Telepsychology

Telepsychology, until recently, was slow-moving and half-heartedly acknowledged in the mental health profession. There is increasing scholarly discourse on the digital therapeutic space. This shift to a digital paradigm means re-evaluating the profession's identity. This chapter considers telepsychology in relation to social justice. It highlights access for underserved groups and the digital divide that limits a substantial population from accessing online services. It identifies the need to integrate telepsychology in community psychology interventions, a significant framework to challenge systemic inequalities in mental health. It outlines the inadequacy of the profession to support needs of diversity in the field and considers if telehealth is one way to bring a shift in the homogenous identity of the profession. Telepsychology has the potential to amplify adherence to social justice principles; however, this requires evolved responses on individual, institutional, and systemic levels to bring unconventional but substantial changes in training, research, and regulatory guidelines.

Rewilding systemic practice

This paper is written in the context of the current ecological crisis affecting physical and mental health, social, economic, and political contexts, at local and global levels which calls for the disruption of old ways of thinking, living and moving towards the future through collective action. One way of responding as a systemic and family psychotherapist, has been my experience of rewilding my systemic practice with individuals, couples, and families in the UK since taking therapy outdoors. I will offer some examples of ecotherapy as part of my own personal and professional journey in “coming home” through nature, becoming an outdoor designer of therapeutic space and a minimalist wild therapist. I invite us all to re-think and re-create a therapeutic space which, by its very essence, is wild, meaning boundaryless, infinitely spacious and unpredictable. It can open up opportunities for creativity, for using metaphors to explore meanings beyond words. Nature becomes not only the context in which I practice but my co-therapist or even the primary therapist. Together we can enrich the therapeutic process through moments of magic and facilitate change using a wild reflecting team. In my experience of ecotherapy, voices from the wild carry unique messages, for example, birdsong can provide unexpected voices, useful interruptions or disruptions that can enrich the therapeutic process. Such a wild reflecting team can also be a daring metaphor to welcome the unexpected and unfamiliar into our systemic practices and relationships, to include new emerging and marginalised perspectives which may bring us all more in touch with our wildness, lost indigenous ways of relating and shape our futures through collective action.

Inter-Brain Synchronization During Sandplay Therapy: Individual Analyses

Interactions between the client (Cl) and therapist (Th) evolve therapeutic relationships in psychotherapy. An interpersonal link or therapeutic space is implicitly developed, wherein certain important elements are expressed and shared. However, neural basis of psychotherapy, especially of non-verbal modalities, have scarcely been explored. Therefore, we examined the neural backgrounds of such therapeutic alliances during sandplay, a powerful art/play therapy technique. Real-time and simultaneous measurement of hemodynamics was conducted in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) of Cl-Th pairs participating in sandplay and subsequent interview sessions through multichannel near-infrared spectroscopy. As sandplay is highly individualized, and no two sessions and products (sandtrays) are the same, we expected variation in interactive patterns in the Cl–Th pairs. Nevertheless, we observed a statistically significant correlation between the spatio-temporal patterns in signals produced by the homologous regions of the brains. During the sandplay condition, significant correlations were obtained in the lateral PFC and frontopolar (FP) regions in the real Cl-Th pairs. Furthermore, a significant correlation was observed in the FP region for the interview condition. The correlations found in our study were explained as a “remote” synchronization (i.e., unconnected peripheral oscillators synchronizing through a hub maintaining free desynchronized dynamics) between two subjects in a pair, possibly representing the neural foundation of empathy, which arises commonly in sandplay therapy (ST).

Olive and me in the archive: a Black British woman in an archival space

This article aims to explore how the archival life of Olive Morris might radically rebuff the devaluation of Black womanhood and identity in Britain. Harnessing a Black feminist framework, I approach Lambeth Archives, where the Olive Morris Collection is found as a therapeutic space. Through an understanding of Olive as complex, I disrupt hegemonic expectations of Black women and propose that within the space of this research, Black womanhood be allowed the freedom of self-definition. In a conglomeration of the documents and voices of the community that remembers Olive, marginalised epistemologies are legitimised. Their sometimes-conflicting accounts generate an unbounded image of Olive as a figure of Black British women’s history that harbours meaning as it is mobilised in social consciousness. Incorporating my own auto-ethnographic reflections, I explore the internal and external impact of Olive and my existence in this archival space.

On the affect of therapeutic spaces: An autoethnographic study of affect and architecture of therapy.

