Dissertation Library


The Sanville Institute maintains a complete
library of dissertations of all our graduates. 
Abstracts of recent dissertations are included
below, followed by titles of earlier volumes.
For more information about this library
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ABSTRACTS OF RECENT DISSERTATIONS

EROS IN ANALYSIS
Betsy Cohen, 2010
THE UNPREDICTABLE IMPROVISATIONAL MOMENT AND TOUCH: WHAT INFLUENCES THE THERAPIST?
Linda Kay Waters, 2010


WHEN COUPLE THERAPY IS NOT ENOUGH: THE COUPLE THERAPIST'S SUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCE WHEN CONSIDERING A RECOMMENDATION
Michelle J. Frisch, 2009
            This qualitative study explored how couple therapists experience, think about and decide whether or not to make a recommendation for one or both members of a couple to engage in individual therapy.  The study examined situations when the couple therapist felt additional work was required, and looked at the risks and benefits of making such recommendations.
            The questions that the study addressed were:  Should referrals to individual therapy be made?  If not, why not, and if so, why?  Are there kinds of couple issues, or attachment styles, that suggest the benefit of both kinds of treatment?  What considerations are most prominent in the therapist’s decision-making process?  What problems or advantages should the therapist anticipate when making a recommendation?
            Open-ended, semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine experienced psychodynamically-oriented therapists who specialize in couple therapy and who come from varying professional fields and theoretical orientations.  Data from the interviews were analyzed using the constant comparative method developed by Glaser and Strauss (1967).
            The primary finding of the study showed that, while there were various categories identified as times when recommendations were made, the principal impetus for making a recommendation occurs when the couple work is stuck, stalemated or has reached a plateau.  The triadic nature of couple therapy was also seen to be an important factor in whether or not the couple work made satisfactory progress.  The decision to refer one or both members of the couple to individual therapy is always focused on improving the progress of the couple work and endeavoring to place the couple within a psychic space where they can listen to, and talk to each other, and have a productive exchange.
            Results indicated that couple psychotherapists in this study felt that individual therapy was oftentimes an important adjunct to the couple work.  Findings included that therapists never made a recommendation without substantial thought and consideration.

USING HUMOR IN PSYCHOTHERAPY WITH OLDER ADULTS: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY
Deborah Leila Cohen Levine, 2009
            This is an exploratory study examining when, how, and why psychotherapists use humor in treatment with older adults and the impact on both clients and therapists. It seeks to bridge the gap between the small body of literature regarding the use of humor in treatment, and the writings regarding older adults and humor. The eight participants report that in their experience, humor is effective in establishing and enhancing the therapeutic relationship, assessing client functioning and client progress, making interpretations, reframing, developing, and strengthening coping skills. They indicate that the use of humor may be problematic if therapists only use it to create a comfortable atmosphere or for their own pleasure; if clients use humor to avoid looking at certain issues or to entertain the clinician; or if the humor insults the client or otherwise creates a breach. 
            The participants see older adults as individuals but are aware that as a group they suffer from many loss-related circumstances: physical abilities, relationships, roles, finances, and meaningful activities. While the participants generally consider older adults to be more open to humorous exchange, they also acknowledge that life circumstances may contribute to greater isolation, loss of resiliency, or depression. The participants’ descriptions of their experiences using humor in treatment with older adults point to the power of humor in creating attunement in the therapeutic relationship and “moments of meeting” that enhance positive affect and reduce negative affect.
            The clinicians in this study are highly experienced and close in chronological age to older adulthood. Humor is also provisionally seen by the participants as helpful in preventing burnout when dealing with client circumstances that may engender painful countertransference experiences.

LIVED EXPERIENCE OF THE OLD / OLD: A GROUNDED THEORY STUDY OF SIX SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA RESIDENTS AGE 85 YEARS AND OLDER
Geoffrey William Shaskan, 2009
            What do we actually know and understand about the lived experience of people 85 years and older? What, for example, are the effects of loss and ageism on the elderly? The field of gerontology is currently moving away from its formerly negative view of this population toward a more positive sense of the "old/old." This more positive perspective, called gerotranscendence by many, emphasizes resilience over fragility and decline, and was borne out by my qualitative field research of six interviewees.
            Three important conclusions regarding the old/old emerged from this research. First, profound, socio-cultural events, especially those experienced in early life, are intertwined with the personal trajectory of one's life. Second, the subjects showed an amazing resilience that permeated their recollections of life in the past as well as their thoughts about life in the present and future. Third, this resilience allowed subjects to accommodate themselves to the large number of losses experienced by those who outlive nearly all their friends and family members. In short, this dissertation provided encouraging evidence of the possibilities of resilience and effective adaptation in an intensively interviewed group of old/old, diverse in terms of race, gender, socio-economic status, and life style. 


