Riding the wave of the shadow: how do Maltese psychotherapists experience shadow in their practice and in their lives?
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- Title
- Riding the wave of the shadow: how do Maltese psychotherapists experience shadow in their practice and in their lives?
- Creator
- John Vella
- Supervisor
- Dr Angela Cotter.
- Date
- 2015
- Abstract
- This collaborative action research study explores six psychotherapists experiences and understandings of shadow phenomena in their work as clinicians and in their own lives. The data was collected through monthly meetings with participants reflecting on their own clinical work and lives between each meeting. Thus each meeting contained reflective data that fed into the discussion. The aim of the study is to stimulate thinking about Jungs concept of shadow within the Maltese context, its implications for the practice of psychotherapy, to bring it within local psychotherapeutic community discourse and to show that it is only through experiencing the phenomenon that one can come to some understanding of it and its relation to clinical work and ones life. The findings that emerged from this research revealed several things. Shadow work implies therapists maturation through being able to hold and develop through several opposites in particular that of allowing one to be as much in therapy as ones patients creating a way of focusing more on relatedness and connectedness. The study also reveals how a close-knit community may need to cater for other components in training and practice. These may be managing dual relationships, de-roling from being a therapist as a space in itself and the necessity for stillness to reflect and have some kind of openness to the phenomenon of spirituality within a specific cultural context. Besides other ways, the phenomenon of scapegoating, a particular manifestation of shadow in groups is also a skill that a therapist needs to learn to deal with especially in negotiating with group and institutional shadow. The thesis concludes with specific suggestions for dealing with several issues mentioned above and some considerations that help shadow issues to be dealt with more thoroughly within the Maltese psychotherapeutic context.
- Subject
- Shadow (Psychoanalysis)|Psychotherapy|Malta|
- Psychotherapy and Counselling
- Extent
- iii, 371 pages ; 30 cm
- Format
- Publisher
- Regent's University London
- degree
- PhD in Counselling Psychology
- Description
- EThOS ID: 729392
- Language
- English
- Date Issued
- 2015
- Type
- Thesis & Dissertation
- Rights Holder
- Regent's University London & John Vella
- Item sets
- Theses or Dissertation