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The deleterious effects of psychological and emotional abuse upon individuals in relationships are seen regularly in family therapy practice and are increasingly acknowledged in the wider community. Yet literature rarely considers these forms of abuse as a whole family problem, even though those who abuse commonly use similar controlling behaviours within all family relationships. Clinical experience reveals that family members rarely speak together about their past experience, whether as a result of complying with family silence or lacking recognition of non-physical abuse.This qualitative study explores psychological and emotional abuse in relation to four aspects of family: family functioning, family relationships, sense of family, and family conversation about past abuse. A unique dialogical methodology, based upon Buber's philosophy that dialogue is the source of knowing, is operationalised by creative methods involving 11 interviews with nine individuals from five families. Analysis privileges the participant-researcher intersubjective process, before considering each participant's subjective experience, followed finally by the systemic view of the family. The research highlights a number of family processes around psychological and emotional abuse, which inform more nuanced thinking on such abuse. Overall, it reveals that psychological and emotional abuse is generalised to the whole family over time, from the couple relationship, to physical abuse of children, and sibling abuse. Additionally, the research points to psychological abuse and emotional abuse as distinct forms of abuse, which engender cumulative individual and family trauma, are enacted through a family relational web of control, are upheld by othering processes based on societal norms of family and abuse, and which compromise family communication.Psychological and emotional abuse is affirmed as directly impacting upon human dignity by significantly compromising the individual's opportunities to e

The process of Christian apostasy or disaffiliation, with its associated identity changes, is an under-researched area within the sociology and psychology of religion. The researcher’s encounter with such disaffiliation was originally from the point of view of a social worker and psychotherapist, providing assistance to people navigating this process. This study has its significance in aiming to situate such a journey of disaffiliation from Christian Fundamentalism (CF) within a relational framework of power, using the theory of Michel Foucault and post-Foucauldian scholars. Power is not understood in a repressive or dominating sense, but as a ‘net-like’ structure in which individuals simultaneously undergo and exercise power as ‘identity projects’.The qualitative study uses a four-tiered analysis of the interviews of 20 people who have exited CF and moved to more diverse positions of belief. Firstly, dialogical narrative analysis is used to create a typology of plotlines of the process of identity re-formation out of CF. Secondly, a Foucauldian genealogy maps the subjectification of the Christian subject along the axes of truth, power and the self, illustrating the power apparatus of the ‘Christian normalising gaze’. Thirdly, a Bakhtinian lens refracts the data to analyse performed identity within a multi-voiced world. Finally, a reflexive explication of the co-construction of the story with the researcher examines power within the research relationship as well as the research participants’ self-placement on the ‘insider/outsider continuum’ of CF. The findings suggest that former participants of fundamentalist churches tell potent stories of interiorised and self-monitored Christian identities. The process of exit occurs over years, with resistance being exercised through such ‘technologies of the self’ as counterstories of self-definition and re-formed ethical substance; the double life of internal protest, leading to an integration of the

This thesis re-thinks the theory of systemic family therapy by investigating the role played by Gregory Bateson's ideas and by reading his ideas alongside the writings of poststructuralist philosophers Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze. While Bateson's contribution to the early development of systemic family therapy is widely recognised, the subsequent emergence of narrative and social constructionist versions of systemic family therapy has been held to have supersededBateson. In this thesis it is argued that when Bateson is read alongside the writings of Foucault and Deleuze, his contribution is reinvigorated. The concepts that emerge out of these encounters are used to articulate a new conceptualization for systemic family therapy.The thesis is divided into two parts. The first part explores the historical development of systemic family therapy and defines the problem in terms of a double irony. The first irony relates to Bateson's frustration with prevalent theoretical models within the social sciences. This frustration was at the base of his investigations into cybernetics which, in turn, were central to the emergence of systemic family therapy. Bateson's theoretical work provided the clinic with a relational alternative to prevalent inrapsychic approaches. The second irony relates to a critical reflection on the contemporaryconfiguration of theory in systemic family therapy with particular reference to Bateson's insights. This critical reflection constitutes a continuous reminder of the difficulties inherent in a rigorous engagement with the complexity of a relational approach to the clinic.The second part provides a positive alternative to the presenting problem by engaging in a constructive reading of the philosophical projects of Foucault and Deleuze. These projects are interrogated in their relationship to the work of Bateson. Out of these encounters, a number of central concepts of Bateson's work are reconsidered, including Bateson's insights into cyberne

Male couples place the issue of extra–relational sex (ERS) in their committed relationships at various points on a continuum between monogamy and non-monogamy. Further, many couples move about on this continuum over the course of the relationship, according to their changing wishes and desires. Making the right choice or transitioning from one relationship style to another is not always straightforward and unproblematic. Some male couples may benefit from therapeutic support at these crucial times.This research seeks to contribute to knowledge that could inform sensitive and respectful practice on the part of therapists and others who work with the relational concerns of gay men. Using qualitative methodology the research questions explored how gay men negotiate the place of ERS with their partners, the strategies they use to manage ERS, and their beliefs about the effects of their choices on themselves and their relationship. A purposive sample of 24 Sydney gay men (six single and 18 partnered) aged between 22 and 68 participated in the research. Data were collected through semi–structured interviews and subjected to thematic analysis. Despite diverse experiences of ERS, a core set of processes appeared central to relationship satisfaction and function.The knowledge produced by this research provides a number of ways for therapists to orient themselves to the therapeutic terrain of work with gay men and ERS while remaining alive to the unique and particular characteristics of the male couple relationship before them.