A NARRATIVE STUDY OF EXILE: WRITERS' REFLECTIONS
Mario L. Starc, 2009
            This qualitative study explores the subjective experience of refugees through an examination of published memoirs for the purpose of better understanding how the refugee experience is integrated into one’s life over time and how this shapes one’s identity, sense of self, and view of the world. The literature is primarily focused on the early stages of exile, with little exploration of the later stags of the refugee experience. Much of the extant literature regarding early stage refugees suggests limited potential for adjustment, although there are exceptions to this perspective, which found potential for recovery.
            Informed by a Grounded Theory approach, a narrative analysis was applied to the memoirs of five notable refugee authors: Salman Rushdie, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Andrew Lam, Vladimir Nabokov, and Isabel Allende. Interpretation of the meanings implied within each memoir lead to the development of explanatory narratives regarding each source narrative (the memoir).  Out of this process both unique and common thematic categories of experience emerged.
            The symbolic meaning of “home” or sense of home, encompassed each writer’s relation to memory, to family, to language (of origin and adopted).  While longing for the lost home was a common experience, the development of identity within a new context appears to have been accomplished precisely because the meaning of home was not perceived in literal terms.
            Though the experience of shame and guilt aroused by a sense of having abandoned the “home” was common, a significant experience of long-term exile was the development of a broad perspective on life explicitly beyond the boundaries of country and national origin.  There was a notable absence of nationalism or the need for political recovery and a strong identification with more universal values. As writers, each found language itself to be an arena of expansion. The importance of the passage of time in the process of adjustment was noted.
            The findings mirrored the perspective of those writers who suggest that recovery is possible for the refugee and that “pathology” as a lens may not be appropriate for understanding the experience of exile. This study suggests that for the long-term refugee, recovery as well creativity and emotional growth are realistic outcomes.
            This exploratory study was limited by its size and the narrowness of the social class involved. There is need for future research to expand the scope and avoid the limitation of a pathology-based perspective.

COMING HOME TO MY SELF: LONG-TERM SOBRIETY IN ALCOHOLIC WOMEN
Wanda Jane O'Gorman Jewell, 2008
            This research used the qualitative approach of grounded theory to explore women's subjective experience of long-term alcoholism recovery. Addiction, particularly alcoholism, is an epidemic. Although there are many studies on alcoholism and treatment, there is little done on long-term recovery, and no studies on the subjective experience of alcoholic women in long-term sobriety. This study addresses that gap in the literature. How do women alcoholics with twenty or more years sobriety understand their ability to attain and maintain sobriety? Specifically, what are the internal processes that accompanied and allowed these women to attain and maintain sobriety? This study found three major themes that dynamically describe what the women experience. Surrender, belonging, and identity are found to be interrelated elements of recovery. Surrender is to a greater power, to what is, to being human, to vulnerability, and to needing others. Belonging is being connected to others, the group, and oneself. Identity changes over time and multiple aspects of identity emerge and evolve. The elements of surrender, belonging, and identity are seen to be closely interrelated, and they emerge, grow, develop, and evolve within this interrelationship. Each element was discussed separately with the understanding that they exist together in a dynamic relatedness. A process of recovery has been identified through the synthesis of the discussion of elements.

A STUDY OF THE WAYS THAT PSYCHOANALYTIC PSYCHOTHERAPISTS HOLD A SENSE OF THEIR PATIENTS' FUTURES, AND HOW THIS IMPACTS THERAPEUTIC ACTION
Penny Schreiber, 2008
            This qualitative study explores how psychotherapists think about and hold a sense of their patients’ futures, about what may be possible or desirable for an individual that may have been foreclosed. All of the participants knew something about the topic, although they approached it from different theoretical points of view and with different language. Their knowledge of these phenomena came from long experience as psychotherapists. From their responses it would seem that holding a sense of the patient’s future, though not often addressed, is an essential psychotherapeutic function, forming a generally unspoken and often unconscious frame of reference for psychotherapy.
            Data was collected in one hour semi-structured interviews with ten experienced psychoanalytic psychotherapists from different professional fields and theoretical orientations. Each was recorded on audiotape and transcribed. Data analysis followed the Grounded Theory approach described by Strauss and Corbin (1998).
            Findings of the study reveal that although the participants all hold and actively work with a sense of the patient’s future, most of them described this in terms of holding hope and possibility. The findings include: holding hope and possibility, therapist hope as action, therapist influence, patient hope and hopelessness, affect regulation, anxiety about change, the relation of affects and symptoms to the patient’s sense of future possibility, and the impact of the past on the future.

