ABSTRACT

Qualitative Research Approaches for Psychotherapy offers the reader a range of current qualitative research approaches congruent with the values and practices of psychotherapy itself: experience-based, reflective, contextualized, and critical.

This volume contains 14 compelling, challenging new essays from authors in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres, writing from a range of theoretical and cultural perspectives. The book covers both established and emerging approaches to qualitative research in this field, beginning with case study, ending with postqualitative, and with hermeneutic, reflexive, psychosocial, Talanoa, queer, feminist, critical race theory, heuristic, grounded theory, authoethnographic, poetic and collaborative writing approaches in between. These chapters introduce and explore the complexity of the specific research approach, its assumptions, challenges, ethics, and potentials, including examples from the authors’ own research, therapeutic practice, and life. The book is not a ‘how to’ guide to methods but, rather, a stimulus for psychotherapy researchers to think and feel their way differently into their research endeavours.

This book will be an invaluable resource to postgraduate students, practitioners and established researchers in psychotherapy who are undertaking (or considering) qualitative research for their projects. It will also appeal to course tutors and trainers looking for a volume around which to structure a qualitative research methods course.

chapter |2 pages

Introduction

chapter 1|12 pages

Into the thick of it

Troubling case studies and researching close to therapeutic practice

chapter 2|16 pages

Hermeneutic phenomenology

Exploring and making meaning of lived experience in psychotherapy research

chapter 4|13 pages

A psychosocial coming into play

Researching authenticity in therapy, the academy, and friendship

chapter 5|14 pages

Feminist research in psychotherapy

The strange case of the United Kingdom's 'hostile environment' policy

chapter 6|15 pages

Critical race theory

A methodology for research in psychotherapy

chapter 8|13 pages

Queering psychotherapy research

Collaborative autoethnography and fossicking

chapter 9|18 pages

Critical heuristics in psychotherapy research

From ‘I-who-feels’ to ‘We-who-care—and act’

chapter 10|16 pages

Keeping it real

Grounded theory for a profession on the brink

chapter 11|14 pages

Researching from the inside

Using autoethnography to produce ethical research from within psychotherapy practice

chapter 12|13 pages

(Re)searching poetically

Poetic inquiry in psychotherapy

chapter 13|17 pages

Putting ourselves in the picture

Phototherapy, collaborative writing, and psychotherapy research

chapter 15|11 pages

Re-searching research

Reflections on contributions to qualitative and post-qualitative research