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This article uses excerpts from poetry, memoir and epistolary genres emerging from research that has utilized close writing practices to interpret the interplay among memory, narrative, and agency. Biographical, historical, archival, and interpretive processes are used to reveal deferred, not noticed, and/or not counted experiences of those depicted in the writings. A model of non-subsumptive memory and narrative empathy is applied as a way to consider how close writing can influence the creation of new cultural memorial forms that support experiences of narrative agency. Comments on interpretive processes used and possible impacts of the research are provided throughout the text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Phenomenon: The construct of professionalism in undergraduate medical education is a core outcome that is included in the wider concept of professional identity formation. The former is grounded in the more general concept of identity, intended as an internalized set of role expectations. Some have proposed frameworks based on psychological or sociological approaches, but empirical research is still scarce and often limited to the exploration of the role of specific learning activities. The pandemic imposed adaptations that produced an artificial setting for a social experiment, suitable to observe how the deprivation of the social component of a student's life, such as in presence teaching and practical training, unveiled the elements and determinants of the developing identity of medical students. Approach: This research was the extension of a previous phenomenological study about medical students' lived experience of distance learning during the lockdown phase in Italy. We adopted a hermeneutic approach to furtherly deepen the analysis of the phenomenon at stake, in dialogue with the relevant literature. Eight 6th year medical students underwent an in-depth interview, themes were inductively generated and used to identify elements and determinants of the developing identities. Findings: Four themes developed, synthetized in the overarching theme "From crawling to standing on your feet and walking toward an uncertain future". The themes were: "social places and practices that make me feel like a student and a medical student", "toward self-regulation", "an emotional journey", "threats to the identity". The elements of the perceived identity as a medical student were autonomy and learning self-regulation, professional knowledge, competence, and sense of belonging to a community. The determinant factors which influenced the identity as a medical student were living environment, learning spaces and architectures, the social networks, the attendance of the healthcare facilities, the relationship with teachers, the social acknowledgement as a medical student, and as a doctor. Insights: It was possible to identify the generation of both constitutive elements of identity and determinants influencing identity development and this distinction is an added value of the research. According Gilles Deleuze's concept of "empty square" (the sudden lack of an object one used to have at hand: sociality in this case), this research highlighted the ambivalent nature of identity. Individualization and socialization are the "uneven sides" of that same paradoxical object which is identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on the case of the tourist visiting battlefield monuments at Waterloo, this article explores how war is historicized in the public imagination through the monumentalization of objects. The argument is two-fold. Firstly, drawing on Gadamer's hermeneutics, it is argued that 'tradition' is constituted in the aesthetic encounter between tourist and monument (as subject and object); such encounters are therefore understood as the genesis of historical meaning. Secondly, through a critique of Gadamer's notion of ontological structures of meaning, it is argued that the tourist is phenomenologically implicated in the constitution of historical meaning, emphasizing the agency of the historical observer more than Gadamer allows for: Objects become monuments through the monumentalizing gaze of the tourist. To empirically illustrate these processes, the author ethnographically explores the experience of battlefield tourist and presents his own dialogue with war-tradition at Waterloo. As such, this study contributes a theoretical account of how war is historicized at the phenomenological level, which has broader sociological implications for understanding how war discourses originate and are sustained in the public imagination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To explore how rheumatology patients experience the personal impact of an inpatient rehabilitation stay and to elucidate the impact of contextual factors on the outcome. Exploratory qualitative individual interviews were conducted with 15 rheumatology patients (73% female) who had completed a two-week inpatient rehabilitation stay. Data collection, analysis and interpretation of data were performed within a phenomenological-hermeneutic framework inspired by Paul Ricoeur's interpretative philosophy. The analysis derived one core theme, A sanctuary from everyday life, and five subthemes: (1) Being seen, heard and acknowledged as an equal and whole person; (2) Professional care and compassion; (3) Social relations and interactions between patients; (4) Individual rehabilitation, but challenges regarding