COUNTERTRANSFERENCE ENACTMENTS IN COUPLES THERAPY
Sid Aaronson, 2007
            This qualitative study explored how experienced, psychodynamically-oriented couples therapists deal with countertransference enactments in couples therapy, which are defined as situations in which therapists get caught up in or act out their countertransferences when working with couples.  Data were gathered from ten such therapists in semi-structured interviews and analyzed using the “constant comparative” method of Glaser and Strauss.  From the data, six categories of experience were identified and saturated:  the complexity of transference and countertransference in couples therapy; how therapists conceptualize enactments—what is an enactment; therapists’ description of their enactments—what happened; how therapists recognize that an enactment has occurred; how therapists analyzed the enactment—attempts to understand why it occurred; and how therapists work through enactments.  Each category had numerous subcategories.
            A primary finding of the study showed that, while the concept of enactment was not well understood by most participants, all were able to identify and reflect upon times when they were caught up in an enactment and reported several examples of such occurrences.  Those who had familiarity with the concept of enactment were better able to detect subtle manifestations of enactments and could more easily uncover important aspects of their countertransferences.  Certain affects were common to the enactments described by the participants—frustration, anger, feelings of ineffectiveness, helplessness, dread, and anxiety.  What best captured participants’ experiences during an enactment was a build-up of feeling pressured by factors such as couples’ high expectations, triangulation pressures, the sheer amount of clinical material and process to track, and the pressure to stop hurtful and destructive dynamics between partners.
            After becoming aware of an enactment, participants typically attempted to work it though with their clients.  By understanding and managing their countertransference reactions—using strategies such as self-restraint, self-supervision, and consultation—they attempted to analyze why the enactment occurred in the context of the dynamics of the case and the clinical situation.  Some participants interpreted their best understanding of the enactment and how it played out among the clinical threesome toward helping their clients better understand the dynamics of their relationship.  In the case of severe enactments, participants had to work to repair a rupture or break in the therapeutic relationship, with varying degrees of success. 
            Though there were significant correspondences between the range of countertransference reactions among the participants and those described in the literature, the data revealed a more limited variety of such reactions among the participants in this study.  


THE SUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCE OF THE PSYCHOTHERAPIST WITH CHRONIC, INVISIBLE PHYSICAL ILLNESS
Cheryl Jern, 2007
           This exploratory research studied the impact of chronic, invisible, physical illness on primarily psychodynamically-oriented psychotherapists in private practice by analyzing—using the “constant comparative method” of qualitative data analysis as described by Strauss and Corbin—the subjective experience of ten such psychotherapists who are living with chronic illness and experiencing the special problems that sometimes arise in clinical work when the therapist’s illness is unseen, as gathered in semi-structured interviews.  Special attention was paid to the effect of the illnesses on the therapists’ professional identities, how their illnesses influence their work, and how these psychotherapists straddle the two worlds of illness and work.
The research posed the question:  given the difficulties that come with illness, what is the psychotherapist’s subjective experience of coping with a chronic unseen illness while working as a therapist in private practice, and how does she think about any impact the illness may or may not have on psychotherapeutic treatment?  And, the following sub-questions were addressed:

