Research as an Act of Resistance: Responsive,Temporally Framed Narrative Inquiry

Introduction

As I have moved (via a professional doctorate in systemic practice) from being a systemic psychotherapist to (also) a practice-based researcher I have developed ways of inquiring into my own practice. In particular, I have been interested in inquiring into the impact of narrative informed group work with women as part of my role working in adult mental health services with women who have experienced multiple traumas and forms of oppression. I am interested in the impact that being part of a group has on the women who attend, on myself and my practices, on the local community and at a societal level.

It is intrinsically relevant within a systemically informed inquiry to pay attention to local and global (cultural and political) contexts. For example, the #MeToo campaign has provided a political and cultural backdrop to working with women who have been sexually abused (which has been and continues to be a substantial part of my work) and the sharing of my own stories of abuse and oppression has also been a part of that. I would argue that this helped in affirming the research as an act of solidarity as well as an act of resistance; mirroring the influences that helped shape the groups (Salter, 2015, 2017a, 2018). Solidarity practices are often local concerns that connect with global movement. I see the research that I have been part of, in this area of practice, as part of continuing the conversation that the #MeToo campaign has started; and part of perturbing the patriarchal structures that might continue to silence women who have been abused.

I made the decision early on in the research, (Salter, 2015, 2017b) to share some of my stories of abuse and oppression; and this took me to a new threshold. It was a purposeful act to stand alongside women I had been talking with about their experiences and to be part of this movement. I would argue that, as such, it did not just make my inquiry more ethical, it also made it more reliable. It became, in its own way, a part of a wider political movement, connecting local practices with global feminist issues. I was purposefully positioning myself alongside a much wider campaign. It would decontextualize the research and deny the women I was in conversation with the opportunity to connect with this movement to not make these connections explicit (Simon & Salter, 2019).

I appreciate when other people tell their stories, within a research frame, that this is rarely without discomfort and risk. However, it is important kind of talk that helps to ‘de-invisibilise’ (in this case) the millions of women who have experienced some form of sexual abuse, harassment and/or discrimination. One in two women will have experienced unwanted sexual contact or sexual harassment before they even reach adulthood (Kelly et al., 1991, quoted in Shaw & Proctor, 2005). This is a story that needs to be told; and I was keen to give it the time and energy it required which is why I made it the focus of a 4 year research project. I have been (and continue to be) involved in other research that has been less time consuming but no less important when research is so closely allied with social justice.

In various research projects, listening to peoples’ stories of oppression I have allied myself (in part) with narrative inquiry (see for example, Etherington, 2004; Clandinin, 2007) and in owning my own experiences I have drawn on autoethnography as a way to ‘reveal myself to myself’ (Ellis & Bochner, 2017). This is an ethical choice.

Personal as Political

Personal stories that I choose to share in my research, such as my own experiences of abuse and oppression, are not ever present in my thinking and I do not experience them as distressing but they are uncomfortable. Some research models might frame this as problematic, but I see it as the opposite; taking up the invitation to go to more uncomfortable places from my own life experiences in order to enhance practitioner and researcher reflexivity within a frame of relational ethics. I argue that this is an important aspect of ‘insider’ or practice-based research (Salter, 2015).

Wanda Pillow (2003) critiques ‘comfortable reflexivity’ which, she says, relies on a gentle exploration of self. She calls instead for more ‘uncomfortable’ reflexivity, fore-fronting complexity, as a ‘disruptive’ rather than ‘transparent’ process. Daphne Patai offers a similar critique of the emphasis on reflexivity as a methodology and argues that ‘…we do not escape from the consequences of our positions by talking about them endlessly’ (Patai, 1994, p. 70).

These are important critiques which can encourage researchers to keep challenging their intentions and inherent biases. I would argue that if we only ever reflect on aspects of our practices that we feel comfortable and familiar with then we potentially limit the opportunities to take full advantage of the potential of learning not just from research, but through being in research. This is a key benefit of practice-based research that enables the researcher to attune their own practice to what they are learning through their inquiry and vice versa. I agree with Wendy Luttrell (2000) who advocates for the tensions and crises within feminist informed research (as does Lather, 1991, 2007; and Doucet and Mauthner, 2006) to be made visible as part of being/doing ‘good enough’ research (Luttrell, 2000). In engaging in practice-based research, my practices as a researcher and as a therapist are under scrutiny, and as such are part of a rich learning process.

