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Childhood Psychological Maltreatment and Perception of Self, Others, and Relationships: A Phenomenological Exploration

Using a qualitative approach this thesis aimed to investigate perception of self, others, and relationships in individuals with a history of chronic, childhood, parental, childhood, psychological maltreatment. Six participants (3 staff; 3 clients) from low-cost counselling agency completed a semi-structured interview designed to assess perceptions of self, others, and relationships. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis yielded four superordinate themes: shame-based perception of self; self-protection from emotional pain; egocentric perception of others; and shame-based roles in relationships. The results of this study were compared with current literature on childhood maltreatment, including psychological maltreatment, and perception of self, others, and relationships, and significant similarities were found between research to date and the findings of this study. Theoretical links were then made to Bowlby’s (1969) attachment theory. The findings of this study suggest that psychological maltreatment has significant, pervasive, deleterious consequences for the individual’s perception of self-worth, awareness of others, and interpersonal functioning, and implies that childhood psychological maltreatment merits greater attention and investigation, especially the issue of perception of others.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:canterbury.ac.nz/oai:ir.canterbury.ac.nz:10092/4251
Date January 2010
CreatorsHarvey, Shannon Maree
PublisherUniversity of Canterbury. Psychology
Source SetsUniversity of Canterbury
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeElectronic thesis or dissertation, Text
RightsCopyright Shannon Maree Harvey, http://library.canterbury.ac.nz/thesis/etheses_copyright.shtml
RelationNZCU

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