Free Association Narrative Interview Research Articles

Voluntary turnover of high achievers: A systems psychodynamics analysis with CIBART

Orientation: Voluntary turnover is a costly and frequently disruptive organisational phenomenon, particularly when it involves high achievers.Research purpose: The study aimed to develop a psychodynamic exposé of voluntary turnover by applying the conflict, identity, boundaries, authority, roles and task (CIBART) model to the lived experiences of high achievers.Motivation for the study: The research primarily focusses on voluntary turnover as an individual, rational decision-making process. It recognises the contribution of unconscious systems psychodynamics to voluntary turnover. Research conducted from this perspective is necessary to gain a more comprehensive and in-depth understanding of the topic.Research approach/design and method: Seven case studies of individual voluntary turnover were conducted in a large private retail company. Data were collected using free association narrative (FANI) interviews. The analysis of the data was guided by hermeneutic phenomenology, and the interpretive frame used was the CIBART model.Main findings: Six themes were constructed to describe the conflict dynamics along each of the six CIBART dimensions. Within each theme, the conflict dynamic is exposed, revealing the subsequent anxiety and defences that accumulate leading to the decision to leave. Ultimately, the six themes synthesise to propose that voluntary turnover is a conscious manifestation, yet an unconscious defence against system-wide conflict.Practical/managerial implications: Facilitating leaders’ understanding and processing of the conflict dynamics that occur across the CIBART dimensions, and which contribute to voluntary turnover, create opportunities for both transformation and prevention.Contribution/value-add: The research offers insights into the psychodynamics of voluntary turnover, which consulting psychologists and organisational leaders can utilise to address this phenomenon within their work groups.

Employing Reflexivity in Sexuality Socialisation Research: A Methodological Contribution from Psychosocial Studies

In this paper, we describe and demonstrate the value of adopting a psychosocial methodology to explore unique sexual socialisation experiences emphasising the role of reflexivity. Psychosocial methodology emerges from Psychosocial Studies, a “transdisciplinary” area interested in phenomena from “both” a social and personal perspective and in this paper is employed to investigate how sexual socialisation is shaped by psychological processes “and” social relations, and how these can be “thought together” (Frosh & Vyrgioti, 2022). Psychosocial data analytic strategies involve applying narrative and discursive psychology alongside psychoanalytic concepts to understand the possible reasons for a participant’s investment in particular discourses, understanding these investments as serving unique unconscious defensive purposes, alongside social functions. To illustrate this, we use data from a Free Association Narrative Interview with an isiXhosa-speaking “Black” socioeconomically disadvantaged woman in South Africa about her experiences of sexuality socialisation within her sister-sister relationship. We show how a psychosocial emphasis traverses traditional boundaries between discourse and affect, talk and experience, researcher and researched, moving across disciplinary spaces. Furthermore, we pay attention to what is frequently considered the background of research – the study context; the emotional quality of the interview encounter between the researcher and participant; the researchers’ relationship with one another and their contribution to both the data production and analysis. This emphasis on reflexivity in psychosocial methodology is consistent with the political and philosophical position of Psychosocial Studies that is critical of the reification of disciplinary knowledge.

The emotional experience of continuing professional development

ABSTRACT This study seeks to understand why some social workers seem to connect and engage openly with opportunities for continuing professional development (CPD) while others seem to have a more conflicted relationship with their learning. Using psychoanalytically informed free association narrative interviews with eight social workers, the study explores the participant’s emotional experience of CPD. The data is analysed using an ‘Evolved approach’ (Cooper, 2014) in which it is examined for new ideas and organised into themes. The findings suggest a clear relational dimension to learning for social workers and the researcher offers The Learning Response model as a product of the study. This is a biographical narrative model of the pedagogy of CPD which offers a way of understanding how social worker’s approach to CPD is influenced by the experience of learning facilitation in early life. The model suggests that for some social workers, the script for future engagement with learning is set at this stage and they will repeat their early responses in their adult learning. But the study also identifies apparent compensatory factors and experiences and these seem to enable social workers to rescript their approach to CPD. For all however, the inner emotional voice created from initial experiences remains the same and it is this which replays and shapes social worker’s emotional experience of CPD.