  •  How do therapists cope with a chronic illness—that is, how do therapists manage on a daily basis the difficulties that come with having a chronic illness, while maintaining a private practice?
  • How do psychotherapists experience the chronic illness—that is, how does it feel in their bodies and in their psyches, and how does it influence their thinking about themselves as therapists?
  • How do chronically ill therapists think about the illness’s affect on treatment?
Participants were limited to those with illnesses that were currently not life-threatening, yet had a regular impact on the participants’ lives, and illnesses that the participants defined as “chronic.”  Illnesses represented in the study were:  Lyme disease, chronic fatigue syndrome, atrial fibulation, ulcerative colitis, sarcoidosis, rheumatoid arthritis, thyroiditis, epilepsy, chronic migraines, osteoporosis, asthma, and primary lower extremity lymphedemia, with four participants having more than one illness and/or condition.  Excluded were non-physical chronic illnesses, such as developmental or cognitive disorders and mental disorders.
            Four categories of inquiry shaped the interviews:  (a) the illness narrative, (b) the impact of the illness on work, (c) the unique issues of the unseen illness, and (d) coping with a chronic, unseen illness.  The findings fell into five saturated categories: (a) the impact of the illness on the work; (b) illness management in the context of the work; (c) wanting to do a good job while being sick; (d) disclosing (or not) the illness; and (e) the positive contributions of the illness to the work.
The impact of the illness on the work:   The impact of illness is directly related to its symptoms.  Symptom were described in terms of their ambiguousness, intrusiveness, their effect on therapists’ focus, how they may threaten to end therapy sessions, and the countertransference reactions that they elicit in therapists.
Illness management in the context of practice:  In order to continue their careers, participants have devised means of managing their practices in the light of the need to manage their symptoms.  They do this by altering the boundaries of their practices and controlling the impact of symptoms during sessions—scheduling carefully, screening clients, and controlling the impact of symptoms through a wide variety of strategies.
Wanting to do a good job while being sick:  Wanting to do a good job and to be thought of as competent, in spite of their health issues, is a major issue for all participants.  Concern about competence was expressed in a variety of ways:  some push themselves, though doing so can make them sicker; for some, illness is the default position from which they evaluate their work; for some, illness becomes a convenient object of blame for problems in their work.
Disclosing (or not) the illness:  Regardless of their respective positions on disclosure, participants all reported thinking about disclosure in terms of:  will the disclosure help or hinder the therapy; is it necessary that the client know; how will the client take the information?  Disclosures to clients are intended or unintended and sometimes necessary, with a variety of beneficial and less beneficial effects.  Disclosure to colleagues involves very different concerns about reputation and its centrality to professional security, though feelings of shame were denied by all but two participants. The positive contributions of the illness to the work:  Participants describe some “practical” ways that chronic illness has changed their work, such as having an increased interest in and awareness of illness in clients, and several are developing new career interests as a result of being sick.  Illness has brought profound changes in participants’ core self and has influenced their philosophy of life—that is, like any other major life crisis, illness has changed the therapists in ways that inevitably influence how they work with clients. 
            This study makes a major addition to the mental health literature, in which there is a paucity of consideration of the experience of being a chronically ill mental health worker.  What little relevant literature does exist focuses more on the “technical” issues as they arise in treatment.  The findings of the study revealed substantial conformity with the broader literature on chronic illness, with notable exception of the striking denial of shame feelings among most of these participants.  In her rich discussion, the researcher looks at her findings in relation to this issue in depth.


AN EXPLORATORY STUDY OF COUNTERTRANSFERENCE RELATED TO PSYCHOTHERAPISTS’ RELIGIOUS BACKGROUNDS
Nancy Neufeld Silva, 2007
           This qualitative study sought to discover dimensions of countertransference that are related to the religious backgrounds of psychotherapists.  Using the “Grounded Theory” approach of Strauss and Corbin, the researcher interviewed eight licensed psychotherapists in California’s San Joaquin Valley, who have strong Christian (in a variety of denominations) or Jewish upbringing and carry an integrated faith and sense of a relationship with God or the transpersonal into their adult lives and professional practices.
            Data from the interviews were reduced to three saturated categories—faith as integral and inseparable; religious background affecting practice; and biases, struggles, and conflicts between religion and practice—with many subcategories.  Findings reveal that the faith of these therapists is rich and deep, having evolved from a solid religious foundation. Their faith affects countertransference attitudes and reactions that include empathic and visceral responses as well as use of religious language, judicious self-disclosure, values conflicts, and spiritual struggles. The findings suggest that a therapist’s faith can be a resource for providing potential space in psychotherapy and that a consciously sustained faith strengthens the therapeutic container to gently and firmly hold all that enters the therapeutic process and relationship.  The researcher describes this as the capacity for a gracious attitude, which she has conceptualized as “generous spaciousness.”  