shared decision making; and (5) Rehabilitation as a personal process but problems with coherence and transferability of learning to everyday life. Patients experience inpatient rehabilitation as a sanctuary, in the following three ways; through individually planned multidisciplinary interventions at the hospital; recognition and compassion from the multidisciplinary staff and through social relationships and interactions with fellow patients. There is a need for improved coordination across primary and secondary health care, to ease coherence and transfer of learning to the patients' everyday lives. Patients can find peace and energy to care for themselves because they are away from everyday life when admitted for inpatient multidisciplinary rehabilitation. Patients need to be prepared for shared decision-making in order to be able to participate in formulating personal and meaningful goals for rehabilitation. There is a need for awareness of organisational and life transitions, to secure transfer of elements from the rehabilitation stay to the patient's everyday life. Rehabilitation professionals should be aware of the significance of fellow patients and facilitate and support the patient-patient relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have published a model of the GP consultation where biomedical and humanistic elements of the consultation are seen as complementary and where hermeneutics, the discovery and creation of meaning, plays an integral role in enriching the conversation between clinicians and patients. The relationship between teachers and learners shows strong parallels with the relationship between practitioners and patients. We therefore explore how a similar analysis can enhance the relationship between teachers and learners and propose that hermeneutics can be particularly powerful in exploring and making explicit elements of the hidden curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bulimia nervosa (BN) is a highly researched eating disorder, yet real world recovery rates remain poor and incidence continues to rise. This study provides a focused exploration of the father-daughter relationship where BN emerges, in order to explore this relationship's significance to the aetiology of BN and to BN's resistance to CBT-based treatment. A hermeneutic phenomenological study of six women in recovery from BN was undertaken. Unstructured interviewing gathered detail-rich information, which was interpreted using the hermeneutic phenomenological method of multiple-level repeated readings, thematic comparisons and contextualisation. Findings were confirmed and validated using the hermeneutic circle and peer consultation. Fathers of daughters with BN were found to be a source of fear, control, abuse, emotional and physical avoidance and gender diminishment. This was a key source of complex traumatic experience in the family setting, with BN emerging in daughters to provide distraction and soothing. Furthermore, BN acts as a survival mechanism from early childhood and is a logical embodied response to the lived experience of complex trauma. The presence of trauma in the aetiology of BN, makes sense of why cognitive-based therapeutic protocols provide for limited treatment success. The research suggests greater potential lies in adopting the individualised, multi-modal complex trauma treatment model for BN, as this more appropriately addresses outcomes of relationship trauma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the prominent features of contemporary global modernity is mobility in its various manifestations, among which are transnational media. In the absence of a robust film industry in Kenya, foreign films have tended to monopolize the market. Of significance is the fact that the foreign films grant their local audiences the necessary access to global cultural flows. However, in the process of consuming such films, local audiences have had to come to terms with the reality of linguistic and cultural disjuncture between the content of the media and indigenous ways of knowing. To address this, a practice has emerged involving the use of innovative remediation strategies by the local consumers in a bid to temper the foreignness of transnational media. In Kenya this is evident in the form of the video jockey phenomenon involving the remixing of imported films for the local market by an emerging crop of artists such as DJ Afro. Making sense of these films presenting largely alien cultural material rendered through equally strange tongues calls for a hermeneutic critical approach adopted in this essay. In the process, the essay intends to demonstrate how the foreign films, otherwise presumed to be complete products, are technologically reconfigured and refracted through the prism of local cultural sensibilities to reinstitute contextual relevance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study aims to explore the caring behaviors experiences of gynecologic oncology nurses.Methods: This study was conducted with phenomenological hermeneutical approach. This study was carried out 14 nurses working on women with gynecologic cancer. Data were collected through individual interview method by using semi-structured interview guide. Data were analyzed using a phenomenological hermeneutical method.Results: Caring behaviors experiences of gynecologic oncology nurses were explained by the themes "missed caring behaviors", "transition from work-centered to care-centered approach", and "transition to caring-healing approach". The