Paste your essay in here…INTRODUCTION
This study is a phenomenological exploration of mothers’ experiences of being both a parent and trainee psychotherapist or counsellor. It aims to investigate lived experience where these two life-changing processes meet.
Background to the Research
Personal connection
I have been a trainee psychotherapist throughout some of my two children’s formative years. Now aged ten and eight, they were four and two when I began training. Like other parents I have spoken to, my decision to train was prompted by motherhood and reviewing my life in response. Combining this huge process of change – deemed a “special psychological condition” (Stern 1995, p24) – and the challenges of parenting children, with the psychological process of undergoing psychotherapy training, was not explicitly explored in my own training, and seems unaddressed in published research.
I have found the relationship with myself as a mother to be the most challenging aspect of training, prompting me to wonder about others’ experiences. The intensive theoretical learning – particularly the developmental theories of Object Relations and Attachment – applies not only to future clients and to ourselves, but how we are parenting our children day in, day out. While I found parents on my training mutually supportive, I did not find space within my training modules to process my experiences as a mother nor reflect on my parenting in the context of the learning, theoretical or experiential. I found this lack of space both frustrating and deeply puzzling. By contrast, trainees wait nearly two years to begin seeing clients and are supported in negotiating these interactions, with developing self-awareness, through supervision.
Relevance to psychotherapy training and practice
The recent ‘relational turn’ in psychotherapy (Mitchell 2000), driven by philosophical (Crossley 2006) and neuroscientific developments (Schore 2009), views the person of the psychotherapist in-relation as instrumental in the therapy room. Self-development is critical; in this, training, and how trainees can engage with it, is arguably important (Grafanaki 2010a).
Given the major life-change of parenthood and its accompanying challenges, including reactivation of parents’ own childhood experiences (Siegel 2001), and given psychotherapists are often driven to their profession by their own childhood wounds and deficits (Celenza 2010), arguably their experience as a parent may be a major part of the trainee’s being to explore. Motherhood is a live, dynamic set of relationships both evocative of earlier wounding and liable to scrutiny in an environment devoted to studying and repairing the impact of mothers on their developing children.
Anecdotally – through conversations with peers and with three tutors on different psychotherapy trainings – there seems to be recognition of the need for a space for mothers – and more broadly parents – within psychotherapy trainings. I hoped exploring the overlap of the experiences of motherhood and training, would produce findings of use to training organizations.
Research Aims
The research aimed to investigate in detail the lived experience of psychotherapy and counselling trainees who are mothers. My question was, ‘how do mothers experience being both a parent and trainee psychotherapist?’ In particular, I was interested in exploring how training may colour trainees’ experience of being a parent – affectively, experientially, practically, and how they think about this. I also wanted to know how being a mother shapes trainees’ experience of training – cognitively, affectively, experientially.
I was curious to explore the space where being in training and being a mother meet; what this throws up for participants affectively and cognitively; what they do with it in terms of processing and support; what they feel they need; what has been helpful to them and what can be learnt from their experiences.
In focusing on mothers I did not wish to dismiss the experience of fathers. My original hope was to focus on the experience of ‘parents’, however it was beyond the scope of this small study to explore the experience of both mothers and fathers – who will inevitably experience parenthood differently. I therefore focused my study on the experience of mothers.
Reflexivity
This study was an attempt to distinguish, delineate and explore something emerging in my own experience from background to foreground, existing as an as-yet unformulated collection of thoughts, feelings, embodied states and relational interactions over the years of my training. From this starting place, I hoped to open, contextualize and co-create in language, through dialogue and relationship, a distinct, shared space for the lived experience of mothers training as psychotherapists. That included my own – “research is really me-search” (Beatrice Beebe, in Van der Kolk 2014, p109).
It was crucial too, to be able to see the field through separation, difference and similarity, rather than merger. As my subjectivity was implicitly present throughout, I made it explicit through my reflexive process in relation to the topic, the participants and what they said, and the project itself. As such I construed reflexivity as a dynamic, relational process.