THE USE OF TRANSFERENCES FROM EVERYDAY LIFE IN PSYCHOANALYTIC PSYCHOTHERAPY: EXPLORING THE CONCEPT OF EXTRA-THERAPEUTIC TRANSFERENCE
Whitney Daly van Nouhuys, 2005
        This dissertation research explores the role of transferences in everyday life in psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy by analyzing data gathered from semi-structured interviews with ten experienced, psychoanalytically oriented therapists from varying professional fields and theoretical orientations within the broad field of contemporary psychoanalysis. The research questions that guided the interviewer were: How do psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapists conceive and make use of clients’ presentation of outside relationships? Do they see clients’ outside relationships in terms of the concept of transference? What theoretical concepts guide psychoanalytically oriented therapists as the listen to clients’ presentation of outside relationships? The study also considers how the concept of extra-therapeutic transference might clarify and legitimize an aspect of clinical practice that is not otherwise accounted for by classical or contemporary psychoanalytic theories of therapy. Extra-therapeutic transference is distinguished from therapeutic transference, which refers specifically to the relationship between the client and therapist.
Analysis of the data, using the Grounded Theory approach to qualitative data described by Corbin and Strauss, identified four major categories that reveal the complexity underlying therapists’ listening to clients as they talk about relationships in their outside lives. They are:
     1) Participants’ development of their own theories of therapy. These theories are implicit in how they think about what is really healing, and although all respondents found relevance in the basic tenets of psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy, they rejected anyrigid adherence to them. They all value the healing power of the relationship itself and believe that through new experiences with the therapist, clients become more self-aware and self-accepting. They all make use of techniques that are not part of the psychoanalytic canon that they have learned can be useful through experience.
     2) Participants listen on several levels at one. Listening is a basic therapeutic stance. Participants are attuned to clients affective states as well as their own, listen for implicit meaning in the concrete stories clients tell, imagine the world their clients live in as they assess their clients functioning and self experiences, listen for relationship patterns and their connection with client history, listen for clues from the unconscious, symbols, metaphors, that relate to significant themes, and listen for transferential themes.
     3) Role of the therapeutic transference. Everyone agreed that the therapeutic transference is very important, sometimes to be interpreted and sometimes not, but their opinions as to just how important were varied and complex. They associated working with the transference with deeper work as opposed to supportive psychotherapy.
     4) Role of extra-therapeutic transferences. All made use of extra-therapeutic transference material, but they were unfamiliar with this theoretical term.
     Participants’ views on the relationship between the two types of transference fell into two sets: the hierarchical perspective, in which interpretation of extra-therapeutic transferences is in the service of the therapeutic transference; and the parallel perspective, in which the two types of transference are both useful and complementary to one another. Participants reported that they sometimes interpret transferential material from clients’ outside relationships, but they had no coherent theoretical rationale for this aspect of their clinical practice, confirming a discrepancy between theory and practice that is described in the literature. One conclusion of the study is that a clearly delineated concept of extra-therapeutic transference can sharpen clinical thinking and bring theory more in line with practice. Using psychoanalytic self psychology as an example, discussion of the results suggested that the concept of extra-therapeutic transference could be integrated into any school of contemporary psychoanalytic theory.


POSTTRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER AND DEPRESSION AMONG U. S. BORN LATINO STUDENTS EXPOSED TO COMMUNITY VIOLENCE
Marleen Wong, 2005
     This dissertation research studied the prevalence of posttraumatic stress disorder and depression, a common co-morbid disorder, among 672 U. S.-born sixth-grade students (11-12 years of age), who were surveyed about their exposure to community violence, utilizing a modified version of the Life Events Scale of Singer et al., and were screened for symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression, utilizing items taken from the FOA PTSD Scale and the Children’s Depression Inventory of Kovacs.
     The study found that 91.2% of the participants reported violence exposure as victims of and/or witnesses to violence. 35.3% of the participants reported PTSD symptoms in the clinical range, but 48% of the victims of violence registered PTSD symptoms in the clinical range. 32% of female victims of violence and 17% of male victims registered symptoms of depression.
     These findings document the need for a public health approach to provide assessment—using screening measures to identify the “hidden” disorders of PTSD and depression—and intervention for students in violence prone communities. The clinical implications of the study are several. Although violence exposure was almost universal in this student sample, questions about violence exposure are rarely asked in clinical interviews to formulate a diagnosis unless there is foreknowledge of a specific traumatizing event. One might surmise that PTSD is often not suspected by teachers or clinicians, as reactions of many of these professionals to the high rates of violence exposure, PTSD, and depression are uniformly of shock and dismay. This suggests that trauma and depression-related behaviors in schools may be perceived as troublesome but not seen as pathological, leading to disciplinary interventions rather than attempting to identify the psychogenesis of the child’s behavior.