first theme, "missed caring behaviors" included two subthemes: "focusing on routines" and "superficial relationships". The second theme, "transition from routine to care-centered" included three subthemes: "barrier perception", "off the record" and "controlled attachment". The last theme, "transition to caring-healing" consisted of the subthemes "ideal care conscience", "presenting presence", "looking through her window", "healing with caring behaviors". The main theme was reached as "caring behaviors: the focus of nursing".Conclusion: This study suggests that gynecologic oncology nurses need to adequately and efficiently improve on caring behaviors in an intense caring environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Just after the First World War the English Association published The Teaching of English in Schools. It argues that developing children's 'creative spirit' is fundamental to maintaining peace in Europe. Seventy years later, the first National Curriculum promotes a creative, unitary English appropriate for 'a European context'. In contrast, today's national curriculum contains no reference to the role of English in international relations; simultaneously, all references to creativity have disappeared. As Britain struggles to cope with the fallout from Brexit, this paper – written from a hermeneutic perspective – discusses the correlation between how each of the three documents positions English in an international context and how they value creativity. Without wishing to over–simplify complex issues, it questions how to what extent a curriculum might echo or shape national politics. It calls for a new curriculum that embraces a creative, internationalist view of English to inspire communities of the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Readers of Zakes Mda are familiar with the postcolonial provenance of his novels, in which magic realism, indigenous knowledge sensibility, and history are seamlessly stitched into the narrative fabric. Mda's fiction is no less notable for its galaxy of animal characters—both minor and major dramatis personae— that interact with humans. Whilst the novel Little Suns (Cape Town: Umuzi, 2015) is synopsised on the dust cover as "a touching story of love and perseverance that can transcend exile and strife", it is also memorable on account of the textual space Mda accords a horse named Gcazimbane, the subject of the entire second chapter of the book. Embedded in a postcolonial/posthuman hermeneutic, and inflected equally by insights from affect theory, this article sets out to investigate the deconstructive, interstitial spaces in a novel that, on the one hand, is essentially about the killing of the district magistrate Hamilton Hope by members of the amaMpondomise clan in late nineteenth-century South Africa and, on the other, about a human–animal embodied relationship. The article underwrites the viability of a posthuman/postcolonial aesthetic, in tandem with affect theory, to focus on the relationship between a man and a horse taken to a phantasmagorical dimension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is now five years since the introduction of the current National Curriculum for English in England; it is just over 50 years since the Dartmouth Conference drew together American and English educationalists. This paper reports on a hermeneutic study that presents voices from the field of English teaching in England. It asks questions of today's statutory instruments in the light of approaches highlighted at Dartmouth, with a focus on writing. It illustrates the challenges faced by English teachers from an examination-focused system, but suggests that ultimately the tradition exemplified by Dartmouth, which promotes creative pedagogies and the potential of writing to develop students' personal and social growth, survives. It concludes that it is important to promote creative approaches in English classrooms of today and education policy of tomorrow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1859, Reverend Alexander Keith published the thirty-seventh edition of his Evidence of the Truth of the Christian Religion Derived from the Literal Fulfilment of Prophecy; Particularly as Illustrated by the History of the Jews and by the Discoveries of Recent Travellers. Included in the illustrations were eighteen engravings from daguerreotypes, presenting the landscape of Palestine and Syria in order to demonstrate the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecies regarding its desolation. In this article, Keith's use of photographic reference is presented as it relates to the illustration of specific biblical texts and to his evangelical characterisation of the camera's empirical point of view. Keith's notion of photographic truth, while grounded in the mid-nineteenth-century's conceptualisation of the medium's indexical science, is revealed through his theology of the literary landscape, his telescoped teleology, and the 'more than human' capacity of the lens. The author argues that with the interdisciplinary engagement of biblical studies a deeper critical understanding of such an explicitly confessional position attributes greater complexity and specificity to the role of religious ideology in shaping early Holy Land photography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a conspicuously hybrid entity, neuropsychoanalysis enjoins one to look critically at its assumptions about knowledge and subjectivity as one tries to understand how its un-hyphenated