Tavistock systemic doctoral research theses

Palmer, Hilary (2014) An action research project to explore and develop family therapists’ experiences of using systemic art and music techniques in a CAMHS setting. DSysPsych thesis, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. Full text available

Amoss, Sarah (2014) The negotiation of blame in family therapy with families affected by psychosis. DSysPsych thesis, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. Full text available

Bird, Gina (2015) Lonely voices: A grounded theory study into the experiences of family members and mental health staff after suicide. DSysPsych thesis, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. Full text available

Nolte, Lizette (2014) Behind closed doors: A grounded theory of the social processes that describe how parents talk to their children about parental mental health difficulties. DSysPsych thesis, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. Full text available

Colmer, Enid (2005) Parental mental health and the family: exploring parennts’ concerns about their children, grappling with inter-generational shadows. DSysPsych thesis, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust.

• This qualitative research project examines family members’ conceptualisation of parental mental health problems from a child mental health context. Different constructions of these problems held within the family, and the connections that these may have to parents’ concerns about their children, are explored through an interpretative phenomenological analysis of seventeen semi-structured interviews with family members from eight families. Multiple perspectives are brought to this systemic exploration through examination of three inter-related points of view within the family (parent-patient, other-adults and young people) and across two services’ cultures through four Focus Group discussions held with professionals in both adult and child services.
• This thesis argues that family members’ ideas about the causes of parental mental health problems are significantly influenced by the ways in which different constructions of the problems relate to powerful emotional states, such as guilt, blame, fear and shame. This is implicated in parents’ ideas about children’s problems, which are primarily attributed to the effects on them of parents’ difficulties and to fears about the inter-generational transferability of mental health problems. The role that professional approaches play in enhancing these fears are highlighted and discussed in relation to practice. A dissonance is noted between the meanings that participants hold about their experiences and the medical discourse of explanation. Findings point to the over-arching importance of keeping the whole family in mind highlighting indications for practice in both adult and child services and at their interface. This research underscores the value of listening to service users’ views and points to further research in this important field.

Draper, Ana (2008) Exploring the future for children experiencing parental death: Constructions of parental childhood bereavement. DSysPsych thesis, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. Full text not yet available from this repository.

Haviv-Thomas, Galit (2019) Referrer engagement in family therapy in the context of child protection: A process study. DSysPsych thesis, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. Full text available

Howell, Hilary Helen (2016) Children with learning disabilities and challenging behaviour: An IPA study exploring how key stakeholders construct meanings around challenging behaviour and how this affects people’s relationships and experiences of giving and receiving help. DSysPsych thesis, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. Full text available

Mandin, Philippe (2014) Creating a space to think in a structured world: An exploration of the structures, relationships and emotions emerging in Network Meetings in the wider context of child care proceedings. Professional Doctorate thesis, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust.

Reynolds, Niall (2023) Suffering in Silence. A Foucauldian analysis to explore the parental experiences of having a child who has sexually harmed another child in an Irish context. Doctoral thesis, University of Essex & Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust.

Flatebø, Roar (2005) “On knowing much and knowing little.” An exploration of case discussions of child protection teams. DSysPsych thesis, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust & UEL.

• This thesis is a qualitative study of child protection cases that the responsible caseworkers have found difficult to handle and in which the professional interventions to date have not been judged sufficient or effective. The study is a rhetorical Discourse analysis and the data analysed is transcriptions of internal case conferences in three different Norwegian child protection groups.
• My research focus has been on how the cases are constructed or constituted by the professionals who are responsible for the cases at the time of the discussions and how the versions about the cases are developed through the discussions among the group members. Focus has been on features of the talk and argumentation, how versions are established through description and on the specific terms and categories that are used in these descriptions.