LIVING WITH SCHIZOPHRENIA: REBUILDING A LIFE
Priscilla Roman Fleischer, 2004
      This dissertation research explored the subjective experience of living with schizophrenia through open-ended, semi-structured interviews with seven participants, two women and five men, six of whom had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and one with undifferentiated schizophrenia, who were chosen to reflect as broad a population as possible with regard to age, ethnicity, cultural background, education, and socio-economic status. The study focused on coping with the ongoing nature of this condition and the cultural stigma associated with being diagnosed and identified as a schizophrenic. It was designed to explore the common features of the experience of living with schizophrenia, while offering the participants the opportunity to tell their own unique stories in a safe and receptive atmosphere, an experience that many of them had never had before. In the sharing of their personal narratives, the participants revealed the understanding they had come to of their experience and the meaning it has had for each of them.
      Anthropologist Arthur Kleinman’s distinction between disease and illness provided a central conceptual framework for the study, which attended to the illness aspect of schizophrenia. A primary finding is that all the participants actively think about and seek ways to live with their condition. The findings were summarized in the following five categories: Reclaiming a sense of self-respect; Finding and maintaining values and goals; Reconnecting with others; Rejoining the world; and Finding meaning in the experience of schizophrenia. They describe a journey from loss and isolation to developing a renewed sense of self-esteem, and for some, reconnecting with the larger community around them. One very interesting finding, among many others, was that participants who find meaning in their illness in terms of fundamentalist religious explanations have a poorer chance of taking back control of their lives. Better education, better earlier life experiences, the support of caring others, the availability of alternative roles and skills, and the availability of effective medications as needed are important ingredients in the lives of those who do make a better adaptation to living with schizophrenia. This study makes an important addition to the literature on schizophrenia, which has not entirely answered the question of how people with this diagnosis find the internal resources needed to rebuild their lives and give meaning to their experience of this illness.


GROWING UP BIRACIAL
Susan Spiegel, 2001
      This qualitative study, using a narrative research approach, explored the subjective experience of growing up biracial. The purpose of the study was to examine identity formation in biracial young adults of dual minority heritages from the point of view of the individual and to understand what factors affected the process for each individual. The researcher analyzed the stories the seven participants told about their racial identity in two ways: to identify dominant themes across narratives and to assess the coherence of each individual's narrative as in indication of self-cohesion.
      Four dominant themes were identified from the narratives. Each theme was dynamic and represented a range of responses by the participants and an evolution over time of these responses. The first theme described the blending of their dual heritages, initially leaning toward one and adding the other. The second theme described how the participants dealt internally with experiences of difference from others and overt discrimination. The third theme looked at how the participants developed and utilized internal and external sources of support for their self-esteem. The fourth theme described the diversity in the lives of the participants, who learned to navigate three or more cultures, and the benefits they derived. All but one participant in this study grew up in predominantly White neighborhoods and attended predominantly White schools. It appeared that moving into more multicultural environments was more conducive to connecting with both of their parental heritages.
      This study found that although the participants asserted a biracial label, there was no one biracial experience. Analysis of coherence of each story revealed that it is possible for biracial individuals to form a coherent story about the formation of their identity. This is significant because a cohesive narrative is considered reflective of internal cohesion, which is essential for psychological well-being. Each narrative revealed how the individual integrated the lived experience of his or her racial and cultural identity. It is this richness and depth of detail that is important for clinicians.


THE ECOLOGY OF CHILD CUSTODY CONFLICTS
Steven E. Zemmelman, 2001
      This is a qualitative study of the psychological and social underpinnings of the family court system. The focus is on exploring the nature of mutual, reciprocal influence between parents in high conflict child custody disputes on the one hand and legal and mental health professional working with them on the other. Ecological theory, in which psychological development is understood to occur within an extended social context, was used as a theoretical framework. The research methodology involved interviewing four individuals from each of the groups under study: parents, judges, attorneys, court mediators, and custody evaluators. Interviews were audiotaped, transcribed, and coded for purposes of analysis. Catregories of experience were discovered and then subsequently organized in an effort to describe the ecological system.
      The research findings suggest that litigants and professionals influence each other in complex ways. The nature of their interaction is shaped by conscious and unconscious determinants. Powerful emotional responses of parents may impact each of the professionals they encounter in the family law system, engendering in those individuals reactions that vary on a range from empathic relatedness to empathic failure. Ther reactions of the professionals then have a secondary, reciprocal impact on the parents. The study explores the critical nature of transference and counter- transference dynamics as these influence the outcome of cases in family court. Additionally, the study identifies the inherent characteristics of each cohort, related to their role and function in the family law system, that lead to the development of particular ways of perceiving and responding to one another. The dimensions of each of these are described, particularly in relation to the tension between conflicting pulls toward continued litigation on the one hand, and collaboration and resolution on the other.


