ABSTRACT

CB

Can we talk about research? How have your clinical and organisational ideas fed into your research work?

DC

The research began in the late 1970s when John Byng-Hall and Rosemary Whiffen got a grant to do some research into family therapy and they asked me to be the convener. This meant getting a research team together; we were looking at sessions that had been recorded, pulling out certain themes and coding the material. It was then that I discovered that I was never going to be a researcher because I’m just not patient enough, and I take my hat off to the people who have the patience and the attention to detail.

CB

But you have gone on to do all kinds of other research, haven’t you?

DC

Yes, and it helped me to be careful about getting bogged down in too much detail, too much coding, because it takes you away from the process of the therapy itself. Since then I’ve done a few pieces of research about talking to families about their experiences of family therapy. Because I was aware of my impatience, I was looking around for something that was already administered and then Izzy Kolvin 128and Judith Trowell developed the childhood depression study (Campbell, 2011; Trowell et al., 2007) and needed somebody to lead the family therapy component at the Tavistock, which was perfect for me. I could develop research thinking around childhood depression, which was a very interesting topic and I really enjoyed that. I was very grateful to Judith and Izzy. It was very interesting because they produced enough data for us to begin to look at the patterns that emerged and apply them to the family sessions.

CB

The interesting thing about that project was that because you taped all the family therapy sessions, you could then do some process research. Outcome studies are very good at a policy level, but you’ve also looked at questions about the significant processes, haven’t you?

DC

Yes, I would see myself as a clinician–researcher rather than a pure researcher, so my primary interest would always be in the clinical process and how to avoid getting too far removed from it. So trying to identify key moments for families and therapists was a fairly accessible research model that wasn’t going to be too much detail and draw you away from the experience of therapy (Campbell et al., 2003).

CB

Do you think that looking at significant moments has had an effect on your own clinical work?

DC

Over the years, I’ve developed a pretty good nose for just staying focused on what people are really trying to say; they can talk for a few minutes and I’m thinking, wait a minute, that’s not what they really want to say, and then finally something will click and I’ll think, that’s what they want me to hear amidst all the other words. So I’m just staying focused on that as significant and I just keep waiting and then I’ll say, that’s really interesting, let’s talk about that. So doing research kind of sharpens your critical thinking.

CB

You’ve also been involved in supervising research projects on our doctoral programme. How does that experience fit with the rest of your work?

DC

I would say supervising doctorate dissertations is about twenty-five per cent research and seventy-five per cent consulting to a researcher; how do you convey certain ideas to a researcher in a way that is inspiring and encouraging and also a bit of a kick? It’s about being a consultant, supervisor, a bit of a therapist, and a bit of a coach 129all thrown in. You need research skills, but I was surprised at how challenging this is because, when I started out, I’d say, here’s the method, here’s the data, here are the conclusions, write those up and that would be it. There are so many nuances about how people respond to the research, so it’s more difficult than it looks.

CB

How important do you think being interested in what you can learn from the people that you’re training is for a teacher?

DC

I’m a much better teacher if I am learning something during the day. I couldn’t just deliver a lecture that I delivered a week before and I think that it’s being interested in feedback and part of something that is evolving. I try to get a feedback loop going as soon as I can rather than going on and on. I don’t like the sound of my own voice, actually. I’d rather stop and say “let’s get some feedback”, or get people to talk to each other about what they’ve heard and come up with a third idea.