<p><b>The architect-self is inevitably expressed in the design process and architectural outcome; often, in more nuanced ways than is admitted. Whether it is a world-renowned architect (Pallasmaa, 2005, p. 73; Souto De Moura, 2019, p. 243-244; Zumthor, 1998, p. 9-10) or a student of architecture, designers intuitively draw on personal spatial experience and knowledge in their design decisions (Van Schaik, 2008). To further explore the architect-self in the design process and architectural outcome, this research focuses directly on autoethnography as a design research method. Through a series of personal design speculations into therapeutic space, architecture’s reliance on the architect’s self is revealed and intensified, posing questions about the connection between designer and space.</b></p> <p>Autoethnography is “research, writing, story, and method that connects the autobiographical and personal to the cultural, social, and political” (Ellis, 2012, p. 49). It is a research method that uses the researcher’s personal experience to describe and analyse social and cultural beliefs, practices, and experiences, and interrogates the intersections between the researcher-self and society through reflective practice. It carefully balances academic rigour, emotion and creativity, and strives for social justice (Denzin, 2014, p. 25). Also, the aspect that relates explicitly to architectural research is that autoethnography assumes a mutual relationship between the audience of stories/inhabitants of space and the researcher/designer that creates it, compelling a complex response.</p> <p>The research sets a refined scope within the topic of ‘therapeutic architecture’ to investigate autoethnographic methodology in architecture research. The general aim of ‘therapeutic architecture’ is a promotion of one’s ‘health and wellbeing’, which is an extremely personal and private matter, yet socially determined. In this context, autoethnography provides a unique approach to the topic. This research addresses the underexplored personal and social aspects of architecture, using therapeutic space as a vehicle and autoethnography as a method.</p> <p>The research methodology was adapted to include both autoethnography and “research by design” (Roggema, 2016, p. 3) methods. First, the author’s therapeutic and anti-therapeutic spatial experiences were collected as data. Reading Hermann Schmitz’s New Phenomenology, his central concept of the felt body, the ‘vital drive’, was applied to determine therapeutic (‘corporeal expansion’) and anti-therapeutic (‘corporeal contraction’) (Schmitz et al., 2011, p. 245-246) nature of experience. Expanding on the traditional autoethnographic method, in addition to written vignettes, data was collected in various modes including physical models, audio and video recordings, photo collages, found items, and more.</p> <p>Following this, data analysis revealed themes and elements that composed therapeutic spatial affects as perceived by the author, bound into design experiments. Analyses were conducted through narrative and contextual investigations, locating the personal spatial experience in the broader local, social, cultural, and political frameworks. It was an important step where autobiography became autoethnography; it explained and critiqued the conceptual frameworks of the author’s experience. The generated insights became the basis of a series of therapeutic spatial design interventions. This methodology resulted in the design process and architectural outcomes being taken beyond their inherent autobiographical nature and towards a close understanding of design’s situated context.</p> <p>The thesis is a proof-of-concept of employing a qualitative research method – autoethnography – within the discipline of architecture, where the method was previously unattempted. Using the objective of understanding therapeutic architecture and its affects to demonstrate the new, innovative methodology, it argues the need to reconsider the relationship between architectural design practice and therapeutic affects. Autoethnography in architecture compels the architect/ researcher/author to acknowledge and investigate the architect-self earnestly, and subsequently, the architectural design process could become a lens to understand and critique its social and cultural context and produce design outcomes accordingly.</p>

On the affect of therapeutic spaces: An autoethnographic study of affect and architecture of therapy.

