriefer that can be used as a criterion for the selection of trauma debriefers. The task description of the trauma debriefer is based on the literature studied. The profile of the trauma debriefer was compiled using the characteristics of a self-actualised person, as described by the Humanism, as well as the skills based on Ivey's Microskills Hierarchy Model. Structured, non-directive interviews were conducted with five experts on the training of trauma debriefers. A qualitative analysis was made of the interviews, based on the personality characteristics and skills identified in the literature. A profile of an effective trauma debriefer that can be used as criterion during the selection of trauma debriefers, was compiled. Conclusions and recommendations were made and limitations were identified. / Toenemende geweld in die werksomgewing het gelei tot 'n behoefte aan 'n koste- effektiewe intervensie vir die ontlonting van getraumatiseerde vverkers. Die doei van die navorsing is die samestelling van 'n profiel van 'n effektiewe traumaontlonter, ten einde die profiel as kriterium vir die keuring van traumaontlonters te gebruik. Die taakbeskrywing van 'n traumaontlonter, gebaseer op relevante literatuur, is opgestel. Die profiel van 'n effektiewe traumaontlonter is aan die hand van die persoonlikheidskenmerke van die selfaktualiserende persoon, soos vervat in die Humanism©, en die vaardighede, gebaseer op Ivey se Mikrovaardighede Hierargiese Model, saamgestel. Gerigte, nie-direktiewe onderhoude is met vyf kundiges op die gebied van opleiding van traumaontlonters, gevoer. Die onderhoude is kwalitatief ontleed aan die hand van die persoonlikheidskenmerke en vaardighede vanuit die literatuur. 'n Profiel, wat as kriterium vir die keuring van effektiewe traumaontlonters gebruik kan word, is saamgestel. Gevolgtrekkings en aanbevelings is gemaak en beperkinge is geidentifiseer. / Summaries in English and Afrikaans / Industrial and Organisational Psychology / M.A. (Industrial Psychology)

Family Therapy training programmes have recently come to appreciate the importance of addressing the personal growth of the trainee-therapist, in addition to the traditional focus on skill development. Suggestions in the available literature on how this "person-of-the-therapist" issue could best be addressed, represent almost exclusively the ideas of authorities (authors, clinicians and trainers) in the field of systemic therapy. Constructivist thought endorsed by the UNISA training programme, encourages and values different viewpoints. According to this view, students and faculty co-construct the training process. The aim of this study is therefore to present the voice of the trainee. Several training contexts, the essential qualities of the different supervisory relationships and difficulties encountered, are explored from the trainee's perspective. It is hoped that this "inside story" about the author's experiences on her journey toward becoming a psychotherapist, will engender sensitivity for and a deeper understanding of the complexity involved in training the person of the therapist. / Psychology / M.A. (Clinical Psychology)

M.A. / Professional identity development of counselling psychologists in South-Africa occurs through seven (and possibly eight) phases of professional development. Phases of professional development are necessary when one attempts to establish optimal levels of professional identity development for counselling psychologists in terms of their experience and training. Using these phases, counselling psychologists may be compared in each development phase to ascertain his/her development or the lack thereof. The phases also serve as guidelines for both the training personnel and the counselling psychologist, enabling them to affect certain changes or modifications in order to optimise professional development for the counselling psychologist. The benefits of optimised development should not be underestimated. The objective of this comparative research study was to ascertain the extent of similarities found in the professional development phases, as postulated by Skovholt and Ronnestad (1995) and the results of the current research study. The eight phases are the conventional phase, transition to professional training phase, imitation of experts phase, conditional autonomy phase, exploration phase, integration phase, individuation phase and the integrity phase. The research strategy consists of a qualitative analysis of responses obtained from a structured interview. Analysis is made possible by way of a replication strategy together with the use of a matrix. The matrix consists of eight categories used by Skovholt and Ronnestad (1995) to describe the relevant developmental phase and to regulate the responses. After describing and allocating the responses according to the categories of the matrix, a storyline is derived by use of an iteration process. Themes become apparent which outline the developmental path across the eight proposed professional developmental phases. Both the categories and the themes are compared to those proposed by Skovholt and Ronnestad (1995). Great similarity was found. The differences and themes derived from this study can also be used as hypotheses for further research.