Definitions
I define below, as simply as possible, my understanding of terms I use frequently.
‘Psychotherapy’ – I use this to denote both psychotherapy and counselling.
‘Training’ – Psychotherapy and counselling training, including: personal therapy, theoretical training, training groups (for theory, experiential interaction, integration, particular modules) and supervision.
‘Core process’ – The fundamental intrapsychic and interpersonal psychotherapeutic process undergone by trainees over the course of psychotherapy training, akin to the psychotherapeutic process of clients in psychotherapy.
‘Integration’ – While ‘integration’ has multiple definitions, I use it here to mean the embodied, emotional and cognitive process of becoming aware of, coming to terms with and owning ‘self-states’ associated with formative (relational) experience, previously inaccessible and unavailable to conscious being.
Overview
Having outlined the aims of the research, I next review the literature around my topic and outline my consideration of how best to answer my research question, introducing my research method and explaining how I designed and conducted the research, ethical considerations being at its heart. The findings are then presented and discussed in the light of extant literature, with a view to contributing to the development of psychotherapy training and practice.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Introduction
Although little attention has been paid to the experience of being a mother and training as a psychotherapist, the literature on motherhood is vast. To situate my topic in the wider field I looked at the following relevant areas: social constructions of motherhood including in relation to psychotherapy, ‘mother’ as constructed by psychotherapy, the experience of mothers as professional psychotherapists and in higher education. I also reviewed the growing literature on trainees’ experience of psychotherapy training. I assessed the quality of the literature and research evidence, mapped the relevant themes and identified the gaps that lead to my research method and questions.
The experience of motherhood (as with any experience) is ever changing in relation to time and context. Equally, the findings of my research can offer only a passing snapshot. This in mind, I limited my literature search to a rough 30-year ‘generational’ window – from the late 1980s, making one notable exception by including classical psychotherapeutic theory, as this is ‘live’ and central to the training and practice of psychotherapy and to understanding the positioning of mothers within it.
The Search
I undertook an extensive and ongoing search of the literature – on Google, Google Scholar, Athens, Pepweb, the BACP and Minster Centre dissertation databases and through Jstor, allowing me access to an extensive range of publications on Shibboleth, Pscyhnet, Scopus, Taylor and Francis, and Wiley. I accessed publications through the British Library, through contacts I made on Researchgate and by emailing authors directly. I asked mothers in related professions for references. I altered my search terms in response to the results each search produced, both broadening and refining my search to identify any relevant literature. For a full list of search terms used, please see Appendix 1. I contacted the UKCP and BACP. The UKCP currently has no special interest group for parents; I joined the BACP’s research network on training issues, however it is “not very active” according to the BACP and whilst there is research about relationships and families, and research about training, my topic was new to the research department.
An extensive search of the literature for my specific topic – the experience of mothers, of being both a parent and trainee psychotherapist/counsellor – yielded one small study and a few passing references (details below) and indicated this is a new field.
Background / Context
With little direct reference to my topic, much of my literature review explores the contexts – or background – in which it is situated. To contextualize as well as identify the gap in the literature, I structured my review starting with the wider contexts relevant to the topic, moving in towards the specific.
Construction of ‘mother’
To investigate the experience of mothers – both as parents and psychotherapy trainees – I first looked at how they are constructed in the context of time (2016) and culture (western Europe). The findings of one study in particular, reflect the main themes in the literature that frame the context within which motherhood is experienced.
Conceptualizing motherhood as socially constructed, Cole’s (2005) study examines “cultural representations of motherhood and the impact of these representations upon the individual”. Using a mix of research methods it offers both a broader overview and an in-depth look at individual experience. 72 mothers – across the range of stages of mothering – completed a questionnaire, with 17 taking part in a further research interview by email and four taking part in in-depth face-to-face interviews.