Narratives of Resistance

Narrative therapy (White & Epston, 1990; Freedman & Combs, 1996; White, 2000) has always been, for me, a way to scrutinise my own practice, to situate my practice (and ultimately research into my practice) within a global context in order to challenge injustice and connect wider as the inquiry goes deeper. Both dimensions of depth and breadth have value in this endeavour.

Fellow systemic/narrative practitioners Allan Wade (1997), Cathy Richardson and Wade (2009), Taiwo Afuape (2011), and Vikki Reynolds (2013, 2014) encourage me to stay curious about women’s everyday acts of resistance in the face of (privatising) experiences such as trauma, sexual abuse, intimate partner violence, and other acts of oppression. Seeing research as an act of resistance (Richardson & Wade, 2009; Wade, 1997) has been a key aspect of my own story of development. Collectively, we resist the dominant narrative which is, more often than not, to stay silent in the face of abuse.

As such I have come to think about research within a frame of ‘liberation praxis’, where action and reflection co-exist in relationship, not just locally, but on a global level (Afuape, 2015). For me, this speaks to that same valuing of multiple dimensions.

I have intentionally, in my practice as a psychotherapist and as a researcher, positioned myself within a frame of solidarity and resistance whilst acknowledging my own limitations as an ‘imperfect ally’ (Reynolds, 2013, 2014). As an imperfect ally, I will not share the same experiences as people I am in conversation with but I can position myself purposefully alongside them in their struggles to be heard and experience justice.

Collaborative Inquiry

A frame of ‘solidarity’ (for me; and I think also for the women I have worked with) moves the notion of ‘coming together’ (whether that be through group work practice or through research groups) into a political frame of action. In this mode, the facilitator/researcher is deliberately positioning themselves (imperfectly or not) alongside others in the group not just to listen, but (as Freire, 1970; McNamee, 2015; Reynolds, 2013, all suggest) as a ‘radical’ way of relating.

There is much research that highlights the efficacy of therapeutic groups as part of a story of ‘bringing about change’, or what I might call ‘transformation through solidarity’; with many researchers pointing towards group identity and cohesion as part of this story. (Some examples include Barlow & Burlingame, 2006; Burlingame et al., 2002, 2011; Marmarosh et al., 2005; Yalom & Leszcz, 2005).

This cohesion or group identity has been referred to as ‘group-ness’ or ‘we-ness’ (Barlow & Burlingame, 2006; Posthuma, 1996; Yalom & Leszcz, 2005) but solidarity, for me, goes beyond that. It is a form of collective action. It is inherently political and not neccessaril cohesive. It can be messy. It is certainly complex. It offers a challenge to the status quo and begins to disrupt a medical model that promotes a discourse of psychopathology through internalising and individualising trauma.

Research with Groups

Most of the research I have been involved with, to date, has focused on groups of people who already identify as a group. This may be a staff group (a team) or a group of people who have come together because of shared experiences (therapy groups) or a group of people who have shared interests (community/solidarity groups). I have viewed all of these forms of research as ‘collaborative inquiry’ – modes of inquiry that centralise collaboration between people; as co-researchers, rather than subjects, participants or respondents. This is a form of co-constructionist research (Salter & Newkirk, 2019; Simon & Salter, 2019) that privileges ‘withness’ thinking and active ways of ‘being with’ over ‘aboutness’ forms of talk. (Shotter, 1999, 2006, 2011)

As a way to work ‘with’ the transcriptions or notes from conversations that come from such a collaborative inquiry, I have developed a particular model to engage with the conversations I have had with groups whether they be audio recordings, video recordings or notes from the conversation. After these five stages of inquiry, my notes begin to form a story/narrative that is then shared with the co-researchers via email, letter or dialogue and their feedback from this is also included as part of the research ‘material’; hence moving towards ‘co-construction’.