Clinical psychology’s relevance and future viability depend on its ability to render services that are relevant and sensitive to multicultural and minority issues. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people are one such group that professional psychology – both in South Africa and abroad - has identified as having unique treatment needs for which psychologists require specialised knowledge and skills in order to render appropriate treatment. Competence to treat non-heterosexual patients has been framed in terms of a gay affirmative paradigm which has as its basic tenet the recognition that same-gender orientation is not pathological but rather a healthy alternative to heterosexuality. From this perspective being “gay friendly” or “gay accepting” is not enough. To implement a gay affirmative approach in practice, practitioners must have resolved their possible prejudice and heterosexist bias and have the requisite knowledge of concerns unique to lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals to be able to apply their skills in a culturally sensitive manner. Although more American post-graduate psychology programmes are addressing sexual diversity, their failure to produce psychologists who feel competent to treat lesbian/gay or bisexual individuals has highlighted the need to develop effective training strategies based on empirical nvestigation. The dearth of comparable data about local South African psychology training prompted this inquiry which had four broad aims namely, (i) to establish to what extent trainees’ prior training had equipped them with the knowledge, awareness, and skills to approach their work with non-heterosexual patients in a gay affirmative manner, and (ii) to implement and (iii) to evaluate to what extent a brief structured training programme is effective in engaging the trainees; in increasing knowledge, in raising awareness, and in changing specific attitudes and imparting specific skills required for treating lesbian and gay patients.; and (iv) what, if any, recommendations should be made for the future with respect to training of sychologists in this area? The field of sexual orientation research has been expanded to include issues pertaining to bisexual, transgendered and intersexed people, but serious time constraints meant that issues pertaining to these groups could not be addressed in depth. Although the exclusion of these groups is problematic and may be seen as reinforcing their invisibility, it was decided to focus primarily on gay and lesbian issues s an introduction to same-sex orientation. It is envisaged that bisexual and transgender issues would be dealt with in depth in more advanced training. Nine trainee psychologists employed at hospitals in the greater Cape Town area volunteered to participate in the programme which comprised a series of two-hour experiential workshops offered once a week over six weeks. The study employed both quantitative and qualitative data analysis methods. The first stage entailed gathering information to better understand trainees’ existing level of competence. Individual interviews were conducted prior to the course to obtain data about their attitudes and perceptions regarding the need for such specialised training, and how qualified they considered themselves to be to treat LGB patients, and their experience in this regard. For the purpose of the over-all analysis information was also gathered about pertinent personal and social characteristics of the trainees, as well as their contact with lesbian/gay persons. In addition, an attitude survey and the Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Counselling Self-efficacy Scale (LGB-CSI) were administered to obtain benchmarks against which change could be measured. The second stage involved the implementation of the educational programme and gathering information about trainees’ responses to its various components. This stage concentrated on discovering how individual trainees reacted to material on lesbian, gay, and bisexual issues and how they used the programme to improve their self-awareness and skills. The results indicate that local psychology training might not address same-gender orientation adequately, thus reinforcing trainees’ belief that sexual orientation is irrelevant, and that their generalist training equips them to work with gay/lesbian/bisexual patients. While the training strengthened existing positive attitudes, it was less effective in changing blatant antigay prejudice. However, both quantitative and qualitative data suggest that the programme increased individuals’ awareness and insight into their previously unrecognised heterosexist biases and created greater understanding of the effects of stigmatisation on sexual minority individuals. In addition, the training increased trainee’s sense of competence to provide affirmative treatment as evidenced by the significant differences between the pre- and post-training mean scores on the Relationship, Knowledge, and Advocacy Scales and between the mid- and post-training means scores on the Assessment and Awareness Scales of the LGB-CSI. Despite the limited generalisability of these findings on account of possible sampling bias, the need and value of such training was confirmed by trainees’ recommendation that this programme should be a mandatory offering in the first year of clinical psychology training.

The mimicry of Europe and United States of America (US) in South African psychology in the early 1900s and the continual presence of Euroamericanised psychology continues to marginalise Black, poor, and working-class people. In this dissertation, I investigated the misalignment of counselling and clinical psychologists’ professional training, specifically the first-year Masters psychology training programme with the South African socio-political context. To counter the usual reliance on hegemonic Euroamerican-centric approaches I elaborated on an Africa(n)-centred perspective so as to make sense of the training of counselling and clinical psychologists in the South African context. I argued that the Africa(n)-centred perspective was pluriversal (accepting of multiple epistemologies), endogenous (developing from within), and focuses on Africans not as the excluded Other but rather as the Subject at the centre of their lifeworlds. I elucidated curriculum practices within the professional training programmes as part of the investigation into the intransigence of Euroamerican-centric epistemologies in the professional training curriculum. I conducted in-depth semi-structured interviews with 23 people, 8 of whom were course coordinators and 15 intern psychologists. The participants were from 5 universities falling into the 4 generic categories: Historically Black University (HBU), Historically White Afrikaans-speaking University (HWASU), merged university (MU), and Historically White English-speaking University (HWESU). For my analysis, I employed what I termed an Africa(n)-centred critical discourse analysis, which builds on the discursive turn in psychology, taking seriously the talk of people in the reproduction of socially unjust practices. All the interviews with the course coordinators and intern psychologists were dominated by talk of race and the Professional Board for Psychology. The interviews yielded a number of discourses, namely: 1) meritocracy, 2) diversity (which referenced issues of race, gender, and curriculum), 3) access, exclusion and privilege as related to language, 4) class, and 5) relevance (including social, market, and cultural relevance, with cultural relevance spoken about in relation to the curriculum). I conclude the dissertation by gesturing towards a constructive engagement (by which I mean a building) of an Africa(n)-centred professional training of counselling and clinical psychologists. / Psychology / Ph. D. (Psychology)

