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The purpose of this paper is to introduce psychosocial research methodology as a method that makes use of the emotions of researcher and researched and goes well-beyond empathetic understanding.

This short piece critically introduces the recently published book Further Researching Beneath the Surface (Volume 2): Psycho-social Research Methods in Practice, Eds Cummins, A.-M., and Williams, N., and analyses the psychosocial approach to qualitative research that emphasizes research as an emotional activity and makes use of the researcher’s and the researched’s emotional responses to each other in drawing interpretations about organizational phenomena.

By analysing transference and counter-transference, researchers can draw valuable insights into organizational phenomena that remain unseen by more conventional research methodologies.

Emotions, far from being the enemy of the researcher, can, if recognized properly, be valuable resources in social research.

Chapter X of The Social System is often cited as the “charter” for the specialty field of medical sociology. A notable feature of its analysis is the argument that the physician is an agent of social control in relation to the patient. This argument grounds the application to medical practice of Parsons’ general conception that social control is an aspect of all social relationships. Parsons started by addressing the situation of a patient who assumes the sick role and then becomes the patient of a physician. The sick role involves a suspension of at least some of the performance expectations associated with a person's everyday social life, such as expectations of working productively at one's job, attending the meeting of a civic association, or caring for one's family members. But in assuming the sick role, an individual encounters new expectations that he or she should try to get well. For minor illnesses this may involve only resting, drinking fluids, and avoiding stress. For more serious illnesses, given our culture's valuation of scientific medicine, it typically involves placing oneself in the care of a physician. It then becomes the physician's duty to offer treatment and guidance to restore one's health and enable one to return to meet expectations of everyday roles. Thus the physician becomes an agent of social control.

To show the reader that storytelling can be seen as a form of seduction based on emotional response and thereby preventing a change process within the organisation.

Case study in relation to a psychoanalytic approach to text as a place for emotional control.

Storytelling without psychodynamic analysis becomes easily storyselling.

Text is seen as carrier of emotions that can be corrected through psychodynamics which implies that there remains hope for enlightment by the text.

Every form of storytelling is a form of addressing an audience that needs to be made aware of the psychodynamics of the text as part of the author.

The worst stories that are sold are those we sell best to ourselves.

Some psychodynamic approaches conceptualise female violence as a communication of experiences too difficult to think about. As practitioners, understanding what may be too painful to be thought about is incredibly important in assessment and treatment of forensic populations. Incorporating psychodynamic concepts such as splitting, transference, projection and counter-transference into formulation can be extremely helpful in understanding and formulating women’s risk of violence. The purpose of this paper is to introduce how psychodynamic concepts can be incorporated into understanding, assessment, formulation and treatment with this complex client group. This paper will also outline treatment approaches with this population.

This paper will review existing psychodynamic literature and apply this knowledge to working with violent female offenders. Translating theory into reflective practice will be presented.

This paper presents the value of incorporating psychodynamic considerations into existing strategies of understanding and working with violent female offenders. Ways forwards and research directions are proposed.

This paper is focussed primarily on psychodynamic approaches to understanding this population

Psychodynamic concepts can add an additional dimension to formulation, supervision and treatment approaches with this population. Examining the meaning of violence perpetrated by women as well as enactments can improve practitioner’s depth of understanding. Empirical research examining the benefits of psychoanalytic supervision would be extremely useful to explore the impact on formulation, treatment approaches, treatment effectiveness, staff well-being and staff retention.

There is a lack of literature considering the application of psychodynamic constructs to help formulation of complex female offenders in the Offender Personality Disorder Pathway for women.

The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the important and unique challenges that arise when using interpreters while conducting psychotherapy with forced migrants who have experienced a range of human rights abuse.

The paper employs a practice‐based evidence methodology that offers guidance to both clinicians and researchers.

Working with interpreters in the clinical setting is often a challenging and complex process for which mental health professionals are rarely prepared. This paper outlines key strategies to address these challenges and limitations.

Empirically‐based research is lacking and is certainly warranted.

It is the responsibility of programs, training sites, supervisors, and institutions to help teach how to work with interpreters.

This paper addresses how to navigate the key issues that arise through the use of interpreters in a mental health setting with forced migrants, including: initiating a therapeutic relationship with an interpreter; common issues that arise around language; setting the therapeutic frame; and addressing boundaries; acknowledging the role of culture, transference, counter transference, and vicarious trauma; screening to assess competence; training to orient interpreters to clinical work with forced migrants; in vivo feedback; assessments; and an appropriate place to process their experience.

Much previous research has explored the impact of group work on the therapist. The purpose of this paper is to examine how group members tolerate the powerful material discussed in groups in a prison-based therapeutic community. The authors briefly describe the regime at HMP Grendon and previous research into the impact of group work on therapists.

A qualitative approach using a focus group was used to explore the impact of group work from the perspective of the group members. Themes emerging from the focus group were analysed using thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006). Participants included adult male violent and sexual offenders (n=10). The focus group was facilitated by two therapists, both based within HMP Grendon.