Responsive, Temporally Framed Narrative Inquiry – a Five-Step Model

In this model, transcribed words from the group conversations are treated as ‘knowledge in themselves’ (Etherington, 2004). However, the transcriptions are also a key part of a narrative inquiry which speaks to local and global issues of social justice. Developing a way to inquire further into the transcripts/notes then is not intended to diminish what people say but to highlight their significance through going deeper and wider.

The model has been devised as a way to honour these important conversations and the conversational partners that have collaborated in research (co-researchers). It forms what might traditionally called the ‘analysis’ stage of inquiry. I reject the word analysis as analysis, just like ‘caseness’ (Susko, 1994) in the context of research could far too readily be part of a story of objectifying, labelling and subjugating; suggesting that the interpretations of the researcher are more important than the words of the co-researchers. However some form of ‘engaging with’ (as opposed to making an interpretation of) the original words, I would argue, is an important aspect of this model. This is with the understanding that any interpretations drawn from the words, just like ‘hypothesising’ in systemic family therapy (Selvini et al., 1980) are seen as provisional, tentative, unfinished; and are checked out with (and grounded back into the relationships between) co-researchers.

A Word of Warning

I am aware that as I am writing, just as when I am engaged in research, I am seeing through my own limited field of vision and using my own experience as a researcher and as a practitioner, which could be reasonably described as a limited way of ‘knowing’.

This notion of ‘knowing’ could be viewed as being situated within (what Nowotny et al., 2001, have called) a scientistic elitist’ backdrop. Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999), and others have challenged the position of research as privileged knowledge and critiqued the notion that research is something to be done to ‘others’. As a Mäori woman, she suggests that research has become a ‘dirty word’ for indigenous peoples whose experience of colonialisation and marginalisation is continued by such a discourse, under-privileging different forms of ‘knowing and “know-how”’. I readily recognise this and I acknowledge my position as (at best) an ‘imperfect ally’ as a white woman and a doctoral researcher with all the attendant power associated with such a privileged, academic status (Reynolds, 2014). The stages of inquiry then have developed as an imperfect but intentional way to centralise more relational and tacit ways of knowing as well as trying to encompass different viewpoints and different ways of ‘knowing’, including peoples’ own lived experience, in their own words.

Step One: Themes

Braun and Clarke (2006) suggest that thematic analysis should be seen as a first ‘go-to’ (my wording) method for qualitative analysis; and highlight its flexibility as well as its simplicity. It may be seen by some as a complete process but I advocate for using this as a starting point, by noting key words and themes that are prominent in the transcripts and then pulling out from the written transcripts, words that appear most frequently, words that are emphasised by people in the telling, sentences that seem key to the conversation (which had moved the conversation on in some way), and ideas that the researcher might recall as being central in the conversation, even if the exact words were not directly used.

I have found this as a useful way to frame the next steps by offering headers or themes from which it is possible to look deeper and wider; depth and breadth/local and global continuing to stay in focus.

By moving on to the next stage then I am not intending to discredit the process of pulling out themes. I am, however, acknowledging that this first stage may not feel ‘complete’. Of course, we can argue that inquiry should/will never be ‘complete’; but for me it is important to keep working with the material until I feel that I have done (enough) ‘justice’ to the important conversations I have been part of.

Step Two: ‘Double Listening’

In this stage, I am not looking into particular words and particular themes but giving myself permission to get a bit more ‘lost’ in the words to feel/hear/see the narratives within, to use all my senses, to go broader rather than deeper. Bamberg (2012) tells us that ‘…everyone not only has a story but also has a right to tell their story’. (Bamberg, 2012, p. 79).

I deliberately try to be ‘in the flow’ of the storytelling and listening and not fixated with ‘component parts’. I make note of what I think are the main stories being told or the key narratives within the transcripts I have in front of me. I then begin to identify and form a (relational) story from the words on the page and through my relating with the words and my relating with the people who have used those words. In relation to working with people(s) who have experienced marginalisation and oppression it is critical that I am not just listening to stories of trauma, abuse, oppression but also for stories of resistance, resilience and competency.