In a fascinating picture of how mothers experience and understand their identity as mothers in a particular (early 21st century, Western) context, several emergent themes seemed pertinent; mothers experiencing:
1. social constructions of motherhood as idealistic and guilt-inducing,
2. a wide range of influences on the role of motherhood including own mother and media;
3. both loss and transformation of the self;
4. maternal ambivalence, reflected by conflicting messages in current social constructions of motherhood, resulting in an inability to succeed as a mother.
5. Mothers who “were able to assimilate their own model of mothering seemed to be less indebted to cultural influences and fared better in terms of perceived levels of confidence in their role” (Cole 2005)
These themes are reiterated across the literature – personal accounts, for example, often by ‘celebrities’, describing realities of the experience of motherhood – drudgery, isolation – in contrast to the ideals (Turner 2016, Allen 2016, Cook 2012, Eckler 2006, Cusk 2001, 2008). Gerhardt (2004, 2010) portrays a conflict between the value of maternal nurture to the developing brain and the value of making money to Western society. Stern and Bruschweiler-Stern (1998) in, The Birth of a Mother: How the Motherhood experience changes you Forever encapsulate motherhood as a life-changing experience in which a woman’s sense of self and identity – in relation to others, to work and to meaning – undergo a major shift.
Cole’s research findings seem reflected in the wider literature incorporating both the terms ‘psychotherapist’ and ‘parent’:
‘(Trainee) psychotherapist’, ‘mother’ and ‘parent’ as socio-politically constructed (in relation to each other)
Contemporary socio-political constructions of motherhood and therapy in western society ostensibly divide them along a fault-line splitting the ‘bad mother’ and ‘good therapist’. “Just as mothers in our culture tend to be objectified in theories of early development, our psychological theories have objectified therapists. While mothers have been objectified in terms of their deficiencies and failures, therapists have been objectified as psychologically healthy, ‘good object’ healers (Elkind 1992, p154).
This equation still seems reflected by contemporary literature; papers and books frame the mother as the party with the problem, the ‘patient’, more often than not their child’s behaviour or emotional state being the pathological issue that therapy (or therapeutic training) with parent and / or child seeks to address – and the efficacy of which, is what is being discussed ((Milne 2015; Webster-Stratton and Hammond 2006; Murray et al 2003; Cohen et al 1999, Kenny 2015).
The mass media seemingly also reflects this context of inadequate, struggling parent helped by ‘expert’ therapist; see for example TV series’ ‘House of the Tiny Tearaways’ (BBC), ‘Supernanny’(C4) or ‘My Violent Child’ (C5). Witness too the widely reported ‘nanny state’ initiatives announced by successive governments, for example “Parents should take lessons in how to control children – PM” (Boffey 2016). The media reflects “a very high level of anxiety [and] a significant tendency to blame parents” (Rustin 2009, p207).
Having explored the socio-political context around the experience of being both a trainee psychotherapist and mother, I next explored motherhood in the context of the key theoretical literature underpinning psychotherapy – and training.
Classical developmental theory
In a psychotherapeutic context, parents – particularly mothers – play a critical developmental role for the child – the child who becomes the client, the psychotherapist, the parent. In particular, Object Relations theory (Klein 1946) and Attachment theory (Bowlby 1988) are central to integrative psychotherapy trainings. The focus of classical theoretical literature is on the developing child, Klein for example being among the first to put words to pre-verbal experience (Klein 1946). The mother is largely a developmental object.
Classical theorists who were parents – for example Freud, Klein, Deutsch, Jung, Abraham, Bowlby, Laing – wrote about their patients – who in the case of the first two included their own children – but nothing of their own experience as parents, even though the latter two acknowledge in their work, the influence of parents on their children’s developing psyches.
Bowlby’s biographers describe his distant relationship with his family (Gomez 1997), while Laing was described posthumously by his son as having “had nothing to do with his own family” (Daily Telegraph 21.04.13) and by his daughter (a psychotherapist) as abusive (The Herald 13.04.09). These father practitioner/theoreticians seemed to keep the personal and theoretical separate. It might be argued they were men of their time, socially constructed absent working fathers.