halves relate to one another. The author looks at the differences between mind (which is grounded in subjective experience) and brain (which is an objectively described neurobiological entity), and suggests that neuropsychoanalytic writers are inclined to acknowledge but then disregard the unique, irreducible nature of lived experience, and the fundamental differences between the psychoanalytic mind (which requires an experiencing subject) and the brain (which is a neuronal aggregate). The author offers a philosophical basis for contending that there are potential dangers for psychoanalysis when neuroscience is misrecognized in its fundamental differences and injudiciously employed as a psychoanalytic partner in order to answer questions that properly belong to the language and conceptual architecture of psychoanalysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper views the experience of “hip pain” through the lenses of multiple stakeholders: the patient experiencing such pain, orthopedic surgeons, and physiotherapists. Using an interpretative hermeneutic view, the method by which each encountered and dealt with living with, diagnosing, and managing hip pain is revealed. Stories of seven participants were obtained through personal interviews. These stories provided accounts and the perspectives of the various participants. A gap in the health service emerged, with the expectations of the patients not being met by the healthcare providers. The health professionals focused on the hip, while the patients were more concerned with how to continue living their lives in a manageable way. The surgeons sought to diagnose and judge as to whether the pain was worthy of surgery. No one was helping the patient to manage the “waiting for surgery” or the “not yet bad enough” decision. We argue that there is a place for physiotherapists to support patients within a human-to-human encounter by listening to the patient’s story of how their hip has impacted their lives and demonstrating that they have understood and are empathetic to their needs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Background: Resilience is one of the main factors affecting human health, and perceiving its meaning for high-risk adolescents is of particular importance in initiating preventive measures and providing resilience care. Objectives: This qualitative study was conducted to explain the meaning of resilience in the lived experiences of Iranian adolescents living in governmental residential care facilities. Materials and methods: This study was conducted using the hermeneutic phenomenological method. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight adolescents aged 13-17 living in governmental residential care facilities of Tehran province affiliated to the Welfare Organization of Iran who articulated their experiences of resilience. Sampling lasted from May 2014 to July 2015 and continued until new themes were no longer emerging. The researchers analyzed the verbatim transcripts using Van Manen's six-step method of phenomenology. Results: The themes obtained in this study included "going through life's hardships," "aspiring for achievement," "self-protection," "self-reliance," and "spirituality." Conclusion: Our study indicates that the meaning of resilience coexists with self-reliance in adolescents' lived experiences. Adolescents look forward to a better future. They always trust God in the face of difficulties and experience resilience by keeping themselves physically and mentally away from difficulties. Adverse and bitter experiences of the past positively affected their positive view on life and its difficulties and also their resilience. The five themes that emerged from the findings describe the results in detail. The findings of this study enable nurses, health administrators, and healthcare providers working with adolescents to help this vulnerable group cope better with their stressful life conditions and improve their health through increasing their capacity for resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Incorporating Gadamer and other thinkers from the continental tradition, this essay is a close and detailed hermeneutic, phenomenological, and ontological study of the dialectic practice of Plato’s Socrates—it radicalizes and refutes the Socrates-as-teacher model that educators from scholar academic ideology embrace. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Typically, qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) is praised for its hermeneutic dialogue between theory and empirical cases. However, in reporting research with QCA, these hermeneutic processes will usually not be illustrated. This paper aims at showing clear how QCA induces this dialogue between theory and data. As an illustrative example, I use a research situation dealing with a genuine research question of Legislative Studies: the causes of party unity. Using the classical dichotomous and the MV-QCA approach, the paper mainly shows how to deal productively with contradictory theoretical statements and how stepping from simpler to more complex models adds explanation while still making clear further routes to improve insights into the substantive research topic: both theoretically and empirically. Finally, non-observed configuration (‘logical remainders’) will be used to simplify the resulting theory, and its theoretical and empirical plausibility will be evaluated. The whole paper makes explicit how the QCA approach forces researchers to reveal the dialogue between theory and cases – just as it was intended by the inventor of this analytical tool. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This dissertation study turned to the realm of philosophy and particularly hermeneutic phenomenology to gain deep understanding of the museum visit experience, particularly in terms of what it reveals about: the connection between human experience and museums; the work of museums as sites of exploring the question of 'being-in-the-world' and 'being-with-others-in-the-world;' and the essential role of museums as communal and cultural institutions. Six themes emerged from the data: seeing the self; experiencing others' experiences; being at the fusion of horizons; mindful presence; embodied experience; and touching and being touched. While not discussed explicitly in terms of what it means to 'be-in-the-world' and to 'be-with-others-in-the-world,' participants engaged in deep consideration of memory, identity, relationship across time and place, spirituality, life meaning and mortality. The act of being in conversation, which was at the center of how people encountered objects in the museum, emerged from this study as a defining feature of the museum experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study deepens our understanding of how patients, when cared for in a psychiatric ward, experience situations that involve being handled according to a common staff approach. Interviews with nine former psychiatric in-patients were analyzed using a phenomenological-hermeneutic method to illuminate the lived experience of receiving care based on a common staff approach. The results revealed several meanings: discovering that you are as subjected to a common staff approach, becoming aware that no one cares, becoming aware that your freedom is restricted, being afflicted, becoming aware that a common staff approach is not applied by all staff, and feeling safe because someone else is responsible. The comprehensive understanding was that the patient's understanding of being cared for according to a common staff approach was to be seen and treated in accordance with others' beliefs and valuations, not in line with the patients' own self-image, while experiencing feelings of affliction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim. Previous research has identified how newly diagnosed prostate cancer affects men's daily lives, including daily activities and existential issues. The aim of this qualitative study was to provide information if and how prostate cancer affects men's daily lives 2 years after the diagnosis. Methods. A second follow-up interview with men who were diagnosed with localized or advanced prostate cancer approximately 18–24 months earlier. Twenty-two men aged 50–85 years participated, data were analyzed by hermeneutical interpretation with Gadamer's approach. Results. The men feel healthy, but prostate cancer affects their daily lives. They experience every day fatigue associated with several changes in life due to age. Three equivalent fusions which influenced the men are: ‘Age is claiming its due’, ‘Living with uncertainty’, and ‘Strengthen self-esteem’. The unifying fusion is identified as ‘Balancing a changed life situation.’ Conclusions. There is need for knowledge and guidance for men with prostate cancer on how to adapt to new life situation decreasing uncertainty and increasing welfare. Men found a sense of pride, despite physical changes, in appreciating independence and close relationships. Value of life was readjusted. The findings indicate harmony in living, enjoying being frank as well as rating the ‘little’ things. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the aspects of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic therapy. It presents psychoanalysis as a scientific study of the mind and the therapeutic application of the study is referred as practical clinical psychoanalysis. It highlights the author's insights regarding the three foundational courses related to psychoanalysis such as neuroscientific and clinical research findings and mindfulness. It also presents psychoanalysis as a discovery and inquiry.

Virtuous exemplars embody the virtues of a cultural community, a dynamic, contextual understanding that is best explored by critical hermeneutic analysis. In order to describe their lives and refine the mental-health treatment of Cambodian immigrants, 12 virtuous exemplars from a Cambodian-American Buddhist and 12 from a Cambodian-American Christian population were interviewed. Grounded theory and a mixed-methods analysis were used. Rigor-enhancing strategies include triangulation, collaboration, member checking, and researcher reflexivity, as well as interviewing a comparison group of 12 Euro-American Christians. Cambodian-American Buddhists and Christians take their religion seriously, and it influences their daily lives. These Buddhists focus on perseverence in the present life and gaining merit for the next. The Christians focus on serving God and nurturing relationships in this life. They report that they are more different from the Cambodian-American Buddhists than Latent Semantic Analysis indicates, providing evidence of both religious and cultural distinctives among the subgroups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study was performed to gain a deeper understanding of how psychiatric staff, when caring for patients with psychiatric disease, experience situations that include a common staff approach directed toward an individual client. Nine