OTHER DESERTATIONS

2000

The Psychological Impact of Combined Treatment: When the Psychopharmacologist Joins the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist
By Patricia K. Antin

Grandparents Raising Grandchildren
By Sandra Staples Thomas

1999

Theory of Interlocking Vulnerabilities: An Integrative Approach to Couple Therapy
By Carol Jenkins

Attachment in the Therapeutic Relationship: An Exploratory Study of Patient’s Response upon Reunion Following a Holiday Break
By Penelope J. Katz

Therapists’ Experience with Patients who are Reluctant to Increase the Frequency of their Weekly Psychotherapy
By Terese G. Schulman

1998

Mother’s Emotional Responses to the Homicidal Deaths of their Adolescent Children
By Robert E. Bennett

1997

Emotional Disruption in the Therapeutic Relationship: A Study of the Benefits of Reconnection to Subsequent Psychological Development
By Holly C. Hein

1996

An Exploratory Study of Career Satisfaction in Seasoned Clinical Social Workers
By Patricia A. Penn

Becoming a Mother
By Dolores Rodriguez

What is the Process of Attachment and Separation that a Birth Mother Goes Through When She Feels Pressured to Relinquish Her Infant
By Gaye Wein-Shepard

1994

Personality Characteristics of Economically Independent Women Involved in Psychologically Abusive Relationships and Their Theoretical Links to Deficits in Early Maternal Love
By Vivian Cameron-McCoy

1993

Optimal Responsiveness: An Exploratory Study of the Subjective and Intersubjective Experiences of Psychotherapists
By Carmely Estrella

An Exploratory Study of Therapists’ Experience of and Response to the Creative Artist Client in Psychodynamic Psychotherapy
By Alexandra Lee Kivowitz

1992

A Study of the Relationship between Maternal Empathy and a Mother’s Satisfaction With Her Decision to Remain at Home or to Work After the Birth of Her Infant
By Janice Bryan Cook

An Exploratory Study of Psychotherapists’ Biases in the Treatment of Domestic Violence
By Susan E. Hanks

1991

Self Fragmentation and Recohesion During Crisis: A Content Analysis
By Susan Lee Kohl

1990

An Exploratory Study of the Life Experiences of Professional Empathizers
By Irene Di Raffael

The Relevance of Neurocognitive Differences to Social Maladaptation
By Olga Ivanovna Shkurkin

1989

Unconscious Bonding in Lesbian Relationships: The Road Not Taken
By Beverly Burch

Clinical Consultation in Social Work: An Exploratory Study of a Dynamic Learning Model
By Nancy L. Saks

1988

Music, Imagery and Affect: A Cross-Cultural Exploration of Responses to Chinese and Western Classical Music
By Karlyn (Hanks) Ward

1987

Countertransference and Spontaneous Imagery in the Therapeutic Relationship
By Gloria Avrech

Women and Meaningful Work
By Margaret Ann Kohls Cottle

The Development of an Instrument to Measure Stress in Nonclinical Populations of Preschoolers
By Rhea E. Johnson

The Criteria for Therapist Self-Disclosure: An Exploration of the Conscious Use of Self in the Practice of Psychotherapy
By Judith Chen Simon

1986

Amplification in Context: The Interactional Significance of Amplification in the Secured-Symbolizing/Context-Plus Field
By Cynthia A. O’Connell

Mastectomy: The Male Partner’s Psychosocial Dilemmas and Coping Processes
By Thea Diste Wilson

1985

The Impact of Geographic Relocation on Married, Career Women: A Study in Social Exchange Theory and Coping Theory
By Margaret Bonnell Emerson

An Investigation of the Relationship Between a Clinical Supervisor’s Theoretical Orientation and Preference for a Model of Supervision
By Judith J. Davenport

The State of Clinical Social Work in California - 1985
By Lorraine A. Gorlick

Interpretation and Application Of Drive and Affect Theory in Clinical Practice
By Louis C. Mone

An Exploratory Case Study of Men’s Experience of Intimacy as Expressed in Marriage
By Lilly D. Nakamura

1984

Study of a Woman’s College Class Thirty Years Later: Maturity in Middle-Aged Women
By Elise Silverman Blumenfeld

Clinical Practice in Employee Assistance Programs: An Exploratory Study
By Saul Martin Leopold

1983

Regressive Behavior in Girls at the End of Latency: A Developmental Consideration
By Gabie Berliner

A Retrospective Study of Six Cases of Primary Anorexia Nervosa in Young Females
By Selma Bloch Brown

Child Development Theory Applied to Foster Placement Decisions
By Geraldine E. Chesnut

Understanding the Unseen Matrix: A Procedure for Developing a Non-Linear Model of the Family Matrix of the Developmentally Obese Woman Based on Observations Made in Individual Psychotherapy
By Karla R. Clark

An Exploration of the Application of Separation-Individuation Theory to the Adult Female at the Time of a Marital Separation
By Joyce A. Deshler

Social Work Consultation to Employee Assistance Program Personnel: An Exploratory Study
By Roberta Rostler Green

The Evolution of the Self in Group Psychotherapy
By Irene Halouchko Harwood

The Relationship Between Social Support Networks and Divorced Midlife Males’ Intimate Relationships
By Lael Horwitz