‘Double listening’ (White, 2004) for these alternate stories adds to the richness/depth of the inquiry but also speaks to the potential of research to be transformative for all those involved-for people to have their stories of resistance and resilience witnessed and honoured.

I offer an example from an inquiry into the impact of group work on women who have experienced sexual abuse. Anne is a founding member of a group of women from a small community who I worked with between 2013 and 2016, women referred to mental health services who were part of a support group for women who have been sexually abused. Anne was keen to participate in research about the group and she had (at the time of the inquiry) completed the group work programme and was in the process of setting up an ongoing community support project for women who have similar experiences; within the same community.

Anne:

“Every time I was raped, everything I felt as a woman disappeared and all I was left with was fear and pain…I set out to kill myself and sat out until daylight …”

This might, at first read, sound like a story of victimhood, or distress and deficit, but of course there is more. Anne tells a story that questions that assumption, in her words and in her presence as she tells it. Anne did not kill herself. She is right here talking with me. Anne is an Asian woman who has experienced childhood abuse in her country of origin, made a new life for herself in a new country without any family support and has gone on to experience significant success in business. She is sitting upright, a large black shawl draped around her shoulders. She is elegant, eloquent and composed. She talks loudly and clearly with emphasis on her words. Anne asked me for this opportunity to tell her story more publicly and she encouraged me to keep going in my research. She is of a similar age to myself and I experience her vitality as contagious as we talk. I feel energised, motivated, inspired.

‘Double listening’ (to this story of resilience as well as her painful story of abuse) and reflecting that back to Anne, as ‘witness’ to her competence (White, 2004) encourages us both to go on; and for past and future stories of resourcefulness to emerge between us.

Anne:

“But I was able to snap out of it… I have more strength to do that now … I stopped seeing myself as an individual and started thinking wider about what people feel and need…. The group was part of that… (it) helped me to not fall in the hole …the more we spoke, the more we realised it was a safe space… we could see a future. It allowed us to see tomorrow and not just today.”

In the report that tells the story of the research (in this case a thesis, Salter, 2018), the differing but clearly related aspects of Anne’s narrative are honoured, paying attention to the original abuse, the effects it has on her, on people in the community, the impact of society; but it also tells the story of personal resilience and resourcefulness that Anne’s story encapsulates. Thus, the impact of the research is one that highlights both oppression and ways that people learn to ‘go on’ from oppression (Wittgenstein, 1953). This helps me keep going myself, onto the next phases of inquiry.

Step Three: Relational Narratives

In this next stage, the currency of relationship is further centralised, paying attention to the stories that are embedded within the nuances of not what is said in the conversation between researcher and co-researcher(s) but how it is said, the subtleties that say something about the relationship of the two (or more) people within the conversation. As Michael Bamberg voices, ‘what narrators accomplish with their stories is first of all highly local business’ (Bamberg, 2012, p. 83).

The focus here, Bamberg tells us, is of storytelling as an ‘activity’, not just as a collection of words, but a performance of telling. I think what Bamberg is pertaining to here is that the relationship between the storyteller and listener has a localised, relational context. In this stage of inquiry, I note down what I notice about what I think people are telling me, about what is going on between us and the context to our talking in this way. I will try and recall (if it has not been video recorded) the way people were sat when they were taking, the proximity between us, any physical contact, how we moved together or separately, such as I highlight in the narrative about Anne. I notice her clothing, her posture, her way of talking, our points of connection.

I also try and note the pauses and inflections, the volume and tone and recognise that they might be saying something not just about the content but about the context in which we find ourselves, as people involved in research, together, possibly (as a practice based researcher) with multiple definitions of relationship. For example, with Anne, I have known her as someone who I have spoken with in individual therapy, in a therapeutic group context, in a research context and subsequently as a collaborator and colleague in setting up services for women who have been sexually abused. All of these relational markers are in the room when we talk; and are captured in the transcripts in differing ways. This stage brings those ‘hidden’ relational stories to light-further definitions of competence.

