Search

This thesis seeks to understand why women with Autism Spectrum Disorder (‘autism’) are more likely to develop restrictive eating disorders (‘REDs’). Part 1 is a conceptual introduction exploring the wider topic. To start, I introduce key terms and explore current understanding of autism among females, including the notion of ‘social camouflaging’; the masking of autistic traits and imitation of social behaviours, common among autistic women. Next, I discuss issues around prevalence and diagnosis of autism among those with REDs and the experience of eating disorder treatment for autistic individuals. Finally, a comprehensive review of the literature, outlining the multiple factors which might increase the likelihood of autistic women developing REDs, is presented. Part 2 documents an empirical study investigating the specific role of social risk factors for autistic women with REDs. It is hypothesised that difficulties gaining acceptance from others increases the likelihood of autistic women to perceive themselves as inferior. Moreover, that autistic women who attempt to ‘fit in’ through social camouflaging, are more vulnerable to such risk factors. Two groups of autistic women, with and without REDs, are compared on measures of social comparison, submissive behaviour, fear of negative evaluation and social camouflaging. Autistic women with REDs are found to compare themselves as significantly more inferior than autistic women without REDs. The clinical implications of the findings are discussed. Part 3 of the thesis is a critical appraisal which describes personal reflections on the research process, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and suggestions for future research.

This thesis extends current adaptation theory by considering the practical realities of adaptation and demolition decisions at the masterplan scale. As existing adaptation theory mainly focuses on individual buildings or the city level, it is not sufficient for explaining decisions on large brownfield sites being redeveloped through the implementation of a masterplan. A qualitative inductive approach was used to generate new knowledge about the topic. Initially, data was gathered from interviews and focus groups with built environment professionals. In-depth case study investigations of masterplan developments containing former industrial areas were then undertaken. The locations were Cambridge, UK; Eindhoven, Netherlands; and Sydney, Australia. Examining decisions in these different contexts unpacked the realities of how and why adaptation decisions on masterplan sites are made in practice. For individual buildings, existing literature argues that the physical attributes of a building are the major factor in decisions to adapt or demolish, due to their impact on construction costs. At the masterplan scale, these factors are still applicable. However, the primary data analysis shows there is a different interpretation of economic viability as costs can be offset elsewhere within large developments, and that there are a number of additional issues considered at the masterplan scale. These include the relative scale of buildings and considerations of vehicle and pedestrian flow through the site. There are two benefits of building retention which are commonly cited in the academic literature: conservation of heritage and savings in materials, and therefore savings in embodied energy and greenhouse gas emissions. In practice, the role of heritage was found to be frequently considered at an individual building level and in some instances is thought out at a larger physical scale, notably as part of place-making within a masterplan. However, embodied impacts were found to be rarely considered in adaptation decisions at either the individual building or masterplan scales. This difference, it is suggested, may be due to the fact that heritage has been included within planning policy for many years, while embodied impacts are only just starting to be included. The three case studies uncovered factors that govern decisions on large urban developments. People involved in, or affected by, masterplan developments including planning authorities, local communities and individuals were found to have a significant influence over the decision-making process, which is also contingent on the structure of the planning system and economic conditions at the time decisions are made. Due to the long time-span of masterplan developments, these decisions may also change at a later date in the development process. The theoretical underpinnings of urban development including equilibrium, structural, event-sequence and agency models, are applied to the research findings to offer a potential theoretical framing applicable to the masterplan scale. Through the multiple lenses provided by composite models, the variations in the factors governing decisions are explained. These include the influence of hierarchies within the planning system, the ability of developers to negotiate with local authorities over planning policy requirements and the transfer of risk to individuals willing to take it. Through the exploration of these complexities which are exacerbated by the physical and chronological scale of the masterplan, current adaptation theory is extended and practical recommendations made.

This study aimed to address how fathers made sense of their experience of losing their baby due to stillbirth after receiving one-to-one counselling/therapy. An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was used to explore the unique lived experience of each father. Eight semi-structured interviews were carried out with fathers of a stillborn baby who had experienced some form of one-to-one counselling/therapy in the aftermath of their loss. The research found that fathers developed an embodied relationship and continued to experience an ongoing relationship with their stillborn child. The fathers were changed by their experience of having a stillborn baby in fundamental and complex ways. The fathers also re-addressed aspects of their ‘masculine selves’ in response to this profound loss. It was meaningful for the fathers when their relationship with their stillborn child was validated and legitimised in their one-to-one counselling/therapy. Moreover, some fathers were able to address the confusion and ambiguity around the nature of their loss and their experience as men. The fathers expressed the unique ways they were transformed by their experience emotionally, psychologically, and existentially. Some fathers could begin to make sense of this and find meaning in their experience when it was recognised in their individual therapy. Finally, a critique of the limitations of the research process and methodology was provided and suggestions for further research were offered.

This dissertation offers close readings of a representative of poems by male confessional and post-confessional writers. I examine poems by men whose construction of the motherson relationship sheds light on the notions of confession and poetic identity. These readings are informed by psychoanalysis, primarily the work of Freud, D.W. Winnicott, Christopher Bollas, Jessica Benjamin, and Adam Phillips. I argue that the term "confessional poetry" although often critiqued is useful in highlighting the psychological dimensions of the mode and in locating the writers within a literary-historical period that begins with the publication of Robert Lowell's Life Studies (1959) and marks a shift towards a colloquial, personal, and deviant poetics. By looking at one aspect of confessional poetry, the writer's fundamental relationship to his mother, I argue for a rethinking of the seemingly masculine poetics of Robert Lowell and John Berryman and the gay sensibility of Allen Ginsberg. I discuss the ways in which male poets collaborate with their mothers, represent motherhood as transcending gender and biology, and suggest that mothers and ideas about mothers play into poetic self-fashioning. Examining crossgender relationships and alliances as represented in a handful of poems has implications on theories of poetic influence, which tend to highlight either same-sex collaboration or, in Harold Bloom's conception, father-son rivalry. This dissertation contributes to an understanding of confessional writing as self-exploratory, uncertain of its own status, and mediated by analysts, parents, and texts, rather than as titillating self-disclosure. Chapter 1 examines two mother poems by first-generational confessional poets, John Berryman and Robert Lowell, and applies Jessica Benjamin's model of intersubjectivity to explore the poet's identification with and differentiation from the mother figure. I consider Lowell's acknowledgment of his mother's identity prior to his own existence; in contrast, Berryman asserts the poet's need to banter with the mother and so discover the writing self as paradoxically reactionary and autonomous. In Chapter 2, I suggest that Allen Ginsberg'S "Kaddish" and Frank Bidart's "Confessional" represent the poet-son's desire to cure the mother's madness; both writers depict soul-making and soulsearching as essential to identity and autobiography. As I consider the literary-historical place of these two poets, who anticipate and respond to Life Studies, I highlight their shared preoccupations with madness, crisis, and intertextuality. Chapter 3 explores poems by two post-confessional writers, Robert Hass and C.K. Williams, which revise the literary mode, and bring to the forefront the fictionality of autobiography, the trope of the maternal body, and the limitations of the child-parent, confessor-confessant, and victim-perpetrator dichotomies. In Chapter 4 and the coda, I discuss Thorn Gunn's transatlantic response to confessional poetry, and examine how his poems about his mother are at odds with his critical rejection of American confessional verse.