Family Affect and Schizophrenic Relapse: An Exploratory Study of Four Assessment Procedures
By Malca Baker Lebell

A Psychoanalytic Theory of Jokes
By Howard Millard Mass

Gender Related Themes of Women Psychotherapists in their Treatment of Women Patients: The Creative and Reparative Use of Counter-transference as a Mutual Growth Process.
By Ellen Bassin Ruderman

A Study of the Superego: The Relative Proneness to Shame or Guilt as Related to Psychological Masculinity and Femininity in Women
By Judith Rothman Schore

How Acculturation Affects a Rural Aged Filipino Population’s View of Death
By Ruben Roy Vanian

1982

The Relationship Between the Formation of the Marital Dyad and the Development of a Self in Pre-School Child
By Katherine Norman Godlewski

The Impact of Cultural Similarities on the Initial Transference in the Early Phase of Psychotherapy of Israeli Patients with an Israeli Therapist
By Lili Pila Hodis

An Exploratory Study of Selected Differences Between Mothers of High and Low Achieving Gifted Boys
By Idell Freed Natterson

Spouses of Cardiac Patients: A Descriptive Study of a Self-Help Support Group for Wives of Cardiac Patients
By Eva Schindler Oles

1981

The Psychological Functions of the Bi-Polar Self
By Gregory M. Bellow

Development of Infants as Affected by Mother’s Employment
By Esther Indman Hecht

An Exploration of Narcissistic Vulnerability in Relation to the Beginning Phase of Treatment
By Mae Denton-Lewis

The Use of Countertransference as Diagnostic Data in the Treatment of Narcissistically Disordered Individuals
By Elinor Dunn Grayer

A Training Model for Clinical Work with Adolescent Groups
By Elaine Lipert Leader

Self Psychology and Women’s Self-Esteem
By Tanya Joy Moradians

The Use of Countertransference in Therapy with Schizophrenic Clients
By Patricia R. Sax

1980

An Exploration of the Role of Mentor: A New Clinical Teaching Concept for the Education of Advanced Professionals
By Ruth E. Bro

Human Sexuality in Clinical Social Work
By Beverlee H. Filloy

Art Psychotherapy in the Treatment of a Puer Aeternus Problem
By John H. Land

An Application of Object Relations Theory to Understanding the Mourning Process
By Martha M. Millhone

Hope: Beginning Exploration of Development
By Kenneth K. Miya

1979

Envy in the Transference and Countertransference
By Claire Isaacson Allphin

An Adaptation of the Theories of Heinz Kohut’s Psychoanalytic Psychology of the Self to the Practice of Clinical Social Work
By Elizabeth Eisenhuth

A Study of Long-Term Successful Marriage
By Nina S. Fields

The Case Study of Lynn: The Value of a Developmental Psychoanalytic Framework as a Basis for Making Interventions in the Ongoing Diagnostic and Treatment Process
By Adele L. Fry

Clinical Social Work: Definition, Values, Knowledge and Practice
By Josephine A. Jackson

Language and Fantasy in a Borderline Child
By Rebecca D. Jacobson

Stress and Social Work Education: Paranoid-Like-Thinking, an Adaptive Mechanism
By Katherine M. Kolodziejski

Androgyny and Clinical Social Work
By Frederick D. Lamme

An Ego Psychological and Object Relations Study of Crying
By Judith B. Nelson

Awareness Groups for Children of Survivors of the Nazi Holocaust: An Application of Control-Mastery Theory
By Norman M. Sohn

New Frontiers for the Clinical Educator: A Study of the Role of Animateur in the Colloquium
By Beatrice A. Sommers

School Phobia: Psychodynamic and Developmental Considerations
By Ronald J. Sovak

1978

Marriages Without Weddings: Changes in the American Family
By Jannette W. Alexander

The Therapeutic Value of Suffering
By Virginia Choo

The Impact of Marital Dissolution on People Attending an Adult Education Course on Divorce
By Joan C. Dasteel

The Existential Psychotherapeutic Encounter: An Examination of Existential Psychotherapy and Its Relevance to Clinical Social Work
By Nancy W. Ferry

Patterns of Immaturity and the Archetypal Patterns of Masculine and Feminine: A Preliminary Exploration
By Gareth S. Hill

The Negative Therapeutic Reaction
By James C. Lewis

Applications of Kleinian Theory to Group Psychotherapy
By Joan Schain

A Differential Context Approach to Treatment Based on a Social Cognitive Model of Character Structure
By Mary A. Ahern

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