Faull, Keith (2012) A phenomenological study into the place of consultation in the work of staff in children’s homes: How much is it an organisational construction? DSysPsych thesis, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. Full text available

Richardson, Geraldine (2015) The potential therapeutic value of therapist stuckness in systemic practice. DSysPsych thesis, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. Full text available

Bond, Sharon Exclusion of black boys of African heritage in the British education system – can systemic consultations make a difference? DSysPsych thesis, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust & UEL.

• There is a wealth of literature and statistics documenting the fact that Black boys of African, African-Caribbean and Mixed-Race heritage are disproportionately represented in the exclusion figures in schools in England.   The literature, predominately, directs our attention to sociological, psychological and intellectual theories that seek to explain this phenomenon.   Consequently schools have developed a wide range of intervention strategies that fit with these explanations.  One example of this is the provision of mentoring projects for black boys which seeks to address the issue from psychological and sociological perspectives.
• These theories and explanations encourage schools and policy makers to focus on individuals ie the children, the parents, the teachers but not necessarily what informs their perceptions of each other and how these perceptions influence the patterns of relationships that give rise to ways of interacting that are labeled as problematic.
• This study sets out to examine how a Relational Consultation Model could be a resource for primary schools.  The Model comprises a questionnaire called an Appreciative Relational Inquiry Map (the ‘Map’).  It uses Milan and Post-Milan Interviewing techniques (Palazzolli et al 1980, Penn 1982, Tomm 1985, 1988(a), 1988(b) and a Reflecting Team conversation (Andersen 1987, 1992) to gather data which is analysed using an interpersonal communication theory called Co-ordinated Management of Meaning (CMM)  (Cronen & Pearce 1985, Cronen et al 1982, Oliver 1992, Oliver et al 2003, Pearce 1999).
• It provides a structure that facilitates family therapists in the exploration of the experiences of black boys excluded from school; their parents and teachers with the aim of promoting a working partnership between the three that would lead to a reduction in the kind of behaviours that resulting in exclusion.
• The research was carried out in two schools in an inner city London borough.  It tells the story of two boys who were the subject of a number of fixed term exclusions, their mother and their teacher.  The data is presented in the form of two case studies.
• A major implication of the findings is the need to address the barriers of silence in which talk about race and colour is enveloped and the nature of conversations that make this an area of both visibility and invisibility.

Azzopardi, Charlie (2007) Expectations of marriage before and after the first year of marriage among Maltese Catholic couples. DSysPsych thesis, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. Full text not yet available from this repository.

Øfsti, Anne Kyong Sook (2008) Some call it love: Exploring Norwegian systemic couple therapists’ discourses of love, intimacy and sexuality. DSysPsych thesis, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust.

Ayo, Yvonne (2017) Ways in which the cultural identities of mixed heritage individuals are maintained in mixed ethnicity stepfamilies. DSysPsych thesis, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. Full text available

Collins, Joanne (2020) Welcome to the motherland. An exploration into how experience is storied through generations of African Caribbean immigrants. DSysPsych thesis, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust.

Persuad, Kamala Jeanette (2017) In the margins: Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic women’s narratives of recovering from an eating disorder. DSysPsych thesis, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. Full text available

Singh, Reenee (2007) The process of family talk across culture. DSysPsych thesis, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust.

Persuad, Kamala Jeanette (2017) In the margins: Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic women’s narratives of recovering from an eating disorder. DSysPsych thesis, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. Full text available

Wright, Sheelagh (2004) Palatable differences: an exploration of the development of anorexia nervosa within the context of the twin relationship experience. DSysPsych thesis, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust.

Farrell, Cally (2005) Bearing witness to stories of substitute mothers to girls orphaned by AIDS in Zimbabwe. DSysPsych thesis, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust.

Ziminiski, Jeanne (2004) Negotiating entitlements in kinship care. DSysPsych thesis, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. Full text available.