Qualitative research interviewing: application and use of free association.

Free association is a core concept of the free association narrative interview method, an approach that is well-known among researchers in the UK who are interested in using psychoanalytic ideas in qualitative psycho-social research. To examine the relationship between the framing of the psychoanalytic concept of free association in the contexts of qualitative research interviewing, clinical psychoanalysis and psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy. This article considers the definition of free association in psychology and psychoanalysis. It then explores free association's role in the free association narrative method, in terms of interview technique and the analysis of interview material. Researchers should carefully consider differences in the contexts of research, clinical psychoanalysis and psychotherapy to avoid makeshift integrations of clinical concepts. The free association narrative interview method is an attractive approach for researchers interested in applying psychoanalytic ideas in their studies. However, researchers should carefully reflect on the meanings of the clinical ideas and terminology they use.

Online Free Association Narrative Interviewing: Intimacy, embodied experience and technological entanglements

Online Free Association Narrative Interviewing: Intimacy, embodied experience and technological entanglements

Prioritising young peoples’ voices in research and work in youth offending services: Themes from free association research methods and a co-production project with young people

Aims:To influence educational psychology practice by sharing key themes from research and work capturing young peoples’ experiences of engaging with youth offending services (YOS).Rationale:The prioritisation of the voice of the child in educational psychology practice is central to inclusivity (Davie, 1993; Messiou, 2002). Professionals capture and respond to the voices of children and young people, with varying degrees of authenticity, accountability and longevity (Hart, 1992; Hart et al., 2004). It is important that adults facilitate and support meaningful participation (Hart, 2008) by employing appropriate methods to enable young people to share their narratives. This paper seeks to influence educational psychology practice through the authentic voice of young people; focusing on what they say works when they are engaging with youth offending services, and highlighting accessible methods used to elicit voices.Method:The author discusses their experience of using free associative methods; the Grid Elaboration Method (GEM) (Joffe & Elsey, 2014) and the Free Association Narrative Interview (FANI) (Hollway & Jefferson, 2008) as part of their qualitative doctoral research with five young people recruited through a local authority YOS, answering the research question ‘What do participants talk about when asked about their engagement experiences with youth offending services?’ The author describes how these approaches facilitated accessible means to hearing young peoples’ voices, capturing their views through codes and themes illuminated through thematic analysis. Prioritisation of child voice during this formative experience inspired a co-production project creating a whiteboard video describing young peoples’ experience of working with a YOS. It provided space, voice, audience and influence to young people involved (Lundy, 2007) and through it, an accessible resource exists for those who may engage with YOS in the future.Limitations:The small number of participants recruited for the original research study (five) and the co-production project in YOS (six), impedes generalisability. Further limitations relate to the interpretivist nature of the original piece of research and following co-production project. The psycho-social approach, inherently acknowledges the subjective nature of analysis undertaken, suggesting that each individual researcher may analyse the data from a subjective perspective and therefore may come to different themes than those illuminated by this researcher.Implications and discussion:Themes that emerged through the script and visual imagery during the co-production project are linked back to key themes from the author’s original research. Key considerations for educational psychologists working in YOS are shared, focusing on the role educational psychologists can play in supporting young peoples’ meaningful engagement through supporting relationship and identity development and the structural processes that serve psychological functions. Proposals for educational psychology roles in YOS that provide consultative and supervisory support as well as in strategic shaping of services are also shared.

Beyond the medical encounter: can the free association narrative interview method extend psychosocial understandings of non-epileptic attack disorder?

