Putting ourselves in the picture: Phototherapy, collaborative writing, and psychotherapy research
Jane Speedy and Jonathan Wyatt
We’ll discuss and draw from our recent collaborative inquiry into collaborative writing approaches to psychotherapy research, following the artist Jo Spence, where we bring ourselves into the picture. In the chapter we say something about our own histories as therapists and scholars and the historical context (research into therapy being more often ‘about’ rather than ‘with’ and thus ‘them’ not ‘us’). At the chapter’s heart is our undertaking of phototherapy and writing as collaborative inquiry, where we each choose photos from our lives to engage with: one as children, one in our young adult years (late teens and 20s), and one from now, in our 60s. We consider these images and the stories that surround and arise from them, and we co-respond. We explore the possibilities this collaborative inquiry might have for re-thinking and re-framing psychotherapeutic research in these fragmented, atomised, polarised, fragile times.
We’ll offer some of this during our Open Space time, Perhaps this might prompt some writing together when we all meet.
Speedy, J., & Wyatt, J. (2023). Putting ourselves in the picture: Phototherapy, collaborative writing, and psychotherapy research. In Qualitative Research Approaches for Psychotherapy (pp. 176-192). Routledge.
