Intersectionality and power: an autoethnographic exploration of a psychotherapist’s narratives of oppression and their impact on her sense of self

This is a critical, evocative and evolving autoethnography that explores the narratives of oppression that arise from my lived experience of multiple and intersecting marginalized socio-cultural and political positions. The study arose from a recognition during my training as a counselling psychologist of a personal need to explore how my felt sense of self-in-relationship, as a gendered, racialized and sexualized being, within my particular socio-cultural and political contexts, impacted who I was or could be, in the therapy room, both as a client and a psychological therapist. In particular, I was curious about how the stories I told about my socio-cultural and political identities influenced my experiences of power or powerlessness in my relationships to others and the worlds I live in. The research became an enactment of the power processes I wished to explore, leading to prolonged periods of feeling stuck in the writing process which necessarily required an evolving methodological stance that could facilitate an enquiry into the stuckness – a process that led to painful but ultimately healing revelations about the silencing processes and internalized oppression that both inhibit and constitute my subjectivity. A recognition of the somatic dimensions and the repressed, or implicit non-verbal memories of the conscious stories I tell and don’t tell others and the emerging stories I tell myself, outside of conscious awareness, come to support the position that foundational trauma also needs to be considered as arising from political locations rather than solely from the familial locations of a dominant Western, Eurocentric and Androcentric psychoanalytic imagination. This research may be seen as a contribution to the growing multi-cultural movement in Western societies which is reshaping theory and practice in counselling psychology and psychotherapy. It is an account of the lived experience of multiple dimensions of oppression on one person’s sense of self. It also tells the story of how someone’s personal narratives about identity can keep them stuck or liberated within the power structures and discursive practices that shape the particular intersecting cultures they inhabit. By sharing my vulnerabilities, my hope is that the research will provide the reader with a lens through which they can reflect on their own narratives and the cultures they inhabit.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

DCPsych

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

DCPsych thesis

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Middlesex University / Metanoia Institute

Year dc:date.issued

2024

Author dc:creator

• Khan, F.

Identifier

oai:repository.mdx.ac.uk:317146

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:repository.mdx.ac.uk:317146