This exploratory interdisciplinary study was devised to explore how using the free association narrative interview (FANI) method might extend understanding of non-epileptic attack disorder (NEAD) within a psychosocial framework. NEAD is the medical definition of what can be described as embodied events that resemble epilepsy, but which are not associated with the abnormal electrical discharges in the brain found in epilepsy. They are the most frequent ‘functional’ disorder or medically unexplained symptom (MUS) seen by neurologists. While NEAD is associated with trauma, distress and negative life events, a significant minority of patients report no trauma history. The FANI method, we argue, produced narratives which shed light on events that patients have not acknowledged as traumatic, but which might be considered as such, and we explore what aspects of the method may facilitate this process. Previous work has highlighted that a diagnosis of NEAD is often experienced as deeply troubling and contentious to both give and to receive. We thus reflect on the need for patients to feel a sense of legitimacy and how the challenges of living with a NEAD diagnosis are negotiated. Drawing on the work of Benjamin (2004) on ‘thirdness’, we suggest that the FANI method can allow the research interview to become a space that facilitates novel ways of engaging around NEAD. We conclude that the method may be a powerful tool for studying NEAD, and that further studies should be undertaken using this approach since it may have broader utility in understanding the landscape of functional neurological disorders.

Stillbirth in Khayelitsha Hospital, South Africa: Women's Experiences of Care

In this study we explore the hospital care experience of women following stillbirths in an impoverished urban setting in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. A qualitative research methodology was used with the collection of primary data using the Free Association Narrative Interview Method with 10 women who experienced stillbirths at a government hospital. The study found that the women generally felt well looked after medically, but also felt an emotional disconnect from, and a need to be seen by, the medical staff. A stillbirth can confront both the woman and the clinician with their own helplessness. Without attention to the emotional needs of the staff, who seemed to be offering optimal care within their capacity, it is unlikely that the staff will be able to provide fully accessible emotional care for the women. The stories told to us by our participants suggest that more expenditure on the emotional needs of caregivers in the health system may contribute to a more emotionally accessible, sustainable workforce.

Women's informal surveillance of alcohol consumption in intimate heterosexual relationships during the early parenting period

Alcohol consumption may play an important part in intimate heterosexual relationships, including regulating partners' emotional well-being and sustaining relational bonds. Quantitative studies consistently indicate that women play a prominent role in the informal surveillance of their partners' drinking. This paper aims to contribute to the evidence-base by examining possible meanings and reasons underpinning the surveillance of drinking in the early parenting period. In doing so, we draw from the results of a study conducted in Yorkshire (UK), exploring accounts of alcohol drinking practices in women up to three years after giving birth. This is a phase of family readjustment, in which childcare is at its most time- and labour-intensive. Free Association Narrative Interviews (FANI) were conducted between 2017 and 2018 with 21 working mothers from different backgrounds, each interviewed twice about daily routines and drinking practices. Narrative and thematic content analysis cast light on the gendered aspects of surveillance of alcohol consumption. Participants described seeking to exert informal surveillance over their partners' drinking and to set boundaries around what was considered an acceptable level of consumption. Their accounts reflected how traditional gender performances and expectations were relationally constructed through drinking practices. Women's attempts at surveillance were generally articulated in non-confrontational language. However, in the interviews, women expressed disappointment and unhappiness that partners' drinking activities were associated with an unequal distribution of domestic responsibilities. Through informal surveillance of drinking, we argue, women performed actions of health-risk management within the family. Most importantly, informal surveillance appeared to be a strategy which sought to negotiate a fairer allocation of household labour, and greater equity between the partners. Findings demonstrates how inequalities in power play out and permeate intimate relationships, re-affirming women's traditional role in the regulation of drinking. Drinking practices, we conclude, provide valuable insights into how gender operates in the sphere of intimacy.

Treating perinatal mental illness with transactional analysis psychotherapy—A narrative enquiry

AbstractObjectivesThis research examines transactional analysis (TA) psychotherapy as a treatment option for perinatal mental illness, using a qualitative, narrative methodology to listen to the experiences of women who have received it within a private psychotherapeutic setting. Perinatal mental illness has wide‐reaching consequences and is a leading cause of maternal mortality. This research aimed to explore women's experiences of perinatal mental illness; and their experiences of TA psychotherapy treatment to explore its acceptability to female clients.MethodA qualitative, narrative approach was used to facilitate an exploration of women's experiences. Data collection was by free association narrative interviewing (FANI) and a creative methodology, forming a deep, rich understanding of personal perspective, using the visual and the narrative as a co‐creative construction. Data analysis used the listening guide method (LGM) to highlight difference, hear multiple voices in one person's narrative and take notice of temporal movement within the narrative.FindingsThe participants found TA psychotherapy to be useful in different formats: couple's, one‐to‐one or group therapy. TA addressed the specificity of illness and was enduring (long‐lasting); the relational dyad was found to be a factor in positive treatment outcomes; TA terms shared with the clients held significance in therapy and within the interview, offering a ‘shared’ language that was easily understood and clarified the treatment process.ConclusionFemale clients in this study (the participants) found TA psychotherapy useful as a treatment for perinatal mental illness.

Female therapists’ experiences of working with male clients who are sexually attracted to them—An exploratory study using a free association narrative interview method

AbstractSexual attraction between human beings is a pervasive phenomenon, impacting the process of psychotherapy, as well as other areas of social engagement. However, within ethical psychotherapy practice the experience of attraction could not lead to enactment without ethical misconduct or premature therapeutic termination. This qualitative study focused on female therapists' experiences of working with male clients who were sexually attracted to them. It employed Hollway and Jefferson's (2008) hybrid method ‘free association narrative interview’, which involved multiple unstructured interviews with five female participants. The results of the study suggested that participants’ experience differed depending on whether they felt reciprocal sexual attraction. On occasions when therapists were not attracted towards their clients, they struggled with unwanted sexual attraction because they feared having to reject their client and the retaliation this may entail. On such occasions, therapists expressed a sense of vulnerability, discomfort with power inequality and a sense of being at fault. Conversely, when therapists felt sexually attracted to their clients, they managed the dynamic by framing it within a context of loving as opposed to purely erotic feelings. The study suggests that working directly with sexual feelings is a challenge for female therapists, requiring personal development work, supervision and institutional support to address the complex interplay of individual, clinical and societal issues, which appear to play a part in this difficulty.

Against the grain? The craving for domestic femininity in a gender-egalitarian welfare state

This article aims to develop new conceptions of the psychosocial dynamics that drive the re-romanticization of domestic femininity in current financialized capitalism. Feminist scholars have described this heightened cultivation of mothering as a reparative move in response to irreconcilable tensions between cultural ideals of the ‘balancing mother’ and ‘lean-in femininity’. This article adds a materialist-psychosocial lens to these conceptions, to enhance understanding of what drives this craving for domestic femininity. Drawing on a free-association narrative interview study with couples in the financial elite in the comparatively gender-egalitarian Norwegian context, I describe a specific emotional mechanism that resists democratization of gender in this specific group. The interviews reveal a felt need to cultivate ‘the human side of things’ at safe distance from the competitiveness of ‘hard-core finance’. The Nordic earner–carer model with its entwinement of care and professional pursuits, cultivated by the more self-fulfilment-oriented parts of the professional middle-class appears not only unwanted but threatening. In my analysis, I retrieve and develop a psychoanalytically inspired historical-materialist feminism, one that perceives of the gendered division of work as a split in modes of focusing human energy. I suggest that the resurgent cultivation of domestic femininity is nurtured by a self-energizing antagonism between competitive and relational practices. I further argue that the cultivation of domestic femininity in these financial couples points to a potential antagonism between the democratization of love and the specific anxiety-driven competitiveness to which this financial-elite group may be particularly susceptible.

Reflections on the use of a psychoanalytically informed interview approach for a study exploring how children’s services professionals experience the suffering of parents

Hollway and Jefferson’s free association narrative interview method is an approach to qualitative research interviewing that draws on concepts and practices traditionally associated with psychoanalytic therapy. Owing to this “psychosocial” framework, the method is an attractive proposition to psychodynamically orientated practitioner-researchers and various studies by researchers in counselling and clinical psychology and the allied fieldsof social work and mental health nursing have made use of the method or aspects of it. In this article, I describe and reflect on the completion of one study informed by the method which sought to explore how professionals working in English local authority children’s services experience the suffering of parents. Specifically, I am concerned with some of the more practical issues involved in doing the research. The topics covered comprise gaining access to and interviewing a suitable sample of professionals; interviewing technique and the analysis of interview material; and the role of researcher reflexivity and the use of the researcher’s “countertransference” experience (with a specific concern for boredom).Overall, the article contributes to furthering thinking about this method as a tool of social work research and what it means to do qualitative research and research interviews with social work practitioners in a psychoanalytically informed way.

