Title: A rich portrait of the non-violent resistance multi- parent therapeutic programme Name: Elizabeth Mary Day This is a digitised version of a dissertation submitted to the University of Bedfordshire. It is available to view only. This item is subject to copyright. A RICH PORTRAIT OF THE NON-VIOLENT RESISTANCE MULTI-PARENT THERAPEUTIC PROGRAMME By ELIZABETH MARY DAY A thesis submitted to the University of Bedfordshire in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Professional Doctorate in Systemic Practice June 2014 Figure 1: Etching 1 (hard ground and chine-collé) Page 2 of 373 Abstract Non-violent resistance group therapy is an innovative way of working with parents whose children are violent and out of control. The programme brings about change on a number of levels, some of which were beyond our expectations. This research aims to both look into the clinical practice and to develop a research method which can do it justice. My aim was to research into those areas which are ‘felt’: beyond the known and the written about. In order to do this I take aspects of the research method portraiture (Lawrence-Lightfoot and Hoffmann Davis, 1997) and bring them together with rich description, rich pictures and arts research practices, so as to create a new qualitative inquiry method which I call ‘rich portraiture’. I describe the development of rich portraiture as a research method and show how I applied it to my practice. At the heart of my dissertation is a complex and layered rich portrait which inquires into the particular experiences of the facilitators of and participants in this groupwork programme (Day and Heismann, 2010). Rich portraiture draws on the performative abilities of clinicians: music, poetry, film, quilt making, painting, dance, sculpture, writing. Detailed narrative portraits of participants and facilitators are located in their social and political context and combined with a juxtapositioning of performance and text which moves into that tacit dimension in which we know more than we can tell (Polanyi, 1966). This is ‘performance in use’ (Cho and Trent, 2009, p 1). My preferred performance method is painting. I made artworks which resonated with the lived experiences of the facilitators and parents who participated in the non-violent resistance therapy programme. As additional layers of performance the paintings were Page 3 of 373 shown in venues where they were viewed by audiences at events during which I spoke and showed films of me working. In this thesis I show how participants and facilitators embody the principles of non-violent resistance and how they perform them in the group. This ‘living’ of non-violent resistance creates change in people’s lives on a number of levels, some of them profound. I argue that there is a gap in the research methods which we use to look at our systemic practice. We constantly seek to creatively enhance our clinical practice so we should also be exploring emerging embodied and performative research practices. This would reflect the shift, in our therapeutic work with clients, towards embodiment (Shotter, 2010), the corporeal (Sheets-Johnstone, 2009) affective or performance turn (Denzin, 2003, 2006). My thesis both describes clinical practice in detail and sets out a new research method. Page 4 of 373 Declaration I declare that this thesis is my own unaided work. It is being submitted for the degree of Professional Doctorate in Systemic Practice at the University of Bedfordshire. It has not been submitted before for any degree or examination in any other University. Name of candidate: Elizabeth M Day Signature: Date: 6 June 2014 Page 5 of 373 Contents Abstract ................................................................................................................................................ 3 Declaration .......................................................................................................................................... 5 Contents ............................................................................................................................................... 6 Illustrations and tables ................................................................................................................ 14 Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................ 16 Preface ................................................................................................................................................ 19 Introduction ...................................................................................................................................... 22 Work context ................................................................................................................................ 22 Clinical practice ........................................................................................................................... 23 Research methods ..................................................................................................................... 25 Inspiring journey companions ............................................................................................... 27 The shape of the dissertation ................................................................................................ 27 Part 1 .................................................................................................................................................. 29 Non-violent resistance therapy ................................................................................................. 29 Chapter 1 ........................................................................................................................................... 30 Introduction to the practice in focus ...................................................................................... 30 Non-violent resistance .............................................................................................................. 30 Chapter 2 ........................................................................................................................................... 37 The story of becoming a non-violent resistance practitioner ........................................ 37 A first meeting with non-violent resistance ..................................................................... 37 Our first non-violent resistance project ............................................................................. 41 The first multi-parent group .................................................................................................. 41 Page 6 of 373 The map ..................................................................................................................................... 42 The wristband .......................................................................................................................... 43 The manual ............................................................................................................................... 43 The conference ........................................................................................................................ 44 The DVD ..................................................................................................................................... 44 Chapter 3 ........................................................................................................................................... 45 Group programmes and group therapy ................................................................................. 45 Parenting programmes ............................................................................................................. 46 Multi-family therapy .................................................................................................................. 50 Part 2 .................................................................................................................................................. 57 Research ............................................................................................................................................ 57 Chapter 4 ........................................................................................................................................... 58 Developing aims and objectives for the research ............................................................. 58 Chapter 5 ........................................................................................................................................... 61 Qualitative inquiry and systemic research ........................................................................... 61 Withness thinking or thinking systemically ...................................................................... 63 Validity ............................................................................................................................................ 64 Moments of feeling and movement ..................................................................................... 65 Multiple moments ....................................................................................................................... 71 Ethnography ................................................................................................................................. 75 Performance ................................................................................................................................