Embodied Enquiry

Embodied Enquiry

Phenomenological Touchstones for Research, Psychotherapy and Spirituality

216x138 mm

9780230517752

31 Jul 2007

224 Pages

397 Grams

0230517757

£45.00

Publisher : Palgrave MacM

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Description Contents Authors

Reviews

'Les Todres’ Embodied Enquiry is a masterful integration of phenomenological research methods and Eugene Gendlin’s Focusing technique. Applicable to a wide range of qualitative research methods, Todres provides qualitative and human science researchers an embodied approach to data collection, analysis, and communication that accesses and invites the deep resources of the human psyche.' - Rosemarie Anderson, Professor, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, author of Transpersonal Research Methods for the Social Sciences

'Todres's most specific contribution may be his humane and flexible reconceptualization of narcissism as a common human dilemma of how we live with our inherent and shared vulnerability. The broader objective is an updated and expanded understanding of care and caring relations. Todres achieves a prose style that presents philosophical abstractions in a way that never severs their connection to interpersonal scenes of caring.' - Arthur W. Frank, author of The Wounded Storyteller and The Renewal of Generosity: lllness, Medicine, and How to Live

'With Embodied Enquiry, Professor Todres has demonstrated the unique qualities and strengths of phenomenological investigation. Focusing upon a descriptively-focused exploration centred upon the complexities of lived experience, the book not only succeeds in presenting a clear and insightful account of the ideas and concerns underpinning phenomenological inquiry, it also expresses this way of investigation through the very structure of the text itself thereby permitting readers a lived experience of the particular journeying that this approach can provide. Throughout, Professor Todres' aim is to evoke an inter-relationally grounded humanising quality to investigation - be it that which is undertaken as research or that which underpins psychotherapeutic understanding. This is a wise and exhilarating text. Every chapter contains its surprises and provocations. It deserves careful reading and will surely generate much-needed debate.' - Professor Ernesto Spinelli, School of Psychotherapy and Counselling, Regent's College, London, UK

'Les Todres' masterly and challenging book clarifies, enriches and extends the work of phenomenology in social research particularly when investigating facilitative work concerned with healing and learning. This ground breaking theoretical text provides a solid and, in places, lyrical foundation for future phenomenological texts seeking to safeguard the livedness of lived experience.' - Dr. Peter Willis, School of education, University of South Australia, Australia

'With this impressive publication Les Todres, once and for all, comes to terms with the old dualism that has understood humans as separate and measurable entities. Everyone who reads Embodied Enquiry must see that the human enterprise is so much more than this, whether it is about research and psychotherapy, or other forms of care and social work.' - Professor Karin Dahlberg, School of Health Sciences, Växjö University, Sweden

Description

Drawing on a particular emphasis within the phenomenological tradition as exemplified by Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Eugene Gendlin, this book considers the role of the lived body as a way of knowing and being. The author, a psychologist, psychotherapist and qualitative researcher pursues this theme within the three practical contexts that illustrate some of the nuances of embodied enquiry:
1 In research methodology: how embodied understanding is not just 'cognitive', but involves embodied, aesthetic experience and application
2 In spirituality: how embodied understanding opens up a view of human existence that lies between great freedom and great vulnerability, a view of spirituality that integrates the personal and the transpersonal
3 In psychotherapy: how embodied understanding may occur through the process of psychotherapy where one is able to increasingly experience oneself as 'more than' the ways one has been objectified and defined (freedom), and therefore, more fluidly in accord with the human realm (vulnerability)
The three sections of the book also provide examples of how embodied enquiry is not just a philosophical perspective but also a practice with very tangible implications for research, psychotherapy and spirituality. The integrating theme that is threaded through these three practical contexts is the concern to articulate and demonstrate a knowledge-practice that is both personally transformative and intersubjectively humanising. The ideas and illustrations in the book may be particularly relevant in these current times where the de-personalisation and de-humanisation of self and other are rampant in obscuring the human ground that we share.

Contents

Introduction: An Embodied Path at Beginning and End
PART I: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY: TOWARDS AESTHETIC AND EMBODIED PRACTICES
The Qualitative Description of Human Experience: The Aesthetic Dimension
The Meaning of Understanding and the Open Body: Some Implications for Qualitative Research
The Bodily Complexity of Truth-Telling in Qualitative Research: Some Implications of Gendlin's Philosophy
Writing Phenomenological-Psychological Descriptions: An Illustration Attempting to Balance Texture and Structure
PART II: PSYCHOTHERAPY: EMBODYING COMPLEX IDENTITY
Humanising Forces: Phenomenology in Science; Psychotherapy in Technological Culture
The Rhythm of Psychotherapeutic Attention: A Training Model
The Primacy of Phenomenological Process and Sequence in Psychotherapy: A Case Study
Globalisation and the Complexity of Self: The Relevance of Psychotherapy
Freedom-Wound: Towards the Embodiment of human Openness in Daseinanalytical Therapy
PART III: SPIRITUALITY: EMBODYING FREEDOM AND VULNERABILITY
Psychological and Spiritual Freedoms: Reflections Inspired by Heidegger
How does Liberating Self-Insight Become Tacit Understanding?
The Wound that Connects: A Consideration of 'Narcissism' and the Creation of Soulful Space
Embracing Ambiguity: Transpersonal Development and the Phenomenological Tradition
Conclusion Thoughts and Touchstones: A Wide Embrace

Author Biographies

LES TODRES is a Clinical Psychologist and Professor of Qualitative Research and Psychotherapy at Bournemouth University, UK. Previous occupational roles have included head of a student counselling service and director of a clinical psychology training programme. His career spans both academic and clinical contexts, reflecting his interest in pursuing knowledge and practice that is both academically and professionally integrated.