Overarching themes emerged from the data which included – the type of material that has an impact on residents; the impact of this material on group members; and how residents manage it. A series of subthemes within these were identified, with salient themes including: the difficulty in listening to others offence histories and past experiences, managing the feelings of guilt and shame which can be overwhelming, feeling vulnerable/exposed, experiencing positive feelings for the first time as well as the benefits of therapy in eliciting change.

Uniquely the current study explores the impact of group therapy from the perspective of the group members. This is a previously unexplored area of research. As the study was conducted on a prison sample, it is unclear how well the findings would generalise to other populations. As such it is recommended that further research be conducted to validate the findings here.

The present study indicates that group members process transference and counter-transference similar to therapists. It is suggested that therapists can use these findings to build resilience in group members.

Previous research has described the impact of group work on therapists, uniquely this paper goes on to describe how group members process the material they are exposed to and how they manage their heightened emotions rather than acting on them. This should help therapists consider how best to develop resilience in group members.

Psychoanalysis has nothing to say about firms or management as such; inversely, psychoanalytic coaching can aid managers to develop a better understanding of the role they exercise within the firm and to better position themselves in decision making and communication with other people. While it is a practice that takes place outside the classical psychoanalytic framework, psychoanalytic coaching must meet certain criteria in order to justify a psychoanalytic filiation: amongst others, the recognition of the unconscious and of the mechanisms of transference and counter‐transference. Crucially, the analyst is at the service of the subject (the manager) ‐ even if it is the firm that pays for the treatment. While there are risks involved for all parties concerned (the manager, the firm and the analyst), psychoanalytic coaching offers a way of rendering meaningful a management that encompasses the respect of oneself and of others.

Purpose – This chapter explores the relational and emotional lifeworlds of qualitative interviews. The chapter documents the ways in which I have negotiated the sharing of traumatic accounts without being able to fix or repair their causes, and how I struggled to listen to recollections without trying to appropriate, accentuate or ameliorate their affective resonances.

Methodology/Approach – The chapter focuses on one case from a four-year study with mothers and their daughters in a marginalised area of South Wales, UK. The study drew on visual and creative methods of data production, including mapping, collage, photoelicitation and timelines, which were accompanied by in-depth elicitation interviews.

Findings – The chapter illustrates the usefulness of reflecting on emotions to understand the communication of trauma, and its emotional impacts on research relationships both within and beyond the field.

Originality/Value – The chapter builds on earlier work that has attempted to consider in detail the nature of the interaction between researchers and participants. It argues that psychoanalytically informed frames of analysis can engender a more nuanced understanding of the relationality and emotionality of qualitative research; particularly when topics are hard to speak of and hard to bear.

Many referrals to our mental health of learning disability service focus on concerns about behaviours that present risks to the referred person and to those around them, including support workers. If the referred person has good verbal ability, psychological therapy may be requested and offered, but the person may find it too difficult to engage for a number of reasons. Even when they do engage in therapy, the authors recognise the importance of helping staff better understand their attachment needs. This paper aims to demonstrate an innovative approach to helping staff provide Trauma-Informed Care (TIC).

The authors developed a training programme for support workers using psychodynamic concepts, such as splitting, transference and counter-transference, to help them develop insight into the processes that get enacted during their work. In this paper the authors have generally used the term “care staff”, recognising that an important aspect of the role of those staff is to provide care within an attachment framework; as well as support to maximise independence.

The feedback from staff who have attended has been very positive, both at the time and later. Staff who have attended have talked to multidisciplinary colleagues about the impact their learning has had on their ability to work with service users who present great challenges, in the context of their trauma histories.

The importance of providing TIC is gaining traction across varied settings. The authors are in the process of developing both qualitative and quantitative research programmes to evaluate this approach to increasing TIC for adults with learning disabilities, reducing staff burn out and placement breakdown.

While within-firm service failure and recovery have been studied extensively, the context in which a service failure at one firm “spills over” and provides an opportunity for an external firm (a subsequent service provider) to recover (compensate) a customer has received limited attention. This study aims to examine how the extent of a service failure plays a role in how external firms should shape their recovery efforts, and how customers’ evaluations of the recovering firm and their feelings of unhappiness are affected.

A pretest conducted on MTurk gauged participants’ perceptions of equitability of the external firm’s recovery effort. In the main study, a 3 × 3 between-subjects experiment examined the effects of failure extent and external recovery type on evaluations of the recovering firm and reduced feelings of unhappiness.

It is found that equity judgments remain consistent in the external recovery context; transferred negative affect is able to be mitigate only in low-failure scenarios, and customers’ evaluations of the external firm increase only in high-failure scenarios.

The use of hypothetical scenarios, as opposed to the employment of a field study, is the primary limitation of the study.

This research finds that external firms can reap the benefits of another firm’s service failure by offering no-cost recoveries, rather than ones that carry some form of cost.