This qualitative study aimed to trace the psychotherapeutic development of clinical and counselling psychologists across the careerspan within the South African context. Through purposive sampling 34 psychologists were recruited according to the inclusion criteria of the study. Five distinct career levels were explored, namely, student (n=10), intern (n=7), early career (n=7), experienced (n=5), and senior (n=5) psychologists in relation to the Society of Psychotherapy Research’s international model of psychotherapist development. By means of semi-structured interviews, couched in the social constructionist position, participants’ experiences were thematically analysed from over 600 pages of transcription. Additionally, the researcher’s personal journey of developing as a psychotherapist was reflected upon. The current study found that a number of aspects fostered the development of psychotherapists. Participants reflected on personal and familial wounding events that influenced them choosing a career as a psychologist; this awareness was gradual over their development. Across theoretical orientations, participants resisted adhering to one way of working in light of the diverse South African context. However, the need to limit the number of theoretical orientations taught within the first months of training was proposed. Professional sources of influence highlighted by participants were personal therapy and peer supervision or reading groups. Qualified professionals to a lesser extent made use of individual supervision which when pursued needed to be a ‘felt’ collaboration. Participants found as they developed they became more comfortable being a psychotherapist however the complexity of cases still kept them humble. Limitations of the study, potential future research directions as well as recommendations for practicing clinical and counselling psychology were outlined. / Psychology / Ph. D. (Psychology)

Psychology / M.A.(Psychology)

This study is qualitative in nature. It reflects on the rich and varied experiences I encountered during training to be a psychotherapist. The content and process information around training is explored. My personal biases and prejudices towards training are made explicit. The experiences reflected upon are contextualized within the Unisa academic and the hospital clinical internship training contexts. The two contexts of training are contrasted accordingly showing their epistemological stance in their contribution to training of trainee therapists. The primary data in this research is the trainee researcher who is also the only participant subject in the study. The rest of the data is drawn from the experiences of the subject in interaction with others in different systems and subsystems. Through the creative synthesis step in the heuristic research approach the inferred theme is integrated in the analysis. Finally the research shows the limitations and implications involved. / Psychology / M.A. Psychology

Text in Afrikaans / It is alarming that psychologists are in many cases insufficiently trained with regard to homosexuality. Against this background and on the basis of a literature study and empirical research, this study aims to provide guidelines to educational psychologists on working with homosexual clients. Within the Educational Psychology, a person's self actualisation rests on three pilars, namely experience, meaning assignation and involvement. The premise of the qualitative research (focus group interviews) used in this study is homosexual persons' experience of psychologists - the investigation was therefore approached from an Educational Psychology viewpoint. Altogether 75% of the focus group respondents' experience of psychologists was negative. The possibility exists that insufficient training may cause insufficient knowledge and insight, which in turn may lead to homosexual persons' negative experiences of psychologists. It is therefore imperative that the aspect of training of psychologists with regard to homosexuality will receive attention. / Educational Studies / M.Ed.

This autoethnographic study qualitatively explores a trainee's journey towards becoming a clinical psychologist in South Africa. Both the formal and informal processes for becoming a psychotherapist are explored. The formal processes governing the training and registration of a clinical psychologist in South Africa are outlined. A critical appraisal of the training program is covered. The informal processes of the journey of this trainee psychologist is contextualised within the life story of that same person. In so doing a seventeen-year long struggle and academic relationship with UNISA is highlighted, including the insatiable desire and life long dream of the writer in wanting to become a psychologist. An autoethnographic study was done by using the researcher as the only research subject. The personal writings of the researcher and her family serve as the primary data for the study. An autoethnographic approach was employed in creating and collecting the data. The stories are presented in narrative form, and the data are analysed by employing narrative analysis for extracting and highlighting initial and inferred themes. / Psychology / M. A. (Clinical Psychology)