title: Video-recording for therapeutic purposes in couple counselling

authors: Depree, Jim

subjects: couples

abstract: The challenges of producing fair and respectful relationships sometimes takes couples to counselling. Problematic and taken-for-granted, individualistic, adversarial and gendered discursive practices continue to get in the way of fair and respectful relationships, with studies showing that in heterosexual relationships women are often expected to do most of the work required to maintain and repair couple relationships which continue to centre men’s experiences. When couples get to counselling, counsellors may also struggle to address individualistic and gendered relational processes and, may reproduce them despite their best intentions. In response, narrative therapists work with clients to externalise and deconstruct discursive practices to make visible the operation of power in relationships and to make available other readings, ways of being and identities, which better position members of a couple to collaborate in order to produce solutions. This study employed narrative therapy co-research and video technology in order to investigate the researcher’s own narrative therapy counselling practice with couples. Three couples, all heterosexual, in marriage or marriage-like relationships, were recruited from the researcher’s counselling practice. Together the couples and researcher reviewed and co-researched the video records of the counselling meetings. Practices of co-research with video made visible and unfamiliar some previously unseen and taken-for-granted territories of life. Co-research of these territories generated understandings and proposals for action, which the couples then experimented with and reviewed. As well, the couples all began to imagine how their actions might appear on video and to adjust their actions and thinking to better fit with their values. The video records also provided a text for further deconstructive analysis. Within the counselling, re-membering conversations, taking-it-back practices and definitional ceremonies, were employed and enhanced by using the video in order to support preferred developments and to strengthen the contributions of children, family and communities to the couples’ preferred ways of being. This approach was used to investigate: the ways the couples shared and conducted their conversations in counselling; their parenting; an anger problem; and the sharing of property and income. Ongoing analysis of the video records and transcripts developed and extended the theoretical tools available in the moments of the counselling, producing a richer telling of a practice that was effective at the time. This retelling involved thinking with Derrida and deconstruction as justice in order to cast counselling as an hospitable, collaborative process of co-research which has as its focus addressing justice in the complex, relational, gendered, cultural and contextual territories in which couples’ relationships are played out. The thesis argues that the positioning of counsellor and couples as co-researchers, using hospitable and deconstructive perspectives, greatly reduced conflict and equipped the counsellor and couples to review and research their own experiences, and to collaborate in order to produce more effective problem solving strategies, which addressed their situations and their hopes for justice.

text: Video-recording for therapeutic purposes in couple counselling The challenges of producing fair and respectful relationships sometimes takes couples to counselling. Problematic and taken-for-granted, individualistic, adversarial and gendered discursive practices continue to get in the way of fair and respectful relationships, with studies showing that in heterosexual relationships women are often expected to do most of the work required to maintain and repair couple relationships which continue to centre men’s experiences. When couples get to counselling, counsellors may also struggle to address individualistic and gendered relational processes and, may reproduce them despite their best intentions. In response, narrative therapists work with clients to externalise and deconstruct discursive practices to make visible the operation of power in relationships and to make available other readings, ways of being and identities, which better position members of a couple to collaborate in order to produce solutions. This study employed narrative therapy co-research and video technology in order to investigate the researcher’s own narrative therapy counselling practice with couples. Three couples, all heterosexual, in marriage or marriage-like relationships, were recruited from the researcher’s counselling practice. Together the couples and researcher reviewed and co-researched the video records of the counselling meetings. Practices of co-research with video made visible and unfamiliar some previously unseen and taken-for-granted territories of life. Co-research of these territories generated understandings and proposals for action, which the couples then experimented with and reviewed. As well, the couples all began to imagine how their actions might appear on video and to adjust their actions and thinking to better fit with their values. The video records also provided a text for further deconstructive analysis. Within the counselling, re-membering conversations, taking-it-back practices and definitional ceremonies, were employed and enhanced by using the video in order to support preferred developments and to strengthen the contributions of children, family and communities to the couples’ preferred ways of being. This approach was used to investigate: the ways the couples shared and conducted their conversations in counselling; their parenting; an anger problem; and the sharing of property and income. Ongoing analysis of the video records and transcripts developed and extended the theoretical tools available in the moments of the counselling, producing a richer telling of a practice that was effective at the time. This retelling involved thinking with Derrida and deconstruction as justice in order to cast counselling as an hospitable, collaborative process of co-research which has as its focus addressing justice in the complex, relational, gendered, cultural and contextual territories in which couples’ relationships are played out. The thesis argues that the positioning of counsellor and couples as co-researchers, using hospitable and deconstructive perspectives, greatly reduced conflict and equipped the counsellor and couples to review and research their own experiences, and to collaborate in order to produce more effective problem solving strategies, which addressed their situations and their hopes for justice.

year: 2016

title: Generation of X-points and secondary islands in 2D magnetohydrodynamic turbulence

authors: Wan, Minping

abstract: We study the time development of the population of X-type critical points in a two-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic model during the early stages of freely decaying turbulence. At sufficiently high magnetic Reynolds number Rem, we find that the number of neutral points increases as Rem3/2, while the rates of reconnection at the most active sites decrease. The distribution of rates remains approximately exponential. We focus in particular on delicate issues of accuracy, which arise in these numerical experiments, in that the proliferation of X-points is also a feature of under-resolved simulations. The “splitting” of neutral points at high Reynolds number appears to be a fundamental feature of the cascade that has important implications for understanding the relationship between reconnection and turbulence, an issue of considerable importance for the Magnetospheric Multiscale and Solar Probe missions as well as observation of reconnection in the solar wind.

text: Generation of X-points and secondary islands in 2D magnetohydrodynamic turbulence We study the time development of the population of X-type critical points in a two-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic model during the early stages of freely decaying turbulence. At sufficiently high magnetic Reynolds number Rem, we find that the number of neutral points increases as Rem3/2, while the rates of reconnection at the most active sites decrease. The distribution of rates remains approximately exponential. We focus in particular on delicate issues of accuracy, which arise in these numerical experiments, in that the proliferation of X-points is also a feature of under-resolved simulations. The “splitting” of neutral points at high Reynolds number appears to be a fundamental feature of the cascade that has important implications for understanding the relationship between reconnection and turbulence, an issue of considerable importance for the Magnetospheric Multiscale and Solar Probe missions as well as observation of reconnection in the solar wind.

year: 2013

title: Environmental ethics in a New Zealand context

authors: Gunn, Alastair S.

subjects: environmental ethics

abstract: Environmental ethics has many strands and roots but there is increasing for a holistic approach. Such an approach, which is consistent with te ao Maori and tikanga Maori, is especially appropriate for New Zealand.

text: Environmental ethics in a New Zealand context Environmental ethics has many strands and roots but there is increasing for a holistic approach. Such an approach, which is consistent with te ao Maori and tikanga Maori, is especially appropriate for New Zealand.

year: 2007