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How Does Attending to the Client’s Bodied Experience of Their Illness in Talking Therapy Open a Gateway to Empathic Depth? A Hermeneutic Phenomenological Study

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Date

2022

Authors

Hepburn, Jane Elizabeth

Supervisor

Van Hout, Francie
Rodgers, Brian

Item type

Thesis

Degree name

Master of Health Science

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Publisher

Auckland University of Technology

Abstract

Essential to healing in talking therapy is the skilful act of hearing clients’ stories of experience and exploring the personal meanings these stories hold. Typically, talking therapists prioritise subjectivity such as thoughts, emotions, and meaning-making in many of their therapeutic approaches with clients, which gives physicality, specifically illness, a less fundamental gaze. This is because Western models of counselling or psychotherapy are influenced by dualistic views of personhood, health, and healthcare. But what happens when the gaze turns towards physicality and illness is given a “voice” in talking therapy, and how does this relate to the therapist’s experience of empathic depth? Using the methodology of hermeneutic phenomenology as informed by van Manen, this study explores five talking therapists’ lived experiences of attending to physicality and bodied story in clinical practice and seeks to understand how these experiences open a gateway to empathic depth when using a whole person approach to healthcare. Walking alongside the meaning of whole person is a Christian understanding of personhood. A whole person approach to healthcare is a non-dualistic way of understanding what it means to be human. This understanding creates a setting where the whole of a person’s being, experience, and story are welcomed, heard, and validated within the therapeutic encounter. Within this non-dualistic way of therapeutic practice, the therapist is invited into a deeper empathic understanding of their clients’ experiences. The Covid-19 pandemic of 2020-2022 meant that all the interviews were conducted online. The participants’ experiential stories were transcribed by the researcher who was guided by van Manen’s method of dwelling with the data and crafting anecdotes of lived experience that capture the essential meaning of data. Out of a dwelling-with and reflecting upon the anecdotal narratives emerged three patterns, or themes, that became the interpretive findings. The first theme focused on attending to the body of both therapist and client and how the impact of this paradigmatic shift in viewing what it means to be human influences professional therapeutic practice. The second theme, empathy as space, focused on the therapists’ experiences of empathy within the clinical encounter. The third theme, home, focused on therapists’ taken-for-granted experiences of working with both body and bodied empathy. Woven through these themes are the cross-findings of courage and the therapeutic relationship, which bring the phenomenon of empathic depth when attending to physicality into focus.

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https://hdl.handle.net/10292/15554

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Masters Theses