Step Four: Embodied Narratives

This next stage is a way to move into the present tense, in an embodied way; and also to pay attention to what is going on for the ‘researcher’. In this stage, I advocate for becoming attuned to what is going on for the researcher. For me, this was/is about noticing what is changing within me as I get deeper into the inquiry, not just what is changing in my practices but in how I am being moved personally by the conversations I am a part of and what I notice ‘happening’ in the moment of reviewing the transcripts. A here-and-now checking in with myself.

In this stage, I practice some meditation (I use a self-directed body scan to do this, a meditation recognised in mindfulness practice, but I think many meditative practices could be appropriate, especially ones that promote a focus on the body) before once again re-engaging with the transcripts, not reading them word for word, but holding them, touching them, breathing on them, and recognising how I have been/am being influenced by them. I embrace my own invitation to be moved, to be vulnerable and to notice my own vulnerability. I then write down the words that come to me, from all my ways of ‘knowing’. I am noticing my emotional state, the sensations in my body (and where), any memories that are evoked from my own life story, from practice, or from the conversation itself; then noticing how they might connect (or not) with what I have been writing and how I have been presenting myself and others; recognising my own biases and prejudices.

This stage is important, I think, not only to do justice to the complexity of the conversations I have been a part of and the relationships they represented but also for me to take stock and to connect with my experiences as a practitioner researcher. This, in itself, has been extremely valuable and hence I continue to use this method and advocate for it.

Step Five: Free Writing

This is the final stage, and I think can be seen as an additional stage. It may be that the first four stages might feel enough, but, for me, this final stage is a chance to re-engage in the transcripts in a different way, a tacit way. I am not re-reading every word, but (re)visiting memories of the conversations and how I felt at that time; and my feelings now at this point of re-reading; but taking that further (beyond stage four) to let those feelings guide me to write.

This idea is taken from creative writing and storytelling traditions, which I have been influenced by, in my various practices but especially in storytelling groups that I have facilitated and been a part of (Salter & Newkirk, 2019). The idea here is not to get bogged down with what you think you should write which may take you to the familiar, the clichéd and the places that silence or restrain, where your own critical voice is at its loudest.

I want here to trust my intuition and be free to write in a way that perhaps I (and others) may have been unable to in conversation. I see this as a future-forming activity, constructing new narratives that may take the story on. Ken Gergen’s (2015) naming of research as ‘future forming’, or as a move from ‘mirroring to making’ is highly relevant here. This is part of the overall methodology, framing writing and conversation as a form of inquiry. Gail Simon (2011, 2013) and Laurel Richardson (1994), for example, have written eloquently about writing as inquiry and I would recommend their work for those interested in developing this further.

The act of free writing enables new stories of resistance to emerge, through the flow of the pen on paper. The original stories held within the transcripts are witnessed and honoured and new ones come to life which can then be shared with the person who inspired it; creating new possibilities for transformation. I was able to do this with Anne (and others) and could also then include their responses which add further depth. There is a vital energy that comes from engaging in storytelling and writing in collective forms, rather than in isolation. As Kim Etherington says, ‘new selves form within us as we tell and re-tell our stories’. (Etherington, 2004, p. 9)

Learning Experiences

I have learnt that whilst research has the possibility to connect people across different cultures and communities to create new (better) ‘social worlds ‘(Pearce, 2007) and new ‘communities of practice’, (Wenger, 1988) it can also itself be oppressive and diminishing of dignity and humanity, reducing depth and breadth. I have experienced, along the way, my own struggles with ‘fitting in’ with the academic world based on (my own internalised view of and the often externally tangible) class structures that the academic world amplifies. For example, I was acutely aware in the process of ‘becoming’ a doctoral researcher that I was experiencing simultaneously a world of privilege whist not feeling I was part of a privileged class; and feeling the distance that this movement created between myself and my family of origin, my partner, my friends. This was, and still can be, full of tension that has (at times) rocked my sense of belonging. My way to deal with this has been to continue to connect with an aspiration to ‘do justice’ with people who I am in conversation with, whether that be within the frame of therapy or the frame of research (and often times both).