nurses were interviewed. The interviews were analyzed with a phenomenological-hermeneutic method in order to illuminate the lived experience of applying a common staff approach. The results revealed several meanings: shedding light on carers' mutual relationships; being deserted by nurse colleagues; being aware of one's own basis of evaluation, and that of others; being judged by the patient as good or evil; and becoming sensitive to the patient's suffering. The comprehensive understanding was that the nurse has a difficult choice—to focus on relations with one's colleagues or to focus on the situation of the patient, who seems to suffer when a common staff approach is used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author presents a dicussion that explores the religious narratives of W. R. D. Fairbairn and D. W. Winnicott, the Clavinism and Wesleyanism. It focuses on three broad philosophical tensions including theory and experience, suspicion and faith, and oneness and otherness (transcendence and immanence).

This article will examine two recent and contrasting British television documentaries about particular stars/celebrities from the world of popular music - Geri (Channel 4, 1999) and Living with Michael Jackson (ITV, 2003). Geri comes from the British documentary film-maker/auteur Molly Dineen's journey with Geri Halliwell shortly after she had left the group The Spice Girls, and Living with Michael Jackson features the journalist/reporter Martin Bashir's encounter with the former member of the Jackson Five. These documentary encounters can be contrasted in terms of their form and institutional context of production and through the similarity to and difference from reality television formats. Dineen and Bashir share a fascination with trying to make sense of the process of fame and celebrity through the privileged private access they are given to the high-profile individuals who have agreed to be their subjects. In each case what is revealed is as much a reflection of the disposition of the filmmaker reporter/mediator towards celebrity and fame as it is a revelation on the process of fame and celebrity. What emerges from each of the interactions is a struggle between Dineen and Bashir and their subjects. The stars are both concerned with the process of negotiating change and adversity in the overlap between their private lives and the public image they endeavour to manage and project. These two documentaries represent two editions of the outcome of this meeting. Together they illustrate, rather than offer an understanding of, how television feeds on the public fascination with celebrity and the destructive and even murderous nature of our relation to celebrity suggested by Jacqueline Rose in the wake of the death of Diana. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Constructions of the HIV/AIDS pandemic are largely influenced by the dominant discourses of sexuality and disease. Deeply embedded in positivistic frames of references that favour conceptions of a medicalised and/or moralised body which operates contextually and socially detached, these discourses remain those that, in the main, frame constructions, interpretations, and research on HIV/AIDS. As interpretive scripts that act as structuring devices, discourses on sexuality and disease as well as the functionalist methodological work dialectically to produce and reproduce particular meanings as well as particular kinds of research regarding the pandemic. Using narrative data from a study that situated teachers as the locus of inquiry, this article offers perspectives that expand current epistemological and methodological paradigms to include those that insert more hermeneutic ways of understanding HIV/AIDS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives. Cancer is a complicated issue both medically and psychosocially, and the process of the disease affects the whole human being. Fatigue is the commonest symptom associated with cancer and its treatment. Prostate cancer is the third commonest male cancer worldwide and the leading cause of male cancer death. The aims of this study were: (i) to identify whether fatigue is found in men with newly diagnosed localized prostate cancer (predominantly early-stage, very low tumour burden asymptomatic patients); and (ii) to gain a perception of whether fatigue has an influence on these men and to try to find out what the cause of this fatigue was. Material and methods. Sixteen men who had been newly diagnosed with localized prostate cancer were interviewed to determine whether fatigue is experienced by such men and whether it has an effect on them. Verbal transcripts were analyzed using hermeneutical interpretation. Results. Five equivalent fusions were identified according to the time when the participants received their diagnosis of early-stage prostate cancer. These fusions occurred successively, in three steps. The first step was Enclosing Intrapersonal Emotions and Enclosing Interpersonal Attachments, when the men were living in a kind of vacuum. Moving onto step two, another two fusions were triggered and contributed to a positive attitude: Reopening Intrapersonal Emotions and Reopening Interpersonal Attachments. Finally, at step three, a unifying fusion was identified: Living with a New Perspective. This study provides insights and new knowledge indicating that prostate cancer does not in itself cause fatigue. Conclusions. The clinical implications of these findings are that it is not possible to handle new and