Romance, suffering and hope, reflective practice with abused women

Abstract

This dissertation is an example of reflective clinical social work practice with abused women, using both narrative therapy and narrative research approaches. The starting point of this research project was situated within clinical practice with abused women, and in particular through listening to abused women discussing their engagements with romance novels, soap operas and chat shows. Initially concerned by the romanticization of abuse within popular cultural texts I was interested in what abused women might be learning through their engagements with such texts. An emergent design was used within this study with two women with experience of relationship violence, asking the women, through the co-narration of their own life-stories, to reflect upon where and what they had learned about heterosexual romantic relationships. I have attempted to make my subject position visible as both clinical practitioner and as researcher while writing about my engagement with the women's narratives and through the presentation of my own narrative. I then immersed myself in the reading and re-telling of the women's favourite popular cultural texts, 'Dark Rapture' and 'Flowers in the Attic' in order to attempt to understand something of their engagement with those stories. This experience has combined with literature and practice to suggest that it might be beneficial to examine, within the therapeutic setting, clients' engagement with popular cultural texts, reflecting upon their learning from such texts. Through this process it also became clear that it would be necessary to take up an examination of conceptions of hope. The dissertation ends with a discussion of hope and approaches for addressing hope within practice. Hope is conceived of as residing in the present, informing us of what is missing in the present. This understanding of hope would suggest that examining abused women's hopes, as represented through some of their popular cultural engagements, could assist with the reshaping of their expectations of relationships, which would assist them in breaking problematic relationship patterns.