Klein, however, who became a psychoanalyst when her children were very young, keeps her motherhood – and anyone else’s – out of her developmental theory. Constructing the mother as a developmental object that is internalized, and as such central to the development of the child’s sense of self, she attributes internalization of good or bad objects to the child, omitting the possibility that they might also be shaped by the person of the mother (Greenberg and Mitchell 1983). One can only speculate as to what informed this striking theoretical omission. Klein’s bitter relationship with her daughter is well documented, Melitta having criticized her mother publicly. Biographers describe Klein suffering from what would now be called post-natal depression, leaving Melitta for an extended period to be brought up by her grandmother (Read 2009). But Klein seems ambivalent at best in acknowledging this. In her finished autobiography describing Melitta’s birth, “I was very happy with her. I gave her much of my time and attention and she was very attached to me” ((Klein 1959, Sayers and Forrester 2013). But an earlier draft, her ‘5th fragment’, reveals a different story, wherein “I knew all the time that I was not happy, but saw no way out” (Klein 1959, Hinshelwood 2015).
It seems a shadow of classical developmental theory is embodied by practitioner theorists who could explain how humans develop in relation to their parenting – particularly mothering – environment, yet would not publicly acknowledge or reflect on their own part in the development of their children or theories. Van Der Kolk (2014) points to their early experiences of maternal deprivation; for example Bowlby, Bion, Winnicott, Fairbairn and Guntrip were sent to boarding school aged 6-10. Reflexivity is a relatively recent, post-modern epistemological requirement, the absence of which at the time classical theorists were writing can perhaps only now be apparent.
A New Context: Intersubjectivity and Contemporary Theory
Over the past fifteen years or so, the developmental literature has been revisited and reframed in the context of developments in philosophy (Crossley 1996), neuroscience (Schore 2009, 2011, Porges 2001, 2004) and the intersubjective psychotherapeutic framework, for example, of contemporary Relational Psychoanalysis (Bromberg 2011). Feminist writer Jessica Benjamin reclaims the mother as a subject in her own right (Benjamin 1999), rather than purely the child’s (arguably idealized (Elkind 1992, Lomas 1990)) developmental object (Winnicott 1962). Contemporary psychotherapy accordingly acknowledges the intersubjective field in which the therapist’s subjectivity – and consequently his/her embodied self-awareness – is central like – and central to – the client’s.
There is some beautiful writing – largely through case studies – about therapeutic use of the therapist’s vulnerability and self-awareness in their clinical work (Asheri 2013, Bromberg 1996, Harris 2012). However, this two-person-psychological perspective seems not to have been applied or invited in the literature when it comes to mothers. The developmental literature does not seem to have filled the gap where the mother’s subjectivity was not, in relation to the developing child. Other than one account, set in the clinical context of problems in the first three years of life (Stern 1995), I simply could not find it.
Still searching, I turned next to the context of psychotherapy and psychotherapy training.
‘Mother’ as Constructed in the Process of Psychotherapy and Psychotherapy Training.
Search results are dominated by the one-person psychoanalytic model of therapist-as-transferential-mother and client-infantalized-as child who ‘grows up’ through the container of therapy and therapist. This is replicated, according to the literature, in the trainer – trainee relationship (Freidman and Kaslow 1986/2088, Folkes-Skinner 2010, Raubolt 2006) with the core process of training mirroring that of psychotherapy (Folkes-Skinner 2010). How this is for mothers is not explored.
In a two-person psychological model, infantile and adult – including maternal – self-states in both client and therapist interact unconsciously with each other, the therapist’s task being to bring them into conscious awareness (Bromberg 2011, Howell 2005). Looking at this process of therapeutic integration in the training context, implicates the relationship between trainee and trainer/training organization. An IPA study into the impact of integrative training on personal process and relationships, concludes, “the self in relationship with the organisation… may be influential in shaping the intrapsychic developments taking place,” Bavridge (2011), suggesting a trainee’s experience of relationship with the organization plays a part in their development as a therapist. There is nothing found in the literature on how this is experienced by either side, let alone mothers.