Thinking from experience in psychosocial practice: reclaiming and teaching ‘use of self’

Froggett, Lynn; Ramvi, Ellen; Davies, Linda

doi:10.1080/02650533.2014.923389

Cited by 24 publications

(15 citation statements)

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“…In my own study of experiences from a Norwegian hospital [ 3 ], it appears to be a problem that the nurses and the hospital play down or turn a blind eye to the experience of anxiety and vulnerability in their relationships. This seems increasingly more problematic, since nursing is progressively more determined as an economically driven management model of service delivery [ 4 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In an exploration of the nature of nursing and the function of the nurse within a 21 st century health-care system, researchers conclude that an understanding of nursing practice places demands not only on the technical competence of the nurse, but also on “the personhood” of the nurse [ 1 ]. The nurse has to be personally involved and “use herself” [ 2 - 4 ], and it is difficult to say where the personal ends and the professional begins. The assumption that the personal informs the professional and vice versa is supported by several studies e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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I am only a nurse: a biographical narrative study of a nurse’s self-understanding and its implication for practice

Ramvi

2015

BMC Nurs

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BackgroundThe personal is a vital part of professional nursing practice. From a psycho-social perspective, nurses produce and reproduce conceptions of the Self through experience. A literature search on nurses’ self-understanding in a psycho-social perspective yields no results. Hence, the aim of this study was to investigate personal and professional experiences that may have formed the self-understanding of a nurse, and how this self-understanding may have influenced her professional practice.MethodsUsing a single case approach, I conducted a Biographical Narrative Interview with a 50-year-old experienced Norwegian nurse. I asked the nurse to tell me the story of her life and how her work has affected her and possibly changed the way she saw herself. The overall aim of the interpretation was to understand the historically situated subjectivity in terms of the nurse’s personal, social and professional constraints and chosen options.ResultsThe nurse’s narrative of her life story made it possible to trace a common theme throughout her experiences, the experience of being “only a nurse”. The nurse experienced a low status, as well as a downgrade in the competence needed to deliver quality care in professional relationships. She felt it difficult to identify with the experience of being on the bottom of the social ladder and to identify with the female, mothering ideal connected to nursing. She desired a better position, and wanted to identify with strong women. In contrast to reality, her self-understanding influenced her relationship with her patients, her professional pride and her further professional development.ConclusionsThis study shows that the professional practice of a nurse was informed by her self-understanding. This study suggests that the individual nurse must be given the opportunity to explore her professional vulnerability based on the assumption that it is both personally and socially constituted. This study indicates that the exploration of a nurse’s self-understanding is one way to contribute to professional development.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

I am only a nurse: a biographical narrative study of a nurse’s self-understanding and its implication for practice

Ramvi

2015

BMC Nurs

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“…The second author has carried out explorative but unpublished work using this method as a teacher-educator with 12 groups in Danish higher education (students in teacher education and experienced teachers pursuing a further education MA). The third author has employed a related approach in practice teaching with students in nursing and social work (Froggett, Ramvi, & Davies, 2014). The application of depthhermeneutics for teachers has, however, to the best of our knowledge, not yet been presented in a scholarly journal.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Depth-hermeneutics: a psychosocial approach to facilitate teachers’ reflective practice?

Gripsrud

Mellon

Ramvi

2018

Reflective Practice

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In this article we present and outline depth-hermeneutics as a new application of a theoretically founded psychosocial approach, with the ambition of inspiring teachers to explore challenging aspects of their relational work with students. Empirical knowledge and psychodynamic theory suggest that teaching and learning are profoundly rooted in relationship based processes. Hence it is a prerequisite for improving learning and supporting teachers' professional development that challenging aspects in the student-teacher relationship be taken seriously by being examined, with the aim of enabling and supporting learning from experience in reflective practice. We suggest that group-based depth-hermeneutics, a qualitative psychosocial method, may allow for analysis and interpretation of situations and relations in school that may be experienced by teachers as difficult or incomprehensible. Drawing on an empirical example from fieldwork in a Norwegian middle school, we illustrate the nature of a challenging situation and relation in teaching and show step-by-step how depth-hermeneutics can be adapted, adopted, implemented, and facilitated in teacher groups, to increase scenic understanding of such complex phenomena.

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“…Frost and Hoggett, 2008;Gadd and Dixon, 2010;Scanlon and Adlam, 2013;Hadar, 2013). In the last few years both the applied methodology developments of relationship-based practice have drawn on psychosocial paradigms (Trevithick, 2003;Ruch et al, 2010;Froggett et al, 2015) and emerging theoretical work on, for example, recognition and shame have been examined through a psychosocial lens in the context of social work and social justice (e.g. Gibson, 2015;Houston, 2016;Frost, 2015).…”

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confidence: 99%

Why psychosocial thinking is critical

Frost¹

2019

The Routledge Handbook of Critical Social Work

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The title of this chapter is really a statement, with a question inscribed in it, and a double meaning at its heart. It seeks to both answer 'why is psychosocial theory critical?' and argue that psychosocial theory is critical, in the sense of challenging orthodoxy, and in the sense of urgent and necessity. The short answer that will be advanced here is this: without engaging with people as subject to unequal forms of social power, interwoven with individual, affective struggles and troubles, you cannot hope to understand the complexities of human existence, let alone human existence in which some people are clearly experiencing forms of social suffering. Psychosocial thinking insists that humans are understood as being constituted within social structures and personal internal landscapes. However, there is also a third fundamental element, which is that the experiencing, relational human subject is placed at the centre of the analysis. The knower and the known in terms of knowledge construction; the worker and the service user in social work, are both equally dynamically present and constitutive in all encounters, and this subjective interface is fundamental to the relationship. The human subject is at the core of psychosocial understanding. As I have commented previously: Within this paradigm the subject is understood as passionate, ambivalent and emotionally driven, existing outside (but defined within) the rational processes of language. Importantly, this is a social subject existing in a world of power relations and status hierarchies. Psychosocial theory is able to explicate the emotional experience which, in relation to all encounters, including social work, defines the nature of the real and fantasised self and other in a coconstructed relationship.

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Thinking from experience in psychosocial practice: reclaiming and teaching ‘use of self’

Cited by 24 publications

References 50 publications

I am only a nurse: a biographical narrative study of a nurse’s self-understanding and its implication for practice

I am only a nurse: a biographical narrative study of a nurse’s self-understanding and its implication for practice

Depth-hermeneutics: a psychosocial approach to facilitate teachers’ reflective practice?

Why psychosocial thinking is critical

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