Purpose
The project is a multicase study of the researcher’s own clinical work with four clients who each presented with embodied expressions of distress. The researcher practised within a ‘narrative-dialogical’ framework and set out to build models of therapeutic change. However a parallel thesis emerged during the project: an autoethnographic account in which the researcher’s uses of supervision, personal therapy, dreams and life events, including the death of his father, intersect with formal stages of theory development.
Design and Methods
Sessions were audio recorded and coded for qualitative markers indicating the emergence of novel self-narratives. At the end of each client’s therapy they received a case report and were invited to provide their own commentaries. Across three ‘mini-studies’, methods from different approaches within the change process research tradition were applied to the data formalising the analytic approach and driving the evolving theoretical model. However a reflexive narrative running throughout the work highlights the superordinate role of reflexivity in theory development.
Findings
Therapeutic change was typified by an evolving internalised map of self and world, with corresponding change in embodied experience. The theoretical model was observed to develop through four chronological phases: 1) the migration of clients between I-positions, 2) longitudinal stages, 3) cognitive mapping, and 4) dialogism in the therapeutic relationship. In each phase the emergent template was layered on to the previous model, resulting in a new synthesis.
Discussion
As an analysis of one therapist’s practice and the experiences of their clients, the study generates hypotheses rather than formally establishing theory. The continuous evolution of change concepts reflects the theory building work of clinicians in their everyday practice. The study highlights the use of self as research instrument and offers a rich example of how practitioner research might be structured and delivered.