detailed information about prostate cancer at the first visit. The need for information occurs, however, relatively soon afterwards and it would seem appropriate to offer a new appointment within 1 week of the first visit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gay affirmative therapy (GAT) has recently emerged in an attempt to rectify previously discriminatory psychotherapeutic practice with lesbians, bisexuals and gay men. GAT aims to achieve this by providing a framework for practice which is affirmative of lesbian, gay and bisexual identities. This "positive framework" is clearly challenging for psychotherapies which seek to avoid imposing specific expectations on their clients, and a number of humanistic and existential psychotherapists have challenged the applicability of such a framework for their practice. This paper examines these arguments and suggests that Ricoeur's formulation of hermeneutic phenomenology may provide a solution. It is argued that incorporating a version of a hermeneutic of suspicion and critique of the illusions of the subject into psychotherapeutic practice would enable therapists to recognise and work with the twin impact of the psychotherapist and social world on the construction of a client's sexual identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we discuss two complementary commitments of interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA): the phenomenological requirement to understand and 'give voice' to the concerns of participants; and the interpretative requirement to contextualize and 'make sense' of these claims and concerns from a psychological perspective. The methodological and conceptual bases for the relationship between these phenomenological and interpretative aspects of IPA appear to be underdeveloped in the literature. We, therefore, offer some thoughts on the basis of this relationship, and on its context within qualitative psychology. We discuss the epistemological range of IPA's interpretative focus, and its relationship to the more descriptive features of phenomenological analysis. In order to situate our conclusions within a contextualist position, we draw upon concepts from Heideggerian phenomenology. The argument is illustrated by excerpts from our own research on relationship break-up. We conclude by encouraging IPA researchers to embrace the interpretative opportunities that are offered by this approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, an interpretative possibility of understanding the experience of being anxious is offered, before looking for an abstract and theoretical explanation about it. In this sense, this article reflects on the hermeneutic ground from which is interpreted the experience of being anxious, as well as on a first attempt to integrate the Amedeo Giorgi's procedure, employed to analyze data, in an hermeneutic perspective. The article then offers the results and conclusions of a single case study. The article emphasizes the importance of clarifying that in order to understand the way people live and confront the experience of being anxious, we have to be capable of grasping the meaning of this experience for the person who is experiencing it, from both the researcher's clarification of her/his own reactions and prejudices and the coresearcher's existential structure and experiential perspective. In this way, the article considers the hermeneutic idea related to understanding another person's experience through the embodied and pre-reflective understanding in which every interpretation is based. Finally, it is also emphasized that if we are contextualized about one person's experience and its meaning, we could offer and develop theories and explanations that attend and are specifically focused on that person and her/his concrete needs, instead of attending to our own theoretical and technical needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I want to suggest that causal and interpretive approaches to epistemology are in tension with one another. Drawing on the work of hermeneutic writers I suggest that epistemological justification is an interpretive process. The possibility of rational justification requires attention to our locatedness within the domain of reasons, into which we have been culturally initiated. The recognition that there is no transcendent processes of rational justification has to be addressed from within this framework and cannot be resolved in a naturalizing way. The turn to hermeneutics in the context of epistemology allows us to reassign a central role to experience within epistemological justification. Here the very features of experience which render problematic its role in empiricist accounts form the basis of its position in hermeneutic ones. This presents us with an immanent conception of rationality, in place of the transcendent conception which so many writers have problematized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the end of the first century of psychoanalytic theory and therapy, this paper takes critical stock of its past performance as a theory of human nature, and as a therapy. An account of the distinction between the dynamic and cognitive species of unconscious is followed by a critique of Freudian and post-Freudian psychoanalysis, as well as by an unfavorable verdict on the reconstruction of psychoanalysis by the “hermeneutic” philosophers. Concluding remarks assess the future prospects of psychoanalysis in the 21st century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]