<p><b>The architect-self is inevitably expressed in the design process and architectural outcome; often, in more nuanced ways than is admitted. Whether it is a world-renowned architect (Pallasmaa, 2005, p. 73; Souto De Moura, 2019, p. 243-244; Zumthor, 1998, p. 9-10) or a student of architecture, designers intuitively draw on personal spatial experience and knowledge in their design decisions (Van Schaik, 2008). To further explore the architect-self in the design process and architectural outcome, this research focuses directly on autoethnography as a design research method. Through a series of personal design speculations into therapeutic space, architecture’s reliance on the architect’s self is revealed and intensified, posing questions about the connection between designer and space.</b></p> <p>Autoethnography is “research, writing, story, and method that connects the autobiographical and personal to the cultural, social, and political” (Ellis, 2012, p. 49). It is a research method that uses the researcher’s personal experience to describe and analyse social and cultural beliefs, practices, and experiences, and interrogates the intersections between the researcher-self and society through reflective practice. It carefully balances academic rigour, emotion and creativity, and strives for social justice (Denzin, 2014, p. 25). Also, the aspect that relates explicitly to architectural research is that autoethnography assumes a mutual relationship between the audience of stories/inhabitants of space and the researcher/designer that creates it, compelling a complex response.</p> <p>The research sets a refined scope within the topic of ‘therapeutic architecture’ to investigate autoethnographic methodology in architecture research. The general aim of ‘therapeutic architecture’ is a promotion of one’s ‘health and wellbeing’, which is an extremely personal and private matter, yet socially determined. In this context, autoethnography provides a unique approach to the topic. This research addresses the underexplored personal and social aspects of architecture, using therapeutic space as a vehicle and autoethnography as a method.</p> <p>The research methodology was adapted to include both autoethnography and “research by design” (Roggema, 2016, p. 3) methods. First, the author’s therapeutic and anti-therapeutic spatial experiences were collected as data. Reading Hermann Schmitz’s New Phenomenology, his central concept of the felt body, the ‘vital drive’, was applied to determine therapeutic (‘corporeal expansion’) and anti-therapeutic (‘corporeal contraction’) (Schmitz et al., 2011, p. 245-246) nature of experience. Expanding on the traditional autoethnographic method, in addition to written vignettes, data was collected in various modes including physical models, audio and video recordings, photo collages, found items, and more.</p> <p>Following this, data analysis revealed themes and elements that composed therapeutic spatial affects as perceived by the author, bound into design experiments. Analyses were conducted through narrative and contextual investigations, locating the personal spatial experience in the broader local, social, cultural, and political frameworks. It was an important step where autobiography became autoethnography; it explained and critiqued the conceptual frameworks of the author’s experience. The generated insights became the basis of a series of therapeutic spatial design interventions. This methodology resulted in the design process and architectural outcomes being taken beyond their inherent autobiographical nature and towards a close understanding of design’s situated context.</p> <p>The thesis is a proof-of-concept of employing a qualitative research method – autoethnography – within the discipline of architecture, where the method was previously unattempted. Using the objective of understanding therapeutic architecture and its affects to demonstrate the new, innovative methodology, it argues the need to reconsider the relationship between architectural design practice and therapeutic affects. Autoethnography in architecture compels the architect/ researcher/author to acknowledge and investigate the architect-self earnestly, and subsequently, the architectural design process could become a lens to understand and critique its social and cultural context and produce design outcomes accordingly.</p>

Pine fresh: the cultural and medical context of pine scent in relation to health—from the forest to the home

Pine is a familiar scent in domestic cleaning products, but how often do we relate it to its origins as an odour emanating from a tree? This article takes a sensory history approach to trace the late 19th century and early 20th century use of the pine forest as a therapeutic space, via the tuberculosis sanatoria to the use of pine scent in domestic disinfectant. By focusing on pine as experienced in this period as a microhistorical subject, this methodology will in turn allow for a detailed consideration of how historical context, and in particular medical conceptions and health concerns, can influence the creation of cultural memory. By following the trajectory of pine from its place in the forest to a commercial product used in the home, this will allow for an investigation at the intersection of environmental and medical histories and provide a framework for the consideration of the relationship of place to senses associated with concepts of health and well-being. As interest grows in the development of more effective sensory settings, in particular within healthcare, it also highlights the importance of considering the roles both cultural and personal memory play in response to various sensory stimuli.

Psychodynamic Psychiatry and the Therapeutic Space in the Era of COVID-19

Psychodynamic psychiatric practice during the COVID-19 pandemic has required most clinicians to conduct treatment online or by telephone. The result is a natural experiment that appears to endorse the efficacy of distance therapy. Consequently, the brick-and-mortar consulting room is no longer the presumptive therapeutic space for the conduct of psychodynamic psychiatric or other treatment approaches. The therapeutic space is reconceived as the place or medium intended for treatment and is distinguished from both the therapeutic relationship and conduct of treatment that occurs within that space. How different therapeutic spaces impact treatment is discussed with specific application to psychodynamic psychiatry and virtual venues. The “digital object” becomes a new presence; the patient's freedom to disclose mental contents is retained though empathic attunement is diminished; a shift in power dynamics may occur; timing of sessions gains greater precision in the online environment. Beyond the pandemic, practicing online is likely to become an accepted supplementary therapeutic space for evaluation and treatment by psychodynamic psychiatrists.

Co-Creating Authentic Sacred Therapeutic Space: A Spiritually Sensitive Framework for Counselling Children

Social work values client-centered holistic approaches of care, yet there is a lack of approaches addressing spirituality in counselling with children. Children’s spirituality and conceptualization have been disenfranchised. Children’s spiritual experiences, ways of knowing and perceptions are important to attend to when supporting them through an impactful life event such as trauma, grief, or loss (TGL). Parents may not fully understand or have the capacity to attend to their child’s spirituality. Counsellors appear to lack knowledge and training to attend to the spiritual needs and capacities of children. This article offers some research findings of children’s spirituality deemed to be vital for healing from TGL and counselling. It provides an understanding of some of the constructs and isolating processes described by children, parents and counsellors related to children’s spirituality in TGL. It also will present a spiritually sensitive framework specifically attuned to the spiritual dimension and creating spaces of safety and hope when working with children. The implications of not addressing the critical spiritual dimensions in practice for children are discussed, and recommendations for continued research and training for further theoretical development and future social work practice are offered.