Research as Praxis

Richardson (1990) and Lather (1991, 2007) (amongst others) advocate that research can and should go beyond a ‘truth-finding’ exploration of the subject at the heart of the inquiry; in order to be concerned with social justice, providing a ‘sociological community’ that challenges inequality and oppression. McNamee (1994) has spoken of research as ‘another form of talk’, and whilst I agree, I also think it is more than that. It is a ‘social intervention’ and a means of connection, as McNamee (1994) also suggests.

Becoming a researcher for me then has been one way to step out of the potentially privatising world of therapy and into the world of social action. It has been an ‘intervention’, at both a local (practice) level but also as a contribution to more global (social) conversations that propel the feminist/social justice argument to continue to challenge power and injustice, in solidarity with others.

I agree wholeheartedly with Richardson (1990) who says that ‘…emotionally binding together people who have had the same experiences, whether in touch with each other or not…overcomes some of the isolation and alienation of contemporary life…(offering) the possibility of social transformation’. (Richardson, 1990, p. 26).

I would strongly argue that discrimination and experiences of oppression are still highly visible in health and social care services and I would suggest that to ignore it is to sustain it. Conversely, talking about oppression perturbs the systems that continue to abuse and silence that can (if unchallenged) prevent new stories from emerging.

The Power of Pathology

Stories attached to diagnoses are, at best, limiting and at worst oppressive. The diagnosis and the person can get conflated as if they are one and the same thing, with problems being seen as people and people being seen as problems (White, 1988).

The UK’s health and social care systems are far from exempt from these kinds of practices, backed up by a reliance on the DSMV and its emphasis on classification; and there are many critiques of psychiatry as a labelling, ‘othering’ practice which highlight this (see for example, Chesler, 1972; Shaw & Proctor, 2005; Szasz, 1972; Ussher, 1991; Watson, 2019; Whitaker, 2002). Some have called such labelling practices ‘denigrating’ (Read & Magliano, 2019) others have noted its hurtfulness (Shaw, 2019) but nearly all critiques focus on the use of language and the power inherent in the words used within a medical model of ‘understanding’ metal health.

The discomfort with the language is part of a wider argument that labelling practices continue the discourse that ‘dysfunction’ is located ‘not within the system that produces it but within the individual who experiences it’. (Penfold & Walker, 1983, p. 31).

Foucault’s concept of ‘biopower’, as a contemporary enactment of power in ‘Western’ society, remains highly relevant in this context. The premise being that the institutions that hold power now retain power by promoting the idea that they ‘protect against our feared parts’ (Foucault, 1974).

In other words, mental health services (as one of many institutions that maintain people in a position of other) help the dominant groups in society feel ‘safe’. The, perhaps obvious, suggestion is that this seemingly more benign method to maintain power is no less powerful. As Foucault (1967, 1974, 1991) and Combs and Freedman (2012) suggest, ‘modern power’ enlists the public to ‘police’ themselves, through powerful discourses underscored by medicalised, elitist language, that ensure that the more ‘privileged’ in society have the most ‘influence’ on those discourses.

Interventions and research that promote social justice and undermine the dominance of psychopathology play their part in resisting and potentially disrupting that power. This is why I have had to admit to myself that research can matter as much as practice; and that being uncomfortable in academia does not mean that I do not have a place in the academic world. It is also why I believe that practice and research, in partnership and through solidarity, can both provoke and create change.

Summary

I have tried, in this paper, to make visible the experiences and the theories that have motivated and inspired me in my work as a systemic psychotherapist and as a practitioner-researcher. I have paid particular attention to research as a form of resistance and social action and have noted, within my practice, an emphasis on group work as a form of solidarity and being ‘with’ which subsequently shaped the kind of researcher I have ‘become’. Paying attention to power has been, and continues to be, intrinsically connected with this.

I have also made visible in this paper the stages of inquiry I have developed in my research practices working with and researching group work. The five steps developed organically in order to be responsive to how I was developing as a practitioner–researcher. However, I have been able to conceptualise the stages as a five step model which hopefully will support others to either replicate them or to develop them further, in their own way.