Wren, Bernadette (2000) Patterns of thinking and communication in families where an adolescent has atypical gender identity development. DSysPsych thesis, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust & UEL

• In this thesis I describe a study of a small group of transgendered adolescents and their parents, referred to a specialist NHS service.   This was a qualitative study based on interviews with seven adolescents, all with a diagnosis of gender dysphoria of childhood, and on separate interviews with thirteen parents. I looked specifically at how the adolescents and parents build an intelligible account of the young person’s gender identity development, how their accounts interact with their coping behaviour, how they manage communication about the gender issues, and how they believe that these issues have impacted on relationships within the family.
• The first person reports were analysed using Grounded Theory methodology.   Into this methodology I incorporated a concern with researcher reflexivity and a commitment to a narrative/constructionist approach. There were several suggestive findings in a number of domains:  how communication is managed with great care in the interview families, with people tending to build their accounts in solitary ways; how the young people and their parents recognise that their response to the transgenderism is a deeply moral issue concerned with their worth as people, and involving them in providing accounts that attempt to explicate the young person’s departure from ‘normal’ development; how an active approach to coping by parents is associated with greater acceptance of the child’s cross-gender identification; how a biological explanation of the cause of transgenderism prevailed amongst the adolescents and the more accepting parents; how the young people are preoccupied with changing the body, and reject self-reflexivity around their gender identity development. The limitations of the study are discussed, reflexivity issues are explored and ideas for further research are proposed.   The implications of the study for therapeutic work with transgendered adolescents and their parents are elaborated.
• See also publication.
• Wren, Bernadette (2012) Researching the moral dimension of first-person narratives. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 9 (1). pp. 47-61. ISSN 1478-0887 (Print), 1478-0895 (Online) Full text not yet available from this repository.
• Wren, Bernadette (2014) Thinking postmodern and practising in the enlightenment: Managing uncertainty in the treatment of children and adolescents. Feminism & Psychology 24(2):271-291

Nascimento, Natasha (2021) Group cohesion in multifamily therapy with multilingual families. DSysPsych thesis. Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust.

Challis Smith, Joanne (2013) An exploration of constructions of meanings narrated by a cohort of older people in relation to their mental illness, its connection to and impact on ageing and familial relationships. DSysPsych thesis, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. Full text available

Jones, Amanda (2005) The process of change in parent-infant psychotherapy. DSysPsych thesis, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust & UEL

• This qualitative research explores the process of change in parent-infant psychotherapy. Two mothers suffering from emotional breakdowns in the perinatal period agreed for their therapy to be analysed. The treatment model involved the use of video-observation (Beebe, 2003). In many of the therapy sessions the mothers were filmed interacting with their babies for five minutes. In the following session the mother watched the video. From this observer position, the mothers were invited to comment freely on what they observed. The research question investigated how occupying this observer position influenced the therapeutic process.
• The data consisted of fifty transcribed psychotherapy sessions; the method of analysis chosen was a form of theme analysis. The findings suggest that parent-infant psychotherapy enhanced the parents’ reflective functioning (Fonagy, Steele, Steele, Leigh, Kennedy, & Mattoon, 1995; Slade, 2002), and the use of video facilitated the process. At the start of therapy both mothers were vulnerable and heavily defended and their defensive processes impacted upon their babies. The findings illustrate that the therapy helped modify their defensive responses and this brought relief for their babies. The mothers’ reflexive capacities grew and their relationships with their babies became more rewarding.
• The efficacy of the video occurred within a structured, trustworthy therapeutic relationship which was theoretically informed by systemic and psychoanalytic understandings. The research concluded that unless such a relationship is in place, the use of video in the way described should be considered with caution.
• Also see publication
• Jones, A. (2006) Levels of change in parent-infant psychotherapy. Journal of Child Psychotherapy, 32/3: 295-311.

Anthias, Louise (2015) Constructing personal and couple narratives in late stage cancer: A narrative analysis. DSysPsych thesis, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. Full text available

Down, Gwynneth (2007) Understanding roles and relationships in the care of ill children: A systemic analysis. DSysPsych thesis, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust.