Sistering and sexual socialisation: a discursive study of Xhosa women’s sisterly interactions concerning sex and reproduction

Considerable research has been devoted to understanding and promoting parent-child sexual socialisation. Less attention has been paid to experiences of sibling interactions concerning sex. Drawing on discursive psychology, this study explores how women report interacting about sex and reproduction in their sisterly relationships. Ten in-depth interviews were conducted, using Free Association Narrative Interview technique, with five Black isiXhosa-speaking, middle-aged and working class women in South Africa. Findings show that the participants construct their sisterly interactions concerning sex drawing on three interpretative repertoires: silence; safety and secrecy; risk and responsibilisation. The silence repertoire constructs sex talk between sisters as vague and non-viable. Within the safety and secrecy repertoire, sisters are constructed as sharing sexual secrets and providing a safe space for sexual exploration. The risk and responsibilisation repertoire is deployed when understandings of ‘proper’ feminine behaviour and sexual purity are breached, with sisters emphasising the importance of avoiding risk and acting responsibly. Thus, alongside encouraging the expression of women’s agency in relation to sexuality, sisters potentially join a patriarchal policing and the shaming of women’s sexuality. These contradictory repertoires have implications for sexual health programmes and interventions targeted at family communication about sex.

Mothers of children removed under a care order: outcomes and experiences

ABSTRACT Focusing on accounts by women who have children taken into care, this paper reports on a socio-legal case study in England, investigating the life experiences of nine mothers, whose children have been made subject to care orders under the Children Act 1989. In particular it considers the women’s experiences of their relationships with their own mothers and places this within the context of the mothers’ own experiences of having their children taken into care. Drawing on free association narrative interviews, the study focuses on the mothers’ accounts of long-term harm that began in their childhoods, especially their experiences of their mothers’ own difficulties and of their experiences of harm. It highlights the impact of relationship difficulties between mother and child, and questions how the legal concepts of harm and reasonable parental care are defined and deployed. In conclusion, it demonstrates a need for the legal framework to address children’s experiences of harm in a more intergenerational and intersubjective way. It highlights a new approach, suggesting consideration of harm, reasonable parental care and welfare to involve an increased concentration on the welfare of mothers and the relationship between mother and child, akin to an intersubjective and intergenerational approach to harm.

Psychoanalytically informed research interviewing: notes on the free association narrative interview method.

Following the development of the transdisciplinary field of British psychosocial studies, interest in the application of insights from psychoanalysis in qualitative research has grown in recent years among researchers in nursing and allied disciplines. To address a paucity of attention to - and lack of clarity concerning - the implications of methodological developments and debate around the application of psychoanalytic perspectives and techniques in research, specifically the theory and practice of research interviewing as a psychoanalytically informed endeavour. This paper draws from the author's doctoral research to provide a critical account of Hollway and Jefferson's ( 2000 , 2013 ) free association narrative interview method (FANIM). It describes FANIM's core elements and then moves on to consider its use by nursing and applied health and social care researchers, and then to criticism that has been levelled against Hollway and Jefferson's work regarding it. FANIM provides valuable ideas about how to approach nursing research in a way inspired by psychoanalytic principles, but requires further evaluation by nursing researchers. Nurse researchers may take inspiration from particular aspects of FANIM. They should also reflect on whether they are mislabelling their approach as 'psychoanalytic' or 'psychoanalytically informed', if they only partly apply it.

Encapsulated Sadness: Iranian Migrants and Exiles in London

This paper is about the experiences of migration of middle class Iranians living in London, with focus on the psychosocial experiences of one woman. Her story is representative of the stories of Iranians who ‘make it’ in exile. There is scant study of the lives of middle class Iranian migrants; I carried out research to contribute to the wider literature on migration and to address this gap. The paper is based on the empirical findings of a PhD study which drew on two strands of psychosocial methodology, BNIM (biographical narrative interview method) and FANI (free association narrative interview) to collect data. Ten Iranian men and women living in London were selected through ‘purposive sampling’ and a ‘snowballing process’ and each individual was interviewed twice. Examination of the data draws on psychoanalytic, sociological and psychosocial theories to gain insight into experiences of loss and the relationship between loss and sadness expressed in their stories. Common to all of the interviewees was a core sense of loss. This was mostly linked to losses of work, professional status, family attachments and complexities of cultural belonging and dislocation. The findings suggest that this sadness is of an encapsulated nature that cannot be worked through.

Free association narrative interviewing, trauma and the youth justice professional

Free association narrative interviewing, trauma and the youth justice professional

Renegotiation of identity in young adults with cancer: A longitudinal narrative study

BackgroundDespite increasing international awareness of the impact of cancer on young adults, to date there has been limited in-depth research to understand their experiences following a diagnosis using a qualitative and longitudinal perspective. ObjectivesTo explore the impact of cancer on young adults’ evolving sense of self and identity over one year from the time of diagnosis. In addition, to contribute further to an understanding of innovative research methods used to examine this experience. DesignThis was a longitudinal narrative study using visual methods and a psychosocial lens. Narrative was used to re-present experiences over time. Setting and SampleRecruitment was from a Principal Treatment Centre for Teenagers and Young Adults with Cancer and a Cancer Centre for Adults in the United Kingdom. Total population sampling was used over a six-month period, recruiting 18 young adults aged between 16 and 30, one to three months from a diagnosis of bone cancer, lymphoma or leukaemia. MethodsIn depth, free association narrative interviews at three-time points over a year were undertaken. Photographs were used to help with story-telling. Extensive reflexive field notes, debriefing and the use of a psychosocial research group, also formed data sources. Forty interviews were conducted with 18 participants: eight took part in three interviews, six in two interviews and four in one interview. Analysis focused on the holistic ‘case’ of the individual temporally. In-depth, visual images were analysed from discussion in the narrative text. Through memoing, coding and comparison, themes were developed across all cases and a conceptual framework developed. ResultsThe conceptual framework illustrates the renegotiation of self over time through narrative. This was ‘biographically’ during young adult development and across ‘cancer time’; through the core components of: the inner world, (psyche, emotion and coping); self as embodied; self as relating to others, and self as relating to place. Stories indicated that there was a constant inter- relationship over time between the renegotiation of identity and adaption of biography. ConclusionsThe focus in this paper is on ‘the temporality of cancer’ through the first year from diagnosis, and the juxtaposed process of managing biographical and developmental milestones. The importance of developing health care and research which enables narrative and the patient's voice has been highlighted. It emphasises the need for professionals to ‘be with’ and ‘walk alongside’ through the intensity of a biographically and identity changing illness.Using longitudinal narrative, visual & psychosocial methods to describe the impact of a diagnosis of cancer on young adults’ sense of biography and identity.

Illuminating undergraduate experiential and situated learning in podiatry clinical placement provision at a UK school of podiatric medicine

Purpose Situated and experiential learning methodologies are largely underresearched in relation to student experience and satisfaction. The purpose of this paper is to illuminate the perspectives of students studying on a BSc (Hons) Podiatry degree programme to establish perceptions of their experience in practice. Design/methodology/approach Using an interpretivist methodological framework, Free Association Narrative Interviewing was used to provide an insight into the perceived impact that experiential learning in clinical placements had on undergraduate podiatry students. Findings Students perceived that what could not be taught but what could be experienced, contributed much to the confidence that students had gained during their training and which they anticipated would be further developed during the initial years of their training in practice, particularly in the context of the NHS. Research limitations/implications This is a study from which it is acknowledged that within the underpinning research design and methodology there is no scope for generalisability. Practical implications The study highlights an appreciation for the implication and recognition of “tacit” knowledge, currently recognised in medical curricula as an asset which can aid a move towards higher order critical thinking skills. Social implications Student acknowledgement of the need for emphasis on “soft skills” can be posited, in the context of this small-scale study as an appreciation for affective domain learning in the context of podiatric academic and clinical curricula. Originality/value Limited information from the extant literature is available in relation to the illumination of podiatry student placement experiences, so this research contributes to an effectively underresearched field.