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: Examination of the Accuracy and Applicability of Information in Popular Books on Dog Training

authors: Browne, Clare Melody

subjects: Social Sciences

abstract: There is a wealth of popular literature available on dog behavior and training; sourcing reliable and trustworthy advice is important to achieving successful training. The aim of this study was to select five best-selling (at that time) dog training books, and review their general content and references to basic learning theory and human communicative cues. An Internet search was performed on three online bookstores’ websites for “best selling” “dog training” books. The books were by Millan and Peltier (2006), Fennell (2002), Stilwell (2005), Pryor (1999), and Monks of New Skete (2002). The results showed marked differences across all books, including inconsistencies in the depth of information provided, and some starkly contrasting training methods were advocated. Overall, these books were not all considered to function as instructional manuals. The persistent popularity of these books suggests that they have likely contributed appreciably to the type of information accessed by dog guardians.

text: Examination of the Accuracy and Applicability of Information in Popular Books on Dog Training There is a wealth of popular literature available on dog behavior and training; sourcing reliable and trustworthy advice is important to achieving successful training. The aim of this study was to select five best-selling (at that time) dog training books, and review their general content and references to basic learning theory and human communicative cues. An Internet search was performed on three online bookstores’ websites for “best selling” “dog training” books. The books were by Millan and Peltier (2006), Fennell (2002), Stilwell (2005), Pryor (1999), and Monks of New Skete (2002). The results showed marked differences across all books, including inconsistencies in the depth of information provided, and some starkly contrasting training methods were advocated. Overall, these books were not all considered to function as instructional manuals. The persistent popularity of these books suggests that they have likely contributed appreciably to the type of information accessed by dog guardians.

year: 2017

title: Brown bodies, white coats: Postcolonialism, Māori women, and science

authors: McKinley, Elizabeth

abstract: This project investigates the historical construction of 'Māori woman' and the constitution of the subjectivities of Maori women scientists today. The central question that is raised by the thesis is 'Do discourses of 'race' and gender found in Enlightenment science at the time of Aotearoa New Zealand's colonization continue to affect the contemporary subjectivity of Māori women scientists, and if so, how?' I have used literary historical techniques and feminist narrative interviews to collect the research data. Deconstruction, and its technique of 'double reading', has been applied through out the thesis to both the literary historical texts (imperial archives) and the transcripts of the interviews. I have argued that a poststructuralist view of the 'splitting the subject' to enable multiple positions must be read alongside the postcolonial view of a contemporary 'colonized subject' of an already 'split' subjectivity. 
This thesis is divided into two sections. Section A investigates Māori women as the objects of science. I argue that in Aotearoa New Zealand journeys of discovery and colonization were also scientific journeys that brought 'Māori woman' under the intellectual control of the emerging 'scientific' academy. At the same time, drawing on the 'imperial archives', I show that stereotypical signifiers are incorporated within scientific discourses and shape the fictions that these texts represent. In Section B I draw on open-ended interviews with 16 Māori women scientists who were asked to discuss their identity in relation to their schooling and workplaces. I explore the conditions by which the subject 'Māori women scientist' emerges and how the Maori women experience these conditions in relation to how they see themselves. I conclude by arguing that the identity of 'Māori woman scientist' appears to be 'impossible fiction' due to the fragmented nature of the sign - 'Māori, 'woman' and 'scientist' - that can be 'traced' to the historical construction of the signs.

text: Brown bodies, white coats: Postcolonialism, Māori women, and science This project investigates the historical construction of 'Māori woman' and the constitution of the subjectivities of Maori women scientists today. The central question that is raised by the thesis is 'Do discourses of 'race' and gender found in Enlightenment science at the time of Aotearoa New Zealand's colonization continue to affect the contemporary subjectivity of Māori women scientists, and if so, how?' I have used literary historical techniques and feminist narrative interviews to collect the research data. Deconstruction, and its technique of 'double reading', has been applied through out the thesis to both the literary historical texts (imperial archives) and the transcripts of the interviews. I have argued that a poststructuralist view of the 'splitting the subject' to enable multiple positions must be read alongside the postcolonial view of a contemporary 'colonized subject' of an already 'split' subjectivity. 
This thesis is divided into two sections. Section A investigates Māori women as the objects of science. I argue that in Aotearoa New Zealand journeys of discovery and colonization were also scientific journeys that brought 'Māori woman' under the intellectual control of the emerging 'scientific' academy. At the same time, drawing on the 'imperial archives', I show that stereotypical signifiers are incorporated within scientific discourses and shape the fictions that these texts represent. In Section B I draw on open-ended interviews with 16 Māori women scientists who were asked to discuss their identity in relation to their schooling and workplaces. I explore the conditions by which the subject 'Māori women scientist' emerges and how the Maori women experience these conditions in relation to how they see themselves. I conclude by arguing that the identity of 'Māori woman scientist' appears to be 'impossible fiction' due to the fragmented nature of the sign - 'Māori, 'woman' and 'scientist' - that can be 'traced' to the historical construction of the signs.

year: 2003