Fletcher, Paul (2014) I know you can’t see it but it hurts: A research study of the experiences of young people, their parents and healthcare professionals who live and work with medically unexplained physical symptoms. DSysPsych thesis, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. Full text available

Mason, Barry (2003) The development of a relational approach to the understanding, treatment and management of chronic pain.  DSysPsych thesis, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. Full test available.

Watson, Rachel (2017) An examination of the ways in which power arises, and is managed, between systemic psychotherapists and parents working together in a social care context. DSysPsych thesis, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. Full text available

Lindeman, Sari Kaarina (2022) Stories from family life: Living with problematic substance use and recovery in Norway. DSysPsych thesis, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust / University of Essex. Full text available

Zafeiropoulou, Evangelia (2022) Ever-emerging meaning: An exploration into the way in which families and therapists position themselves in stories of drug misuse. DSysPsych thesis, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust / University of East London. Full text available

Hickman, Susan Mary (2014) Shared understandings? The interface between systemic psychotherapists and the family courts. DSysPsych thesis, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. Full text available

Guregård, Suzanne (2009) Open dialogue across cultures: Establishing a therapeutic relationship with the refugee family. DSysPsych thesis, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust.

Richardson, Colette (2014) Family therapists’ experiences of working with adolescents who self-harm and their families: A grounded theory study. DSysPsych thesis, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. Full text available

Parsons, Ross (2003) Discovering a ritual of oblivion: systemic perspectives on adolescence, self harm and the Zimbabwean context, with particular attention to the usefulness of postcolonial theory. DSysPsych thesis, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust.

• This is a qualitative and exploratory study, from a systemic therapeutic point of view, of the links between public and private discourses in the explanations young people in Harare, Zimbabwe, give of their deliberate self harm. The study is concerned with establishing the variety of forms in which relationships may be perceived between individual adolescent narratives of despair (and consequently self harm) and a broader social and cultural context. In regard to this study postcolonial theory in relation to southern Africa is used as a privileged explanatory construct, not because young people themselves find such theoretical models to be useful therapeutically, but because as the researcher I have found it a useful means with which to connect private and public discourses. Colonial process in relation to Zimbabwe is described and explored. The theoretical work of Achille Mbembe is foregrounded in this. The eleven young people who participated in the study are described, as are the transcript and research narratives they provided. Methodologies used were a theoretical analysis, Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis and Narrative Analysis. These analysises show a textured picture of young people struggling to voice painful emotion in elational contexts which are also heavily impacted by colonial history and traumatic process, and suggest self harm moving from expression to coping mechanism. These descriptions are related to systemic theory and practice, as well as to the Zimbabwean crisis.

McCann, Damian (2011) What does violence tell us about gay male couple relationships? DSysPsych thesis, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. Full text available

Hlazo-Tawodzera, Charity Ntsikie (2006) Narratives of sexual orientation: Towards an understanding of how individual women come to know themselves as lesbian, heterosexual, bisexual, asexual and/ or in other ways. DSysPsych thesis, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. Full text available.

Roman-Morales, Monica (2017) Intersectionality in the construction of authority: A systemic supervisor’s perspective. DSysPsych thesis, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. Full text available

Loras, Lennart (2016) The map of competencies in systemic therapy: A qualitative study of the systemic competencies in child and adolescent mental health that target the associated abnormal psychosocial situations. DSysPsych thesis, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. Full text available

Hofsmarken, Terje (2020) A qualitative study of systemic leadership training in a Danish municipality. Leaders’ experiences of participating in leadership training based on a systemic approach. DSysPsych thesis, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust.

Hurst, Alfred (2009) To disclose or not to disclose: That is the systemic therapist’s question. A framework for therapist self-disclosure in systemic psychotherapy. DSysPsych thesis, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust.

Jensen, Per (2008) The narratives which connect… A qualitative research approach to the narratives which connect therapists’ personal and private lives to their family therapy practices. DSysPsych thesis, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust.