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PRODUCING SCRIPTS: AN ETHNOMETHODOLOGICAL
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PRODUCING SCRIPTS: AN ETHNOMETHODOLOGICAL STUDY OF
INTIMATE PARTNER VIOLENCE CHILD WITNESS THERAPY

By

Stacie Marie Gibson

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of Sociology

2008

ABSTRACT

PRODUCING SCRIPTS: AN ETHNOMETHODOLOGICAL STUDY
OF INTIMATE PARTNER VIOLENCE CHILD WITNESS THERAPY

By
Stacie Marie Gibson

Child witnesses of intimate partner violence (IPV) have begun to receive
explicit theoretical and therapeutic attention over the last decade. While
research on these children is relatively sparse, there is some agreement in the
literature that IPV child witnesses experience a number of childhood problems
including aggressive behavior, anxiety, depression, anger, low-self esteem,
temperament problems, and a tendency toward becoming abusers themselves.
In response to these negative consequences, various therapeutic regimens that
seek to rehabilitate these children have emerged. Subsequently, questions
around the effectiveness of these therapeutic regimens have begun to surface.

The Community Coordinated Response Projects to Prevent Intimate
Partner Violence collected data on the child therapy provided to 58 IPV child
witnesses at a Michigan rural Safe haven between January 2000 and September
2001 in an effort to explore the effectiveness of the traditional therapeutic
environment on various outcomes for the children. This dissertation is a
secondary analysis of the child therapy case notes collected through the original
research project.

The dissertation uses ethnomethodology as a framework to examine how
the traditional therapeutic environment is operationalized by one child therapist in

the Community Coordinated Response Projects to Prevent Intimate Partner

Violence. The data analysis was conducted through content analysis of the
therapy case notes using the ethnomethodological documentary method of
interpretation. The central questions that frame this study focus on how the child
therapist in the project accomplishes doing therapy. What claims does she make
about the IPV child witnesses, and how does she arrive at these claims? What
underlying assumptions does she appear to use in her assessments? How does
indexicality inform the interpretations that the therapist makes? And, ultimately,
what potential consequences for the IPV child witnesses result from a therapeutic
process based on these particular definitions, assumptions, and interpretations?
The conclusions of the study suggest that the therapist approached her
assessment and treatment of the children in her therapeutic care by employing a
number of interpretive procedures. For purposes of analysis, those procedures
are assembled into specific scripts including the Traumatized IPV Child Witness
script, Gendered scripts, the Healing IPV Child Witness script, and the Grateful
IPV Child Witness script. Each script documents certain characteristics,
attributes, and activities that the therapist associates with particular IPV child
witnesses in particular circumstances. The study also concludes that the
therapist actively produces the scripts despite the likelihood that she experiences
them as predetermined or predictable according to her personal and professional

training, experience, and common sense knowledge.

Copyright by
STACIE MARIE GIBSON
2008

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I cannot begin to thank all of the people who have contributed to my ability
to complete this unusually long journey as a graduate student at Michigan State
University. I would, however, like to acknowledge a number of individuals who
have played key roles in that process. First, I wish to thank my advisor, Dr.
Thomas Conner, for his patience, his ethnomethodological imagination, and his
commitment to the project. I would also like to thank my other committee
members, especially Dr. Toby TenEyck, for his consistent support,
encouragement, and belief in my abilities, without which I truly do not know how I
would have persisted; Dr. Lori Post for her original research and her commitment
to the welfare of the children in the project; and Dr. Steve Gold for always finding
another relevant connection to be made.

I would also like to thank my family. My parents, siblings, and extended
family have never wavered in their support and encouragement of my academic
pursuits. I am eternally grateful to my partner, Dawn McCoy for her years of
support, listening, understanding, and countless personal sacrifices she has
made to allow me the space and time to work, think, and write. I owe gratitude to
my two children, Cooper and Kennedy, for all of the small and large ways in
which their young spirits have unknowingly provided me with the inspiration to
continue through these last stages of project.

Finally, I would like to thank all of the other friends, family members,

faculty, colleagues, and co-workers who have contributed to my academic life

over the years. I credit them with providing the courage, strength, kindness,
perspective, and truth that I needed at the exact moments in time that I needed

them.

v1

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION ................................................................................... 1
Statement of Purpose .................................................................... 2
Conceptual Framework .................................................................. 4
Research Data ............................................................................. 5
The Data Set ...................................................................... 5
Data Adequacy and Limitations .............................................. 7
CHAPTER TWO
THEORY AND LITERATURE ................................................................. 10
Ethnomethodology as Theory ........................................................ 10
Inexicality ......................................................................... 15
Culture of Traditional Psychotherapy ............................................... 16
CHAPTER THREE
METHODOLOGY ................................................................................. 22
Ethnomethodolgy in Practice ......................................................... 22
Documentary Method .......................................................... 22
Expansion Analysis ............................................................. 27
Ethnomethodologic Principles ............................................... 33
Membership Categorization Analysis ...................................... 34
CHAPTER FOUR
DATA ANALYSIS: PRODUCING SCRIPTS ............................................... 40
The ‘Traumatized IPV Child Witness’ Script ...................................... 43
Gendered Scripts ........................................................................ 58
The ‘Healing IPV Child Witness’ Script ............................................. 70
The ‘Grateful IPV Child Witness’ Script ............................................ 74
CHAPTER FIVE
CONCLUSIONS .................................................................................. 81
Study Overview .......................................................................... 81
Discussion of Findings ................................................................. 82
Theoretical and Practical Implications ............................................. 85
APPENDICES .................................................................................... 87
BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................. 96

vii

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Intimate partner violence (IPV) refers to physical, sexual, or psychological
abuse by a current or former partner or spouse (CDC 2007). Children and
adolescents who have seen or heard IPV, been used as a tool of the perpetrator,
and/or experienced the aftermath of the violence are generally defined as having
“witnessed” IPV (Edelson 1999). Child witnesses of IPV have begun to receive
therapeutic attention over the last decade which has become explicitly
theoretically driven (Edleson 1999; Groves, Zuckerman, Marans, & Cohen 1993;
Rossman, Hughes, & Rosenberg 2000). Prior to this recent attention, the
phenomenon of children witnessing IPV was typically addressed, if at all, as a
tertiary issue related to either lPV or child abuse and neglect.

Like children who are victims of child abuse and neglect, child IPV
witnesses have been shown to experience a number of childhood problems
which can be loosely grouped into three main categories: behavioral and
emotional, cognitive functioning and attitudes, and longer-term problems
(Edelson 1999). Behavioral and emotional problems include aggressive and
antisocial behavior, anxiety, depression, anger, low-self esteem, temperament
problems, and diminished capacity to understand how others feel. Cognitive
functioning and attitudes of IPV child witnesses are most notably impacted in
their tendency to justify their own use of violence as a means of conflict
resolution (Spaccarelli, Coatsworth, & Bowden 1995). Some studies have shown

that these childhood problems can become longer-term and translate into

adulthood depression, low self-esteem, trauma-related symptoms, and low social
adjustment (Silvem et al. 1995; Henning et al. 1996). There is also evidence that
children exposed to IPV are more likely to become abusers themselves (Moffitt
and Caspi 1998).

As a response to the host of detrimental responses that children can have
as a result of witnessing lPV, various therapeutic regimens that seek to
rehabilitate these children have emerged. A wide range of therapies exist and
some will be examined in more detail below. However, in general, these
therapies can be seen as making the basic assumption that IPV witnesses have
manifested a degree of abnormal emotional and behavioral responses as a result
of the stress or trauma that they experienced during the violence witnessing
experience. The overall goal of child therapy then, is to help children learn to
cope appropriately and to become “normalized” in their behaviors and emotional

reactions.

Statement of Purpose
The most effective method for normalizing IPV children can be, and has
been, debated (Groves 2002; Rossman, Hughes, & Rosenberg 2000). There are
traditional clinical models, individual child counseling approaches, group therapy
sessions for children, family therapy sessions, after-care programs, multi-
disciplinary teams, play therapies, and various combinations of the above aimed
at providing IPV witnesses with the most effective and developmentally

appropriate menu of services. What has not been closely attended to in these

discussions however, is how the process of providing these therapies, and the
fundamental assumptions that underlie them, contribute to a particular
construction of identity for the IPV child witness that includes abnormal attributes.
That is, the therapist in essence contributes to the child’s sense of self, and
purposefully so, during the course of treatment. The goal of normalizing the child
is generated from the assumption that the child is somehow abnormal or has
abnormal responses to his or her environment. As such, the specific
assessments, activities, and interventions that the child is subject to in the name
of normalization help to define and shape that child’s self as abnormal in the first
place.

This is not to say that IPV child witnesses do not suffer real and significant
consequences as the result of their experiences. To the contrary, there is a
wealth of clinical evidence that indicates that they do (Burgess, Harman, &
Clements 1995; Rossman 1998; Mullender et al. 2002). What is being called
into question is whether and how traditional therapeutic models are providing IPV
witnesses with what they need in order to lead “normal” healthy lives. This study
seeks to explore this question through an examination of the child therapy
provided to 58 IPV child witnesses at a Michigan rural safe haven through the
Community Coordinated Response Projects to Prevent Intimate Partner
Violence. To develop this line of inquiry, a fundamental exercise in “sense-
making” of the therapeutic process itself is required. The central questions that
frame this study then, focus on how the child therapist in the project

accomplishes doing therapy. What claims does she make about the IPV child

witnesses, and how does she arrive at these claims? What underlying
assumptions does she appear to use in her assessments? How does indexicality
inform the interpretations that the therapist makes? And, ultimately, what
potential consequences for the IPV child witnesses result from a therapeutic

process based on these particular definitions, assumptions, and interpretations?

Conceptual Framework

This study is decidedly an exercise in ethnomethodology. The conceptual
framework that serves as the foundation for engaging in this exploratory
secondary analysis is, at its core, rooted in the ethnomethodologic tradition. That
said, it is worth noting that the ethnomethodologic “tradition” is itself somewhat
fluid and difficult to package in any sort of neat way. Attempts to do so leave one
with messy edges and loose, uncooperative ends that defy categorization. As
such, we are better served by assembling a conceptual framework that accounts
for a particular interpretation of ethnomethodology, as long as that interpretation
can be shown to have valid tenants which allow for an instructive analysis to
ensue.

The literature review will outline ethnomethodologic theory developed
through the work of Harold Garfinkel. In addition, theory on various therapeutic
models that shape child-therapy will provide an additional layer of context to the

framework which will ultimately be employed to move through the analysis.

Research Data

The Data Set

This study involves an ethnomethodological secondary analysis of data
collected as part of the Community Coordinated Response Projects to Prevent
Intimate Partner Violence in a rural Michigan Safe Haven (see Post et al. 2003).
The data were collected during phase II of the clinical trial portion of the project
which included child therapy being offered to children and adolescents who were
IPV witnesses. The goal of this aspect of the original project was to evaluate the
effectiveness of the child therapy intervention provided to the IPV child witnesses
by answering four questions:

First, how does individual and family therapeutic counseling

sessions with the Child Therapist improve the overall health

outcomes of children and adolescents who witness and report
intimate partner violence and trauma at home? Second, how
effective were the short-term individualized therapeutic
intervention(s) and selected arts of healing for the children and
adolescents seen by the Child Therapist? Third, is group
counseling as effective as individual counseling for children who

have witnessed intimate partner violence or domestic violence,

family violence, and trauma? Fourth and finally, how do the pre-

school, elementary school-aged children, and adolescents living

with various exposures of intimate partner violence or domestic

violence, family violence, and trauma describe their ‘real-world’ and

‘lived experiences’? (Post et al. 2003: 72)

Child therapy associated with this study took place at the rural safe haven
between January 2000 and September 2001. During that time, 68 families (with
104 children) were referred to the same child therapist at the shelter and data are
available on 58 children who had a least one therapy session with her. The child

therapist recorded case notes after her therapy sessions with the children. The

notes were later transcribed by a research assistant. Each child was assigned a
case number and that number was used to associate the child with the
corresponding case notes. This collection of therapist case notes comprises the
bulk of the data available from this study. Other background data elements
extracted from the original study included researchers’ summaries of group
therapy notes completed by the therapist for a boys’ group attended by some of
the children, therapeutic workbooks and drawings completed by some of the
children or completed by the therapist for the children during the course of their
therapy, and demographic data compiled from shelter intake and referral forms.
In the original study, children’s self-reports of well-being and clinical case
notes from the child therapist were used to conduct an analysis of the
effectiveness of the child therapy. The study concluded that the therapy seemed
to be effective in improving children’s well-being on a short-term basis and it
provided them with an opportunity to discuss their concerns about their situation
as well as their ‘lived experiences’. The study conceded, however, that the short
duration and other limitations of the study design and data sets prevented any
conclusive substantiation of the effectiveness of the child therapy interventions.
The child therapist’s case notes were obtained with permission from Lori
A. Post, the Principal Investigator for the Community Coordinated Response
Projects to Prevent Intimate Partner Violence, and comprised the bulk of the data
set for this secondary analysis. In addition, other supporting demographic data,
analyses, and conclusions that were compiled as part of the original research

were utilized to provide additional context to the secondary analysis.

Data Adeguacy and Limitations

As with any secondary analysis, this study is limited by the quality and
parameters of the data collected for the primary investigation. A number of data
limitations pertaining to this component of the original study were noted by the
primary researchers including; the lack of use of validated instruments; the
absence of a control site; the use of self-reporting from a self-selected sample of
women and children experiencing crisis; and a small, predominately white group
of participants, (Post at al. 2003). In addition, the therapist did not work from a
specific grounded theory or adhere to a specified study design. Finally, case
notes were not always adequately numbered so that they could be tracked back
to the corresponding child in therapy. These limitations made it difficult for the
primary researchers to track children’s progress over time or to assess the real
efficacy of the child therapy sessions in any meaningful way. Another layer of
complication exists in that the completed intake forms, parental interview forms,
and biological information forms cited in the original study could not be located or
were otherwise unavailable for the secondary analysis.

There is also a significant challenge posed by the questionable quality of
the case notes. The notes are written in a stream of consciousness style. In
many instances, the speaker is not identified and it is difficult to discern if the
case notes are referring to what the child actually said during the session or what
the therapist concluded based on the discussions that took place. Some

sessions included multiple family members and it is unclear who the therapist

addressed and whose responses and reactions are recorded in the case notes.
In other entries, individuals are identified in the notes as having said or done
something without any description of the individuals’ relationship to the child.
There is often no sense of whether the therapist is referring to a sibling, parent,
guardian, teacher, or other helping professional who happened to interact with
the child that day. There is also an overall lack of context in the case notes.
Connections are not always made with previous sessions and the case notes
exhibit little follow-up on issues that the children presented with from one session
to the next.

The combination of these limitations admittedly make it very difficult to
conduct any investigation into the therapy’s effectiveness in improving the well-
being of child IPV witnesses. However, the data did offer a very interesting
ethnomethodological opportunity to look at the manner in which the therapy was
provided and the possible consequences for the child’s conception of self. The
musings of the therapist, if that is all we can say they are, reflect the information
and details that she believed were pertinent to the course of therapy. This had
something to say about her perception of the children, their degree of
“abnormalness”, their progress toward becoming more “normal”, and her role as
their therapist.

While the original data set poses significant challenges to arriving at
empirical findings through a traditional secondary analysis, this is an
ethnomethodological analysis and there is a wealth of information teeming with

evidence of interactions, assumptions, interpretations, negotiations, and

reflections representing a data set well-suited to meaningful analysis through

ethnomethodological inquiry.

CHAPTER TWO

THEORY 8: LITERATURE

This study will use ethnomethodology as a framework to examine how the
traditional therapeutic environment is operationalized by one child therapist in the
Community Coordinated Response Projects to Prevent Intimate Partner
Violence. The work of Harold Garfinkel and other ethnomethodological scholars
will be employed to establish the analytical and methodological framework. I will
also provide a brief review of literature related to psychotherapeutic theory and
culture to give some insight into the therapeutic environment being analyzed in

this study.

Ethnomethodology as Theory
A student of Talcott Parsons, Harold Garfnkel is credited with founding
ethnomethodology in the 19503 and 1960s (Heritage 1984; Francis & Hester
2004; Hilbert 1992). In his classic work, Studies in Ethnomethodology, Garfinkel
describes ethnomethodology as, “the investigation of rational properties of
indexical expressions and other practical actions as contingent ongoing
accomplishments of organized artful practices of everyday life,” (Garfinkel 1967:
11). Ethnomethodology often escapes neat sociological definition precisely
because it is a “method” or a means of “investigation” rather than a theory
proper. Others have described the ethnomethodological approach as follows:

lts concerns are with the ‘observability’ of ordinary social life,
and its principal method of investigation is that of observation.

10

Its focus is upon the methods by which observable social

activities are produced. It seeks to investigate how social

activities are accomplished by members of society...lts key

assumption is that the production of observable social

activities involves the local or situated use of member’s

methods for doing such activities. (Francis & Hester 2004:

20)

Because of its focus on everyday interaction, ethnomethodology is often
associated with the symbolic interaction tradition, and/or similar perspectives
such as social constructionism and phenomenology. While some basic
similarities do exist, ethnomethodology departs from these traditions in important
ways. Social rules and norms provide a foundation for symbolic interactionist
traditions. For the social interactionist, shared meanings, or typifications, are
internalized by individuals through a process of socialization. These become the
common rules that members of a particular group use to conduct their day to day
lives. Reality, then, is not objective, but socially constructed through the
everyday interaction between members of a particular group.

Ethnomethodolgy also holds that reality is not an objective or external fact.
However, it does not place the construction of reality squarely on the shoulders
of a pre-existing set of shared meanings, common knowledge, rules, norms, or
typifications.

Ethnomethodolgy goes further. The structures of ‘objective

reality’ are characterized as being far more fragile and malleable.

For the ethnomethodologist there is no shared set of

understanding and meaning which members attach to the world

around them...What members do share are methods for making

sense. Schutz’s [phenomenological] common stock of

knowledge is reconceptualized as a shared set of interpretive

procedures, sense making activities that are invoked and

employed continually in interaction. These procedures allow
members to produce practical accounts of specific individuals

11

engaged in specific activities in the context of particular
situations. (Keel 1999: 3)

Garflnkel’s work pays particular attention to this distinction. Ethnomethodology
treats common understanding as a procedure or an operation rather than
something that assimilates an external rule. Consider this excerpt from Studies
in Ethnomethodology:

‘Shared agreement’ refers to various social methods for
accomplishing the member’s recognition that something was
said-according-to-a-rule and not the demonstrable matching of
substantive matters. The appropriate image of common
understanding is therefore an operation rather than a common
intersection of overlapping sets...ln short, a common
understanding, entailing as it does an ‘inner’ temporal course of
interpretive work, necessarily has an operational structure. For
the analyst to disregard its operational structure, is to use
common sense knowledge of the society in exactly the ways that
members use it when they must decide what persons are really
doing or really ‘talking about,’ i.e., to use common sense
knowledge as both a topic and a resource of inquiry. An
alternative would be to assign exclusive priority to the study of
the methods of concerted actions and methods of common
understanding. Not a method of understanding, but immensely
various methods of understanding are the professional
sociologist’s proper and hitherto unstudied and critical
phenomena. (Garfinkel 1967: 31)

For Garfinkel, the notion that there exists a common set of rules that members of
a particular society simultaneously construct and employ in order to understand
each other is abandoned in favor of ethenomethodology. Ethnomethodology,
then, is the work of studying how sense-making is achieved to accomplish
practical actions in everyday life.

To accomplish this, he describes five ‘policies’ that guide

ethnomethodological inquiries. I will briefly describe them below.

12

1)

2)

3)

The first policy Garfinkel puts forth pertains to the scope of activities or
occasions that can be studied in ethnomethodological research. Quite
simply put, the scope is infinite. “No inquiries can be excluded no matter
where or when they occur, no matter how vast or trivial their scope,
organization , cost, duration, consequences, whatever their successes,
whatever their repute, their practitioners, their claims, their philosophies
or philosophers,” (Garfinkel 1967: 32). Because ethnomethodology is
concerned with everyday practical actions, all the stuff of everyday life is
appropriate research material.

The second policy necessitates a recognition that rational activities are
continuous procedures engaged in by members rather than a simple
exercise of invoking some pre-existing rule. We cannot assume a
definition of rational action exists for the members, and therefore neither
can we assume so for the researcher. We must recognize that,
“[mlembers to an organized arrangement are continually engaged in
having to decide, recognize, persuade, or make evident the rational.
(Garfinkel, 1967: 32).

Upon acceptance of the second policy, the third policy becomes a matter
of course. That is, we cannot assume that activities are efficient,
planned, typical, consistent, or uniform. As such, it does not make sense
to attempt to describe rules that exist outside of the activity itself as
somehow guiding the activity. Instead, ethnomethodology focuses on the

production of rules and rational action by members within a setting rather

l3

than the employment of external rules by members to guide their actions.
Rules can be understood to be used by members as part of the social
order rather than as an explanation of it.

4) The fourth policy, “is recommended that any social setting be viewed as
self-organizing with respect to the intelligible character of its own
appearances as either representations of or as evidences-of-a-social-
order,” (Garfinkel 1967: 33). Every setting is uniquely organized through
its member’ methods to make its own activities accountable.

5) Finally, Garfinkel suggests that in every possible inquiry there will be
evident the apparent rational properties of the sense-making activities
(proverbs, passing remarks, fables, expressions, etc.) of the members.
The production of rational properties of indexical expressions and actions
by members is experienced by those members as practical and organized
conduct.

This last policy is key to the ethnomethodological perspective. Garfinkel
suggests that there are underlying and, indeed, ‘unrecognizable’ features to
everyday life. Members recognize their sense-making activity as common
sense, practical, and organized. However, ethnomethodology seeks to
recognize that same activity as something more — namely, as ongoing,

continually produced, contingent, ‘artful’ practices.

14

lndexicaliy

As we have seen above, the concept of indexicality is central to
ethnomethodological inquiry and, as such, it warrants some additional treatment
here. According to Hilbert (1992) ethnomethodologists use the term ‘indexical’
to refer to a property of expressions that suggests that their meaning is
imprecise and varies depending upon context. We can only understand an
expression or a collection of words within the particular context or situation in
which they were used. Garfinkel (1967; 1974) has noted that traditional
sociological analysis has been uncomfortable with indexical expressions and
found them rather inadequate for understanding an objective reality. As a
consequence, social scientists have sought to develop a standardized
descriptive vocabulary by substituting ‘objective’ expressions for ‘indexical’
expressions with a goal of accomplishing a scientifically sound and literal
description of the social world. However, this is where ethnomethodology
makes an important departure from other forms of analysis. Garfinkel suggests
that gfl expressions are indexical and therefore, an objective decontextualized
sociological vocabulary is impossible and basically useless.

Garfinkel takes this argument a step further and suggests that most
sociological researchers end up recognizing that whatever objective approach
they are trying to employ is somehow inadequate due to the indexical nature of
the situation, but they will try to pass the research off as meaningful
nonetheless. “In every actual case without exception, conditions will be cited

that a competent investigator will be required to recognize, such that in that

15

particular case the terms of the demonstration [that objective concepts are in
use] can be relaxed and nevertheless the demonstration be counted as an
adequate one,” (Garfinkel 1967: 6).

Given that we are stuck with indexical expressions and only indexical
expressions, Garfinkel takes them on head on as the unit of analysis in
ethnomethodological investigations. Instead of trying to generalize or uncover
some underlying social rule set to apply to everyday indexical expressions,
ethnomethodological work focuses on understanding each expression within its
context. Why is something being said at this particular time, in this particular
way, by this particular person, in this particular situation? How is the action of
what is being said linked to the situation in which it was said? “Thus, the point is
not to construct theories of the relationship between, for example, culture and
behavior or social rules and their application, but to investigate the cultural
methods and resources persons actually and observably employ in getting done

whatever it is that they are doing,” (Francis 8 Hester 2004: 31 ).

Culture of Traditional Psychotherapy
This study is social-psychological in nature and does not in any way
attempt to provide an in-depth analysis of the history and theory behind the
various approaches to child therapy. However, I feel that some cursory
discussion of theory and practice of the traditional therapeutic approach is
warranted as it lends context to the behaviors, reflections, and impressions of the

child therapist and her interactions with the child IPV witnesses. In general, the

16

literature on child therapies for lPV witnesses tends to support approaches that
are multifaceted, involve several family members, and are developmentally
appropriate (Rossman, Hughes, & Rosenberg 2000). Because a good deal of
child IPV witness therapy takes place in women’s shelters, a comprehensive
approach to treating IPV witnesses is often not possible due to limited resources
available to the shelter and the limited amount of time families typically will reside
in, or be associated with, the shelter. As a result, IPV witness therapy in practice
may be as much a reflection of what is possible as it is a response to therapeutic
models that have been shown to be effective. To further complicate matters,
empirical testing of IPV witness therapy is scarcely conducted due to the relative
newness of the field coupled with the lack of shelter resources and short duration
of family stay as noted above (Rossman, Hughes, & Rosenberg 2000).

Despite the lack of comprehensive or conclusive research in this area
there are, nonetheless, a number of therapists doing clinical work with IPV
witnesses and these therapists do that work within whatever particular theoretical
framework their training and experience has afforded them. There are several
theories that support the work of child therapists seeking to assist IPV child
witnesses. Most are couched in a culture of traditional therapy. Harry Stack
Sullivan (1933; 1934; 1937; 1938; 1940; 1947; 1951) is largely credited with
formulating the foundations of modern psychiatry and the psychiatric interview.
Sullivan’s conceptions about psychotherapy are based largely on his
understanding of the self. Like symbolic interactionists, Sullivan understands the

self to be reflective and dependent upon interactions with others. Sullivan pays

17

particular attention to the development of the self through childhood. His
conclusions are particularly germane to this study of IPV child witnesses.

The self may be said to be made up of reflected appraisals.

If these were chiefly derogatory, as in the case of an

unwanted child who was never loved, of a child who has

fallen into the hands of foster parents who have no real

interest in him as a child; as I say, if the self dynamism is

made up of experience which is chiefly derogatory, then the

self dynamism will itself be chiefly derogatory. It will

facilitate hostile, disparaging appraisals of other people and

it will entertain disparaging and hostile appraisals of itself.

(Sullivan 1940: 10)
The basic premise of this conception is that children who grow up in difficult
circumstances where they do not feel safe, secure, and loved, will be challenged
with low self-esteem and inappropriately negative conceptions of others.
Sullivan’s assessment of the mental state of individuals who experience these
issues is equally as telling.

Needless to say, limitations and peculiarities of the self may

interfere with the pursuit of biologically necessary

satisfactions. When this happens, the person is to that

extent mentally ill. Similarly, they may interfere with

security, and to that extent also the person is mentally ill.

(Sullivan 1940: 10)
This points to a culture of therapy that has emerged from a position that
understands children with difficult backgrounds as necessarily afflicted with low
self-esteem and by definition, mentally ill.

The child therapist involved in the Rural Michigan Community Coordinated

Response Projects to Prevent Intimate Partner Violence cites the widely

employed work of Cari Rogers (1959; 1961) and the “client-centered” or “person-

18

centered” approach as fundamental to her theoretical base. Building on
humanistic theory and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Rogers’ approach suggests
that because the client or individual has an innate drive for self-actualization, it is
the client rather than the therapist who has the capacity to affect positive
personal change. In order to facilitate that process then, the therapist must
exhibit three attributes; congruence or genuineness, unconditional positive
regard for the client, and accurate empathetic understanding for the client. The
goal of client—centered therapy is to have the clients develop self-trust, relinquish
defenses, and achieve insight in order to take on personal responsibility for
making positive changes that will result in a greater sense of personal happiness.

In addition to the client-centered approach, the child therapist in the Rural
Michigan Community Coordinated Response Projects to Prevent Intimate Partner
Violence indicates that she is guided by principles of feminist therapy. This is a
consistent theme with many therapies typically provided in response to family
violence (Rossman, Hughes, & Rosenberg 2000). With feminist theory as a
foundation, feminist therapy is rooted in the understanding that male-dominated
cultures devalue women and children and that the experience of living in such a
culture has an adverse effect on not only their life chances, but on their mental
health as well. The therapeutic environment then, is strength-based and very
focused on addressing the dynamics of power.

Feminist therapy attempts to create an egalitarian therapy

relationship, in which, although the inequality of power between

therapist and client is acknowledged, intentional efforts are made

by the therapist to empower the client and to define her or him as

an authority equal in value to the therapist. Clients are encouraged
to discover the manner in which their authority in their lives has

19

been taken from them and, using the therapeutic relationship as

one model setting, begin to reclaim that authority and to speak in

their own voice. (Brown 2000: 2)

Validating repressed feelings of anger, self-doubt, and self-hatred are common
features of feminist therapy as is the focus on relearning sex—role socialization
and the building of women’s strengths.

It is within this traditional theoretical matrix that child IPV witnesses are
frequently treated. Whether the child receives individual therapy, group therapy,
or some combination thereof, the basic premise of the therapeutic environment is
one that has at its base a notion of the child repairing a damaged “self" through a
positive and trusting relationship with his or her therapist. While there is some
agreement that a therapeutic regimen is somewhat beneficial for lPV child
witnesses (Moore & Pepler 1998; Rossman, Hughes, 8 Rosenberg 2000), there
remains a dearth of empirical studies that provide conclusive evidence of the
degree and nature of the benefit. This further begs investigation into the
consequences to the self that may be experienced by children in the traditional
therapeutic environment.

It is important to consider the dynamics of power at work in the traditional
therapeutic environment as well. The typical provider-client relationship is
socially constructed in such a way that the therapist has a degree of social
authority over her patients (Turner 1995; 1996). The therapist’s status as a
professional, or at least as a paraprofessional, affords her some measure of
power over her clients. Professions are constructed in such a way that ensures

that members have this power.

20

The specialized knowledge of the professional creates the basis for

prestige and social distance between the expert and the client,

since the client by definition is excluded from the esoteric

knowledge of the professional association. We might suggest that

the professions have to have a hermeneutic basis; that is, there has

to be the development of interpretation which provides the barrier

against external regularization through the routinization of its base

in knowledge. (Turner 1995: 133)
While the professional prestige of a therapist is certainly less significant than that
of a physician or a psychologist, the interpretive nature of the work and the
occupational specialization of therapy within a quasi-medical context results in a
power imbalance between therapists and clients in the therapeutic setting
nonetheless. In the case of IPV child witness therapy, this unequal distribution of
power is further exaggerated by the fact that the provider is an adult and the
client is a child. These dynamics must be accounted for in the examination of

how the therapist’s relationship with the child IPV witness contributes to the

child’s concept of self.

21

CHAPTER THREE

METHODOLOGY

For this secondary analysis, ethnomethodological content analysis of the
child therapist’s case notes and the other available documents from the child
therapy project was conducted. The full set of case notes representing the
therapist’s work with the children from January 2000 to September 2001 was
used to conduct the analysis. To the extent that demographic data could be
extracted from the data set, basic relationships between the recorded content of
therapy sessions and the children’s gender, age, ethnicity, cultural background,

and familial structure were examined to provide context for the rest of the

analysis.

Ethnomethodology in Practice

Documentary Method
The basic principles and concepts of ethnomethodology have been established
above. The fundamental questions that ethnomethodology seeks to explore
have been outlined and the central tenants of that exploration have been
explicated. What has not yet been attended to is how one actually ‘does’
ethnomethodology. Garfinkel employs Mannheim’s (1952) ‘documentary
method of interpretation’ to assist us here.

The method consists of treating an actual appearance as ‘the

document of, as ‘pointing to’ as ‘standing on behalf of’ a

presupposed underlying pattern. Not only is the underlying
pattern derived from its individual documentary evidences, but

22

the individual documentary evidences, in their turn, are

interpreted on the basis of ‘what is known’ about the underlying

pattern. Each is used to elaborate the other. (Garfinkel 1967: 78)
As we have shown, ethnomethodologists understand ‘underlying patterns’ as
essentially nonexistent and without core meaning due to indexicality. However,
we have also shown that members experience such patterns as common-sense
knowledge that might be understood as something akin to folklore. Individuals
expect or anticipate that their expressions will be meaningful to each other in the
context of a whole. Schutz provides us with a key understanding about this
intersubjectivity. Essentially, Schutz asserts that two individuals will never have
the exact same experience, but this does not matter because each individual will
invariably assume and operate as if their experiences are, practically, the same.

I take it for granted - and assume my fellow man does the same -

that if I change places with him so that his ‘here’ becomes mine, I

shall be the same distance from things and see them with the same

typicality as he actually does; moreover, the same things would be

in my reach which are actually in his... ‘We’ assume that both of us

have selected and interpreted the actually or potentially common

objects and their features in an identical manner or at least an

‘empirically identical’ manner, i.e. one sufficient for all practical

purposes. (Schutz 1962: 11-12)
Individuals achieve intersubjectivity, then, by functioning in a perceived common
world. As such, they do not utter every detail of what they are trying to
communicate to one another. They use expressions and vague references in
their interactions and yet they seek to maintain a common understanding by what
they experience as the use of common-sense.

Rather than recognizing sense-making procedures of members as a

common body of knowledge that resides in pre-existing empirical social

23

structures, ethnomethodologists view each concrete use of an expression as
‘documentation’ of both the production/assembly and the presupposition of a
body of social stmctures on the member’s part. An ethnomethodological
researcher cannot make interpretations based on presuppositions, but must
temper any interpretation of an expression with the context of the situation, what
may have been said prior to the expression, and what may be said after the
expression was uttered. Just as social structures emerge in every social setting,
so too must the interpretations made by the researcher. The same word or
expression can, and Garfinkel would argue invariably does, have different
meanings when used in different context. It is the ethnomethodological
researcher’s task (just as it is the members’ task) to consider the various
alternate meanings and arrive at some adequate description of the expression
within the particular social situation. An important feature of the documentary
method of interpretation then, is its temporality. According to Mannheim,
“documentary interpretation has the peculiarity that it must be performed anew
each period, and that any single interpretation is profoundly influenced by the
location within the historical stream from which the interpreter attempts to
reconstruct the spirit of the past epoch,” (Mannheim 1952: 36).

While the documentary method of interpretation is not a popular
methodology in sociological analysis, there have been a handful of
ethnomethodological studies that have used the documentary method
successfully. The most well-known are detailed in Garfinkel’s (1986)

Ethnomethodological Studies of Work. In this collection of organizational

24

studies, Garfinkel, true to his first policy, demonstrates that the scope of inquiries
and practical actions that lend themselves to ethnomethodologic study is
ubiquitous. A range of studies focusing on everything from truck wheel
accidents, to Kung Fu instruction, to designing a notational system for
transcribing lectures, to the occult science of alchemy are profiled. Despite the
vast range of topics and data sets, the procedures and conclusions of the
researchers are unmistakably ethnomethodologic. For example, in an inquiry of
accident data related to truck wheel accidents, Baccus (1986) notes the
indexicality of service personnel’s assessments of the types of improper
behavior that could contribute to an accident. “These improprieties are
contextual assessments. That is, seeing actions as improper in some fashion,
either as shortcutting or as illegitimate action, is seeable only within a context of
looking. The context is made up of existing schema of the account of what the
enterprise — here truck tire servicing — is about and of what it consists,” (Baccus
1986: 38). Using the documentary method, Baccus goes on to explicate how
these real-world assessments both evidence and produce an underlying pattern
or “common—sense” body of knowledge for the service personnel.

In a slightly more recent, and arguably more exotic, ethnomethodologic
study, David Zeitlyn (1990) uses the documentary method of interpretation to
inform his analysis of Mambila spider divination. Zeitlyn’s study focuses on the
Mambila society of Cameroon. The Mambila practice spider divination which
involves a process of enticing a spider out of its hole in the ground forcing it to

disturb leaves placed near the mouth of the hole. The pattern the spider creates

25

in the leaves is then interpreted by a diviner as one of two possible answers to a
question posed by the person who has come to seek advice. Often multiple
questions about a particular problem are asked and multiple spiders may be
consulted during the process. Zeitlyn analyzes divination sessions as situated
dialogue and pays particular attention to how contradictory answers are
understood to provide additional information. He suggests that when apparent
contradictions in the answers arise, the diviners redefine the contradictions as
opportunities to pursue other lines of questioning. Negotiating contradictions in
this way serves to protect the validity and integrity of the divination practice itself.
If the answer to one question contradicts the answer to a previous question, the
contradictory answer is interpreted as begging a new question and suggesting
the question that produced the contradictory answer was not the appropriate line
of inquiry. He concludes, “Garfinkel’s methods may be used to reveal the way in
which diviners construct the dialogue. In essence: contradictions were
understood as question-rejection moves. They give pause for thought, and lead
to changes in tack,” (Zeitlyn 1990: 663). Zeitlyn’s study is an excellent example
of how even ancient practices that have been ritualistically repeated numerous
times are new productions each and every time they are performed. Each
production ‘documents’ a certain presupposed common body of knowledge (the

validity of the divination practice) at the same time it contributes to it.

26

Exggnsion Ana_lvsis

This secondary analysis employs procedures related to the documentary
method of interpretation (Mannheim 1952, Garfinkel 1967) as described above.
In order to understand the various methods individuals use to accomplish shared
meaning, Garfinkel recommends a meticulous exercise whereby records of
situated dialogues are expanded to include the ‘unspoken’ or taken for granted
information within a particular context. Garfinkel relays an example of this
exercise that he engaged in with his students.

Students were asked to report common conversations by writing on

the left side of a sheet what the parties actually said and on the

right side what they and their partners understood that they were

talking about. A student reported the following colloquy between
himself and his wife.

 

HUSBAND: This afternoon as l was
Dana succeeded in putting a brining Dana, our four-year-
penny in a parking meter without old son, home from the
being picked up. nursery school, he

succeeded in reaching high
enough to put a penny in the
parking meter when we
parked in a parking meter
zone, whereas before he has
always had to be picked up to

 

reach that high.
WIFE: Since he put a penny in a
Did you take him to the record meter that means you
store? stopped while he was with

you. I know that you stopped
at the record store either on
the way to get him or on the
way back. Was it on the way
back, so that he was with you
or did you stop there on the
way to get him and
somewhere else on the way
back?"“

 

 

 

 

(Garfinkel 1967: 38)

27

Garfinkel goes on to discuss how the colloquy demonstrates that the couple
understood many things that were not explicitly mentioned, and that
understanding was possible both because of what was said m1 what was left
unsaid. The understanding relied on temporality and biography. The couple
often had to rely on their historical knowledge and also wait for future
expressions to be made in order to accomplish meaning. Further, the couple
could achieve a common understanding by treating each other’s actual
expressions as ‘documents’ of an undenying pattern. “The underlying pattern
was not only derived from a course of individual documentary evidences but the
individual documentary evidences in their turn were interpreted on the basis of
‘what was known’ and anticipatorily knowable about the underlying patterns.
Each was used to elaborate the other,” (Garfinkel 1967: 40).

By treating the therapist’s case notes as a situated dialogue, the data in
this study was analyzed through the same meticulous methodology. Excerpts
from actual case notes were placed on the left side of the page. On the right side
of the page, what was actually recorded in the case notes was expanded to
include an interpretation of the ‘taken for granted’ information that was not
recorded. Like Garfinkel suggests above, the interpretations needed to rely on
what was previously documented in the record as well as what was subsequently
documented in the record. Admittedly, there was ultimately a degree of ‘leap-
taking’ in the interpretation, especially since the analysis was physically and
temporally removed from the actual event of the therapist note-taking. However,

that uncertainty was mitigated by the existence of an extraordinary volume of

28

notes available for analysis. Further, the therapeutic literature provided a sense
of the therapeutic approach, or underlying assumptions experienced as common
sense knowledge likely employed by the therapist as she engaged with the child
IPV witnesses for therapy sessions. While current delivery mechanisms for child
therapy may vary, according to Groves (1999), certain therapeutic goals for
children who have witnessed domestic violence are well-established and
commonly accepted.

A first goal of therapeutic intervention is promoting open discussion

of the children’s experiences. . .the process of retelling or reenacting

a traumatic event in the safety of a therapeutic relationship is in

itself a healing experience, and a first step toward integrating the

experience into their understanding of themselves. Second,

therapists seek to help children understand and c0pe with their
emotional responses to the violence, while promoting their
acquisition of positive behavior patterns...Third, mental health
interventions seek to reduce the symptoms the children are
experiencing in response to the violence...Finally, therapists work

to help the family create a safe, stable, and nurturing environment

for the child, because children cannot begin to recover from the

effects of exposure to violence so long as the exposure continues.

(Groves 1999: 125-126)

With the background of the therapeutic literature that likely occupied the
therapist’s common sense knowledge and an expansive record in the data set,
there was increased opportunity for ‘underlying patterns’ to be documented with
significant frequency and a high degree of efficacy through the expansion
analysis process. This provided more substantial evidence of how sense-making
was accomplished in this context and left less up to interpretative leaps.

In true enthnomethodologic fashion, the use of expansion analysis

necessitates an acknowledgement that there is a purposeful layer of

29

interpretation (rather than an objective relaying of empirical facts) occurring by
the researcher. Ethnomethodologic research employs the same process that it
seeks to understand — the sense-making process. In doing so, it requires the
researcher to be explicit about the interpretive procedures being used to conduct
the analysis. For this study, the secondary analysis was physically and
temporally removed from the actual occurrence of the provision of therapy. The
analysis was primarily conducted on the written case notes that were dictated by
the therapist. As such, the task of expanding each case note required
interpretation based upon not only what was written, but also upon what was
known by the researcher about the therapist, the therapeutic environment, and
the commonly held tenants of providing child therapy.

The following excerpt from the case notes has been arranged in such a
way to illustrate the multi-Iayered interpretive process involved in conducting the
expansion analysis. The first column represents an exact quote from the data
set, the second column is the expansion analysis, and the third column has been
added to provide insight into how the expansion analysis was arrived at by the
researcher. It is explicit about the procedures, or common sense knowledge,
employed by the researcher in the task of conducting the analysis. Again, just as
Garfinkel suggests, the ethnomethodological researcher goes about sense-
making (analyzing) in the same manner as do his or her research subjects.
Unique to ethnomethodology is the deliberate-ness of this interpretive process
and the acknowledgement that it is not (and, in fact, cannot be) a purely objective

exercise.

30

 

 

 

Therapist Case Expansion Researcher Extrapolation:
Notes: Analysis: (for illustration purposes)
During the therapy With the background knowledge

Gave Owen
affirmations
poster. Say it
everyday.

 

session today, the
therapist seems to
have recognized that
Owen has low self-
esteem due to his
IPV witnessing
experience. The
therapeutic course of
action she took was
to present him with a
poster that had a
positive, self-
affirrning message on
it. The therapist
instructed Owen to
repeat the saying to
himself everyday
apparently with the
intent that it would
become second
nature and he would
begin believing it,
thereby increasing
his self-esteem.

 

that the therapist produced the
case notes as a result of providing
therapy to IPV child witnesses as
part of a larger project, it is
understood that the therapist
recorded these particular notes
subsequent to a therapy session
with Owen (rather than a casual
conversation with him) and Owen
is understood to be a child IPV
witness. Further, with the
knowledge that the therapeutic
literature consistently identifies
children who have witnessed
intimate partner violence as having
low-self esteem, it is understood
that the therapist, having been
formally trained (presumably
formal training credentials were
required in order to be employed
by the shelter in the study) and
likely exposed to the therapeutic
literature, would recognize Owen
as having low self-esteem. The
therapeutic literature also suggests
that a goal of therapy is to help
children deal with negative
emotional responses and develop
positive ones. Again, given that
the therapist would likely be
familiar with this commonly held
tenant of the literature, it is
understood that she would
prescribe interventions to
accomplish the goal of increasing
Owen’s self esteem. With the
benefit of having read a large
volume of the therapist’s case
notes and seeing reference to
affirmations posters in other
contexts, it is understood that

 

31

 

 

 

 

 

these posters (by nature of being
called ‘affirmations posters”) and
by how they are referenced in
these other contexts, contain
positive messages and are
intended to help the child recipient
of the poster to increase self-
esteem by repeating the phrase on
the poster every day. According to
therapeutic literature and self-help
lore in the general culture, the
repetition of verbalizing positive
sayings helps the individual
engaging in the verbalization to
internalize the sentiment in the
saying and feel more positive
about themselves and/or their own
abilities. As such, the affirmations
poster given to Owen by the
therapist is understood to be a
therapeutic intervention intended
to increase his self-esteem.

 

As this illustration demonstrates, the expansion analysis is neither an objective

regurgitation of fact nor a randomly subjective collection of presuppositions.

Instead, the researcher arrives at the analysis through interpretive procedures

that take into account the indexicality of the situation. That is, the researcher

draws on background knowledge of the context in which the therapy was

provided, what is known about the therapeutic literature and the therapist’s likely

exposure to it, what is present in previous and subsequent case note entries, and

general features of the culture in which the original therapy took place.

32

 

Ethnomethodologic Principles

On a practical level, the content analysis adheres to Fancis and Hester’s (2004)
four ethnomethodologic principles.

. The demonstrable relevance of sociological descriptions

. The consequentiality of members’ orientations and understandings

. The situatedness of talk and action
. The inspectability of data

#wN-A

The first principle of demonstrable relevance of sociological descriptions
suggests that whatever is observable in the data is relevant to the members’
understandings and thus, relevant to the analysis. If the therapist organized her
case notes in a particular way, wrote something down, or neglected to write
something down, then the organization, inclusions and the omissions are all
relevant to the analysis. They tell us something about her orientation and her
sense-making of the interactions. Care needs to be taken not to pre-define or
over-categorize the data, but rather to let the themes emerge from the data as
the analysis progresses.

The second principle suggests that the consequentiality of members’
orientations and understandings is important. This simply means that the
researcher must show how a member’s orientation or understanding is involved
in the production of the social activity. It forces attention to the details of the data
and spells out how a social actor took his or her orientation into account when
producing a particular action.

The third principle, situatedness of talk and action, relates to how

members make sense within a particular context. In what situation are the

33

actions taking place? What knowledge are the actors drawing on to make sense
of the situation? How are the actors orienting themselves to their particular
knowledge about the situation and how does that orientation and knowledge
factor in the production of a resulting action? In every situation, meaning is
locally produced. In a particular therapy session, the therapist and the child are
drawing on the unique accumulation of history and reservoir of knowledge and
experience that each of them possesses at that point in time.

Finally, the inspectability of data principle suggests that the analyst must
ensure that the data can be inspected by the reader. Direct quotes from case
notes are necessary to relay an ethnomethodological conclusion.
Generalizations and statistical indices from data that has been cleansed and
codified can provide background or supplemental points of reference, but this
type of information does not contain the elements of specificity germane to

ethnomethodology.

Membership Categorization Analysis

The expansion and interpretation of the case record as described above, was
informed by elements of Membership Categorization Analysis (MCA), (see Sacks
1967; 1972; 1974; 1992). MCA is an activity involved in ‘doing’
ethnomethodolgy. More specifically, MCA is a sense-making process engaged
in by both everyday individuals and professional sociologists alike.

The focus of MCA (Membership Categorization Analysis) is on the

use of membership categories, membership categorization devices

and category predicates by members, conceptualized as lay and
professional social analysts, in accomplishing (the sociology of)

34

‘naturally occurring ordinary activities’. MCA directs attention to the

locally used, invoked and organized ‘presumed common-sense

knowledge of social structures’ which members are oriented to in

the conduct of their everyday affairs, including professional

sociological inquiry itself. (Hester 8 Elgin 1997: 3)

MCA gives lexicon to a twofold process; one by which individuals use to make
sense of their everyday lives and a subsequent process by which sociologists
use to analyze (make sense of) that very sense-making process. The MCA
activity engaged in by the individual in his or her everyday life and that of the
researcher performing an analysis is essentially the same. However, the
ordinary individual experiences the activity as the employment of common-sense
knowledge whereas the researcher experiences it as deliberate analysis.

Sacks (1972; 1992), suggests that the MCA activity can be understood
according to a number of organizational procedures and rules. The most basic of
these is the ‘membership category’. Individuals belong to various membership
categories in their everyday lives such as male, female, sister, brother, mother,
father, teacher, therapist, construction worker, artist, runner, etc. Each individual
belongs to multiple membership categories simultaneously. I am at once a
female, a mother, a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a student, a partner, a
supervisor, an employee, a football fan, etc. However, in accordance with the
‘situatedness of talk and action’ principle, we must account for the fact that
individuals are uniquely oriented in each interaction and as such certain
membership categories will be operationally relevant in certain situations

whereas others will not. When I am at work assigning a task to an employee,

my membership categories of daughter, aunt, and football fan are not necessarily

35

relevant with respect to that particular activity, whereas my membership
categories of supervisor, employee of the Department, and female are quite likely
to be operationally relevant. One challenge for the ethnomethodological
researcher is to avoid simply presuming that certain membership categories are
relevant for individuals in a particular situation. As much as possible, the
researcher must allow the relevant categories to emerge from careful
examination of the data. As Garfinkel would argue, the detail of the situated
dialogue contains the documentary evidence to establish the membership
categories relevant to the actors in the particular circumstance being studied.

Once relevant membership categories are established for an individual, a
good deal of information about that individual can be inferred. “[W]hen we know
what category applies to a person, then we know something about them. We
can predict what kinds of attributes they may have, what their obligations and
entitlements are and, perhaps most importantly. . .what kinds of activities they
properly and typically engage in, and hence how they may act in the here and
now,” (Francis 8 Hester 2004: 39). Again, this process of inferring is done by
ordinary individuals as they engage others in their everyday lives and it is done
by researchers as they analyze those everyday interactions.

According to Sacks (1972), membership categories are organized into
collections that are recognizable as part of our common-sense knowledge. We
expect certain membership categories to co-exist in certain collections such as a
family, a baseball team, or a first-grade class. Some categories within these

collections are understood to go together as ‘standardized relational pairs’. A

36

parent can always be understood to be paired with a child. Similarly, doctor-
patient, therapist-client, husband-wife, teacher-student, and the like occupy our
common-sense knowledge as standardized relational pairs. We typically expect
one category to imply the other and to exist in a specific relationship to that other
category. A mother is understood not only to have a child, but also to have
specific obligations, possess specific rights, perform specific activities, and take
on specific attributes in relation to the child.

According to Sacks, individuals use collections of categories such as
standardized relational pairs to assist in the organization of their thinking and
talking about their everyday lives. Sacks also identifies several ‘rules of
application’ that guide the use of categories. Francis and Hester (2004) describe
the most fundamental of these rules as follows.

[T]he “consistency rule’, refers to how, if one uses a category from a

particular collection, to describe a first member of the population of

persons, then one may use a further category from the same
collection to refer to an additional member of that population. It is

from the consistency rule that the ‘hearer’s maxim’ is drawn as a

corollary. This states that if a hearer can hear two consecutively

(not necessarily immediately adjacent) categories as going or

belonging together then: hear them that way. In other words, don’t

doubt that they are related if that is how you hear them, unless you

have good reason for doing so. (Francis 8 Hester 2004: 41)

The hearer’s maxim pays particular attention to how individuals describe their
experiences as well as how they make sense of the descriptions of experiences
that they encounter in their everyday lives. When I encounter a description

involving a ‘player’ and a ‘coach’, I immediately recognize them, or hear them, as

belonging together in the collection of ‘team’ but also in a standardized ‘player

37

and coach’ relational pair. Without any evidence to the contrary, I recognize the
coach and the player as members of the same team. Further, I am going to
understand (hear) that the coach is the coach of the player that was referenced
earlier and not the coach of another player. They belong to a standardized
relational pair.

Categories can also be understood to be associated with ‘category bound
predicates’ or characteristics which, “can conventionally be imputed on the basis
of a given membership category,” (Watson 1978: 106). Various predicates
including; activities, attributes, rights, obligations, attributes, tendencies, and
skills are specifically associated with membership in a certain category. So, for
example, delivering a lecture is a category-bound activity of professors and filling
a cavity is a category bound activity of dentists. Similarly, acting out in school
might be understood as a category-bound activity of male IPV child witnesses.
Category bound predicates provide us with methods for sense-making and as
such, comprise elements of our common-sense understanding of our everyday
lives.

Just as individuals can be understood to go together in standardized
relational pairs, so too can activities be understood to go together as ‘category-
paired actions’. When we hear a description that includes an individual falling off
a ladder and breaking her leg, and then hear a subsequent description that the
individual went to the hospital, we understand that description to mean that she

went to the hospital because she broke her leg and not for some other reason.

38

Breaking one’s leg and going to the hospital are category-paired actions and,
without any evidence to the contrary, we will hear them as related actions.
Through Membership Categorization Analysis, individuals are able to
make sense of their everyday lives through drawing on various processes and
rules of application to fill in what is left unsaid in day-to-day interactions. These
processes and rules occupy each individual’s body of common-sense
knowledge. Similarly, the ethnomethodological researcher is able to analyze
data through a more explicit, but parallel exercise in sense-making. And it is
through this explicit attention to the rules of application employed by the child
therapist, as evidenced and documented in the data, that the analysis for this

study was conducted.

39

CHAPTER FOUR

DATA ANALYSIS: PRODUCING SCRIPTS

Ethnomethodology suggests that expressions are always indexical.
Ethnomethodological data analysis must understand meaning as produced anew
in each and every situation. However, ethnomethodology also suggests that
individuals employ certain rules and procedures (common sense knowledge) to
produce this meaning and make sense of their everyday lives. What follows is
an analysis of how the child therapist in this study made sense of the child IPV
witnesses that received therapy during the Community Coordinate Response
Projects to Intimate Partner Violence. The data analysis will be presented
through a series of scripts. Each script represents the aggregate of procedures
and rules that the child therapist apparently used to make sense of certain
children in her professional care during the course of the project.

The characterization of these procedures and rules as scripts suggests
that they might be fixed or standardized in some way. The therapist draws on
her body of common sense knowledge related to child therapy to form her
personal and professional opinions about each child’s emotional and
psychological responses to their IPV witnessing experiences. In doing so, the
therapist is indeed experiencing her common sense knowledge as a sort of script
— an undertying pattern that includes a predictable series of actions and
reactions. Indeed, one could argue that the therapist has a certain amount of

investment in understanding the scripts, or at least the story lines within the

40

scripts, to be predetermined objective realities in order to validate her common
stock of knowledge and legitimize her professional standing as a therapist in this
particular environment. However, rather than being fixed or predetermined, the
data suggest that each script is actually produced during the course of the
therapist’s interactions with each child. The children’s responses serve as
documentary evidence to support the therapist’s production of a script based on
an underlying pattem/story line in the first place, and at the same time, they
serve to reinforce the validity of the script once it is produced.

Stated another way, the scripts represent the intersection of the
abstracted institutional system of providing therapy and the actual occurrence of
providing therapy to the IPV child witnesses in the original project. The work of
Dorothy Smith (1987) and David Sudnow (1965; 1967) suggests that sociologists
have often struggled with accomplishing generalizations from the study of
particular or local “cases”. However, Smith maintains that if we use
methodologies that approach the local, or the everyday world, as problematic, we
discover the generalizations in the underlying patterns. The generalizations are,
in fact, actively adjusted and organized into the local productions of meaning.
This is explicitly apparent in institutional systems, including the therapeutic
environment.

Professional and bureaucratic procedures and terminologies are

part of an abstracted system. Abstracted systems are set up to be

independent of the particular, the individual, the idiosyncratic and

the local....ln actual operation...the abstracted forms must be fitted

to the actual local situations in which they function and which they

control. In practice, the abstracted system has to be tied to the

local and particular. Psychiatric agencies develop ways of working
which fit situations and people which are not standardized, don’t

41

present standardized problems and are not already shaped up into

the forms under which they can be recognized in the terms which

make them actionable. What actually happens, what people

actually do and experience, the real situations they function in, how

they get to the agencies—none of these things is neatly shaped up.

There is a process of practical interchange between and

inexhaustibly messy and different and indefinite real world and the

bureaucratic and professional system which controls and acts upon

it. The professional is trained to produce out of this the order which

he believes he discovers in it. (Smith 1975: 97)

In a similar fashion, the therapist’s employment and production of scripts can be
understood to represent the process of ‘shaping up’ or ‘fitting’ the actual local
situations into actionable forms.

Membership Categorization Analysis draws this script production process
out more explicitly. The therapist’s case notes, once expanded, reflect the
membership categorization, standardized relational pairs, category-bound
predicates, category-paired actions and the like she employs to make sense of
her interactions with the children. These rules of application can be loosely
assembled into scripts for purposes of analysis. So, for example, the
‘traumatized IPV child witness’ script contains the components of the therapist’s
common-sense knowledge that are employed to understand child IPV witnesses
as possessing certain category-bound predicates that can be associated with a
child who is traumatized. This script is employed by the therapist to reflect her
understanding of the children, but the script then also informs her assessment
and treatment of the children. The children are approached by the therapist ‘as

if’ they behave, act, and react according to the script, when in fact, they may not.

The intersection of the script, which attempts to understand the children

42

according to certain rules, and the contextual indexicality of each interactiOn with
the children produces meaning anew. This meaning is understood according to,
and as evidence of, the therapist’s common sense knowledge of IPV child
witnesses.

The therapist’s common sense knowledge of IPV child witnesses is
informed by the therapeutic literature. Indeed, the scripts she both employs and
constructs with the children in her care appear to follow what is, in a sense,
prescribed by the literature. As described above, the literature suggests that IPV
child witnesses suffer emotional, behavioral, and cognitive functioning difficulties
such as low self-esteem, anger, and a tendency toward becoming abusers
themselves due to their violence witnessing experiences. In addition, the
literature identifies that, “children may harbor rage, feelings of guilt, and a sense
of responsibility for the violence. Children who witness traumatic events, such as
incidents of domestic violence, may feel helpless and see the world as
unpredictable, hostile, and threatening,” (Groves 1999: 123). We see evidence
of all of these features in the therapist’s construction of scripts for the children

that emerge from the data.

The ‘Traumatized IPV Child Witness’ Script
One script that emerges from the analysis of the therapist’s case notes is that of
the Traumatized IPV Child Witness. That is, the therapist appears to draw on a
particular set of procedures (common sense knowledge) in the course of

providing therapy to the children that understands these children as experiencing

43

trauma as a result of their having witnessed IPV. According to this script, the

children not only experience trauma, but they continue to be traumatized by the

experience and are emotionally compromised in some way as a result.

Consider the following case note excerpt and corresponding expansion analysis

from the therapist’s session with Emily. This is Emily’s second session with the

therapist- her first full session after an initial intake was conducted.

 

Therapist Case Notes:

Expansion Analysis:

 

Got new house. She is excited.

The child, Emily, returned to therapy for
her session this week. It became known
to the therapist that Emily was going to be
moving into a new home. The therapist
discussed with Emily (or observed) how
she felt about moving out of the shelter
and into a new home. The therapist
interpreted Emily’s responses and
behaviors to mean that she was pleased
to be moving into a new home.

 

Drew — praised drawing.

During the therapy session, Emily drew a
picture. The therapist provided her with
positive feedback about her drawing,
likely in an attempt to contribute to
positive self-esteem.

 

Listened to Spinoza “You are All
You Need To Be.”

A therapeutic technique that the therapist
employed during the session was to listen
to a juvenile tape that contains a positive
message. The particular tape is called
“You are All you Need to Be.”

 

We talked about the message and
that Stymie the Skunk is mean (on
the tape).

 

 

There is a character on the tape named
Stymie. Stymie is a skunk and his
character exhibits unkind behavior. The
character is apparently meant to provide
an age-appropriate way for children to be
able to process feelings about people
they know in real life who are unkind.
Recognizing that Emily has feelings about
someone who is unkind in her own life,
the therapist seems to use the characters
on the tape to initiate a discussion about

 

44

 

 

that type of behavior.

 

I told her when people say or do
mean things to others it is because
they have problems not because
there is something wrong with the
person they are being mean to.

 

 

The therapist understands children to be
likely to feel that they have done
something wrong when they are in an
abusive household. Apparently
recognizing that, as an IPV witness, Emily
may have the perception that she had
done something wrong, the therapist
explained to her in general terms that
when people behave in an unkind way
toward someone, it is not because the
person did something wrong or deserved
to be treated in an unkind way.

 

 

This excerpt reflects the general orientation that the therapist takes toward

Emily as a traumatized IPV child witness. With apparently no prompting behavior

from Emily, the therapist elects to show her a therapeutic tape about processing

feelings around the “mean” behavior of others. This suggests that the therapist

assumes that Emily is struggling with the issue and needs therapeutic

intervention to deal with it.

We see further evidence of this orientation as the session continues.

 

Therapist Case Notes:

Expansion Analysis:

 

She said a boy knocked her down.
She told the teacher. The teacher
made him apologize. She felt better.

 

During the therapy session, Emily
relayed an incident that occurred while
she was at school. Another child who is
male and attends the same school,
pushed her and she fell down as a
result of the boy pushing her. After the
incident, Emily told a teacher who works
at the same school where the incident
occurred, very likely, it was her own
teacher. The teacher that she told
required the boy who pushed her down
to apologize to her for pushing her
down. After the boy was made to
apologize for pushing her down, Emily
indicated that her negative feelings

 

 

45

 

 

about the incident were at least partially
ameliorated.

 

I asked what she does when she
feels mad or sad — go play in my
room.

Recognizing that IPV child witnesses
have difficulty expressing their feelings
and that IPV children frequently feel
anger and sadness as a result of the
IPV witnessing experience, the therapist
asked Emily how she reacts when she
has the feeling of anger or the feeling of
sadness. Her response was that she
goes to her bedroom to play when she
has feelings of anger or sadness.

 

Sometimes kids are mad at mom. Is
she? Yes, It’s okay to be mad.

Recognizing that IPV children often feel
anger toward their mothers, the
therapist explained to Emily who she
knows to be an IPV witness, that if she
were to feel anger toward her mother,
that would be a normal reaction given
her situation. Then, she asked her if
she felt anger toward her mother and
she responded in the affirmative. The
therapist appears concerned that Emily
may feel negative feelings toward
herself for being angry with her mother,
because normally, children recognize
that they should only feel positive
feelings toward their parents. In
response to this concern, the therapist
attempted to diffuse any self-directed
negative feelings she may have about
her anger by telling her that it is
appropriate for her to feel angry toward
her mother.

 

How does she feel? Guilty. She has
a right to feel mad.

The therapist asked Emily how she felt
about being angry toward her mother
and she responded that she felt guilty
about those feelings. The therapist then
explained to Emily again that her anger
is a normal, appropriate response to her
situation and that she should not feel
guilty about it.

 

 

Mom is trying to make things better.

 

The therapist explained to Emily that
her mother is trying to improve the
situation and cease putting the child in a
position where she will be exposed to
IPV. Since the therapist likely assesses

 

46

 

 

that being exposed to IPV is what is
making the child angry toward her
mother, she concludes that Emily’s
anger will be diminished as her mother
is able to keep her from being exposed

 

to IPV.
When she comes here, we will help Emily is concerned about being angry
her not feel mad anymore. with her mother. To help alleviate her

concerns, the therapist explained to her
that the therapy sessions will assist her
with not feeling that anger any longer
and this is framed as a positive outcome
for the child.

What are some things she could do? The therapist asked Emily what
strategies she might use to address and
process her angry feelings.

 

 

 

 

After discussing the pushing incident that took place at school, the therapist asks
Emily if she is angry at her mother by first “normalizing” the feeling of anger
toward mothers — “Sometimes kids are mad at mom. Is she?” Emily’s response
in the affirmative serves to reinforce the validity of the therapist’s procedures.
While the question itself is framed from the therapist’s common-sense knowledge
that IPV child witnesses are often angry toward their mothers, Emily’s affirmative
response becomes new documentary evidence of that common-sense
knowledge. As Garfinkel suggests, each elaborates the other.

The therapist further attempts to normalize Emily’s anger toward her
mother by telling her it is okay to be mad and she has a right to feel mad. This is
tempered by the therapist’s subsequent remark to Emily that coming to therapy
will help her to not feel mad anymore. With attention to the situatedness of this
expression, it appears that the therapist is really saying that it is normal for IPV

child witnesses to experience anger toward their mothers given the trauma they

47

 

have been through, however, it is not a normal state of being for emotionally

healthy children to experience anger toward their mothers, and, at a minimum, it

is not desirable. Therefore, the goal of therapy becomes to assist Emily with not

feeling this anger any longer. The therapist begins to administer treatment

toward this goal by introducing a therapeutic tool that describes healthy ways to

express anger.

 

Therapist Case Notes:

Expansion Analysis:

 

Reviewed “25 Healthy Ways to
Express Anger.”

Apparently recognizing that Emily did
not possess healthy ways to process
anger, the therapist reviewed a
therapeutic tool entitled “25 Healthy
Ways to Express Anger" with her. This
tool is intended to provide the child with
healthy ways to express her anger.

 

She enjoyed my “angry dance.”

One of the healthy ways to express
anger that is identified in the therapeutic
tool is to dance in a forceful, energetic
way. The therapist demonstrated this
technique to her and assessed by
observing her body language and/or
listening to her reaction that she was
pleased by watching the demonstration
of this technique.

 

I told her I will give this to mom so
she can help Emily and her sibs get
out their anger in healthy ways
(which I did).

 

 

The therapist explained to Emily that
she would give the tool entitled “25
Healthy Ways to Express Anger” to her
mother. The reason she communicated
for giving it to her mother was because
she would then be able to review it and
explore positive ways to express anger
with the child and her siblings. It is
known to the therapist that Emily and
her siblings are all IPV child witnesses
and she assesses they all can benefit
from treatment because they all have
anger and they do not possess healthy
ways to express their anger. By giving
this tool to the children’s mother, she
will be able to administer appropriate
treatment to give them more normal

 

48

 

 

ways to express anger. (Sometime
after telling Emily that she would give
the tool to her mother, she actually did
give the tool to her mother.)

 

 

 

 

The introduction of the therapeutic tool again suggests that Emily needs
assistance with healthy ways to express anger. Note Emily’s earlier self—report
that she goes to her room to play when angry or sad is not explored as a
potential healthy response. The fact that different techniques are introduced and
Emily’s current technique is not explored suggests that the therapist does not
believe Emily’s response is a healthy one.

Taken in whole, the therapist’s interactions with Emily document her
common sense understanding of Emily as a “typical” IPV child witness in that she
feels guilt about the child IPV witnessing experience, she feels anger toward her
mother, she feels guilt about being angry toward her mother, has low self-
esteem, and she does not possess healthy ways to express her anger. Stated
another way, Emily’s therapy session documents the therapist’s understanding of
category-bound characteristics of child IPV witnesses as angry, guilty and lacking
appropriate tools to express their anger.

Further evidence of the therapist’s common sense knowledge of IPV child
witnesses as traumatized emerges in the following brief excerpt from her session

with Max.

 

Therajlst Case Notes: Expansion Analysis:

 

When Max came into the therapy
Feelings check — denied having any session today, the therapist inquired as
feelings but happy. to how he was feeling. This is a
therapeutic tool aimed at assessing the
emotional state of the child. Max

 

 

 

 

49

 

indicated that the only feeling he could
identify having was one of happiness.
The therapist inquired about other
feelings that IPV child witnesses
generally have (and she seemed
confident that he was also experiencing
these feelings) but he denied having
any of these other feelings.

 

I acted surprised when he hadn’t When Max veered off script and denied
been sad, mad, or shy. having feelings of being sad, mad or
shy, the therapist used verbal and non-
verbal behavior to indicate to Max her
surprise that he hadn’t felt any of those
other feelings. This was apparently
intended to challenge Max on his denial
of those feelings and to let him know
that the therapist expected him to have
those other feelings.

 

He smiled and said he might have Upon recognizing her reaction of

been shy. surprise, Max understood that the
therapist had expected him to have
feelings of being mad, sad, or shy. This
recognition prompted him to admit that
he may have been feeling shy. Max
smiled during the admission which
reinforces the therapist’s assessment
that he was embarrassed to admit
feeling shy. Max did not admit to feeling
mad or sad.

 

 

 

 

In this excerpt, the therapist challenges Max’s assertion that he is not feeling
angry, sad, or shy by acting surprised. By challenging Max in this way, the
therapist again evidences her common sense knowledge that IPV child
witnesses are sad, angry, and shy. She is, in essence, attempting to pull Max
back on script. Max’s response, however, only provides the therapist with limited
reinforcement of her common sense knowledge as he will only somewhat
reluctantly admit to being shy. The therapist must account for this as she

produces meaning from the interaction. It is possible that she attributes Max’s

50

reluctance to admit anger or sadness to his shyness. Alternatively, she may

determine that Max is in a deep denial about these feelings and will eventually

admit to having them. However this information is incorporated into the meaning

that is produced, the therapist clearly indicates that she believes Max does

indeed have feelings of anger and sadness about the IPV. At this point, it does

not appear that she needs Max’s admission to corroborate her script. However,

Max’s non-admission does give her new information and is something she has to

account for one way or another as she deciphers meaning from the interaction.

This feature of the script is challenged in a similar way during a session

with Kendall.

 

Therapist Case Notes:

Expansion Analysis:

 

Kendall completed several pages in
her workbook today.

During the therapy session today,
Kendall completed several exercises
contained in her therapeutic workbook.

 

She wouldn’t complete statement
about feeling sad or bad. She said
she never feels that way.

When Kendall was presented with an
exercise in the workbook that asked her
to complete statements about feeling
sad or bad, Kendall did not complete
them. When the therapist inquired as to
why she did not complete the
statements, she indicted that she does
not ever feel sad or bad.

 

I said everyone feels that way
sometimes and gave her examples,
but she still denied ever having hose
feelings.

 

 

Knowing that IPV child witness in
particular have negative emotions
resulting in feeling sad or bad, and that
it is important for them to admit those
feelings in order to heal from their IPV
witnessing experience, it appears that
the therapist attempted to get Kendall to
admit her feelings by relaying to her that
she knows that everyone feels negative
feelings sometimes and she offered
some examples of what might cause a
person to feel sad or bad. Despite the
explanation and examples, Kendall
continued to deny feeling sad or bad.

 

51

 

 

She drew a picture of herself and One of the exercises in the workbook
her cat as her favorite memory. asked Kendall to draw a picture of her
favorite memory. Kendall drew a
picture depicting herself with her cat as
her favorite memory.

She chose the little princess as the In the story that Kendall made up for the

 

theme for her story. She said the exercise, she chose a princess theme
princess has no family and she is and indicated that the princess did not
sad about that. have a family. Kendall was able to

identify feeling sad about the princess
not having a family.

PLAN: To continue exploring issues It is likely the therapist’s assessment
around family separation. that Kendall has negative feelings
related to the IPV witnessing experience
and the subsequent family separation
resulting in her father moving out of the
home. The therapist appears to believe
that Kendall is unwilling to express
these negative feelings and that is not
emotionally healthy for her. In response
to this belief, the therapist indicates that
she will attempt to provide Kendall with
additional therapeutic interventions
aimed at getting her to identify with the
rfigative feelings in future sessions.

 

 

 

 

Again we see the child’s resistance to admitting negative feelings challenged by
the therapist. This points to an underlying assumption on the part of the therapist
that the IPV child witnesses in her therapeutic care are experiencing negative
feelings as a result of the trauma of IPV and, at least in Kendall’s case, the
aftermath of the IPV that led to family separation. It is clear that when the
children do not respond according to the therapist’s perceived script for them,
she makes an effort to pull them into the script. When those efforts fail, she is
able to create new meaning out of the interaction that allows her to maintain the
validity of the script and the underlying story line. In much the same way as the

diviner does in the Mambila spider readings, she is able to take contrary

52

 

responses and redirect or negotiate them in such a way as to avoid invalidating

her common sense knowledge. In this case, rather than coming to the

conclusion that Kendall is not traumatized by the IPV witnessing experience and

does not have negative feelings related to it, the therapist appears to attribute

Kendall’s lack of negative feelings as a deeper denial that needs more

therapeutic intervention to be overcome.

Similar meaning is achieved when Ethan denies angry or sad feelings

during one of his sessions.

 

Therapist Case Notes:

Expansion Analysis:

 

Feelings check - happy.

During the therapy session today, Ethan
indicated that he was happy when the
therapist administered the therapeutic
technique aimed at assessing his
emotional state.

 

Denied any sad or mad feelings.

When the therapist inquired as to
whether Ethan had feelings of sadness
or anger, he indicated that he did not.
The therapist appears to assess that he
does have feelings of sadness and
anger and he is unwilling to admit those
feelings.

 

I read him “When I Get Angry” and
“Let’s Talk about Feeling Sad.”

The therapist appears to believe it is
beneficial for IPV child witnesses to
admit their negative feelings. In an
attempt to get Ethan to admit feeling
anger and sadness, the therapist read
two therapeutic books to him that are
aimed at getting children to discuss
negative feelings, “When I Get Angry"
and “Let’s Talk about Feeling Sad.”

 

Ethan listened for a time but said
that talking about feelings was
“garbage talk”, I said everyone has
feelings and it’s okay.

 

 

While the therapist was reading the
books, Ethan appeared to be listening
for a period of time, but before the
therapist finished reading, Ethan said to
therapist that he thought talking about
feelings was “garbage talk”. The
therapist assessed this comment as
Ethan believing that it was not

 

53

 

 

acceptable to have certain feelings so
she told him that everyone has feelings
and it is acceptable

 

PLAN: Meet with mom about feeling
issues.

 

 

Given Ethan’s refusal to follow the
prescribed script, the therapist looks to
another person—a parental figure—to
re-engage the proper script, in a sense
challenging any cognitive dissonance
raised by the interaction with Ethan.

 

Again, the case notes reveal that the therapist’s expectation according to her

common sense knowledge is that Ethan feels sad and angry. When Ethan does

not initially follow the script, the therapist assesses his reluctance not as

contradicting the script, but as Ethan having “feeling issues” that prevent him

from recognizing that he does indeed fit the script. In essence, the denial of

negative feelings becomes another feature the traumatized IPV child witness

scnpt

We get additional insight into the therapist’s common sense understanding

of IPV child witnesses as traumatized when she conducts an intake session with,

Jan, the mother of two children who are entering therapy.

 

Therapist Case Notes:

Expansion Analysis:

 

Jan outlined abusive relationship
with Rob and answered interview
questions.

Jan, the mother of the children that are
entering child therapy met with the
therapist and told her about her
relationship with Rob and how that
relationship had been abusive. She
also answered standard interview
questions that the therapist typically
asks mothers at an initial meeting.

 

I let her tell her story which took
about an hour.

Jan’s description of the abusive
relationship that she had with Rob took
about 1 hour, which is unusually long.

 

She apologized for talking so much.

 

 

Jan recognized that her description was
unusually longand she apologized to

 

 

54

 

 

the therapist for taking a long time to
describe the situation with Rob.

 

Sam has underlying behavioral
problems that have been ongoing
throughout his life.

Jan told the therapist that her son, Sam,
has experienced behavioral problems.
These problems have occurred
throughout Sam’s life and are not just
recent

 

He appears to be depressed and
Jan would be open to meds for him
as she herself has recently begun
taking antidepressants and anti-
anxiety meds and sees that they are
working.

Jan reported to the therapist that her
son, Sam, appears to be suffering from
depression. Jan indicated that due to
the depression she believes her son is
suffering from, she would be willing to
consider putting her child on
prescription medication that is intended
to treat depression. Jan is comfortable
with using medication to treat
depression because she has recently
started to take both antidepressants and
anti-anxiety prescription medication and
it has been her experience that the
medications are having a positive
impact on her feelings of depression
and anxiety.

 

 

Sam’s reaction with the bat is a
normal reaction to the trauma he
witnessed. (Jan understands that.)

 

Jan and the therapist talked about a
situation that involved Sam taking some
inappropriate action with a baseball bat.
Jan was concerned that Sam’s behavior
was abnormal. The therapist explained
to Jan that Sam took that action
because he was experiencing trauma
as a result of the abuse that he
witnessed in the home. The therapist
also explained that it is normal for
children to behave abnormally when
they are witness to abuse in the home.
Jan indicated to the therapist that she
understood the therapist’s explanation
and agreed that Sam’s behavior with
the bat, though abnormal for a well-
adjusted child, was a normal response
for a child who had experienced the
trauma of witnessing IPV. The parental
agreement serves as a sort-of third-
party validation of the traumatized IPV
child witness script.

 

55

 

 

Parents appear committed to their
children — questions remain,
however.

The therapist’s perception from the
session with Jan is that both she and
Sam’s father are invested in their
children’s well-being. Something about
the interview had the therapist
concerned about how effective the
parents are going to be at improving
their children’s situation and/or their
behavioral problems.

 

PLAN: To see Jan next week to
complete intake. Then set up a first
appointment for Sam at that time.

 

 

The course of therapeutic treatment that
the therapist intends to pursue with this
family is to schedule another meeting
with Jan in one week. At that meeting
they will continue to discuss the intake
questions and answers that they were
unable to complete today. They will
complete those questions and answers
next week. It is also the therapist’s
intent during the appointment next week
to talk to Jan about when she can
schedule the first therapy session with
her son, Sam.

 

Without having met Sam, the therapist is able to make some evaluative remarks

about the behavior his mother has reported by drawing on her common sense

knowledge that IPV child witnesses are traumatized. The therapist tells Jan that

whatever action he took with the bat is normal for a child who has witnessed IPV.

Again, the abnormal behavior is normalized for an IPV child witness. This

suggests that the therapist expects IPV children to behave in this abnormal way,

or at least she is not alarmed by the abnormal behavior when it is an IPV child

witness who is engaging in it. According to the therapist, it is all part of the script

that she simultaneously employs and produces. It is also of note that the

therapist documents that Sam has had behavioral problems throughout his life.

56

 

Nonetheless, the incident with the bat is attributed to the trauma of his having
witnessed IPV.

Through careful attention to the underlying patterns in the data, the
elements of the therapist’s Traumatized IPV Child Witness script emerges. This
script approaches IPV child witnesses as having a certain set of category bound
characteristics resulting specifically from the trauma of witnessing IPV. These
characteristics include; harboring feelings of anger, sadness, and shyness,
experiencing anger specifically toward their mothers, feeling guilt about the IPV
itself, and the resulting anger toward their mothers, denying negative feelings or
having difficulty expressing negative feelings in healthy ways, possessing low
self-esteem, and having aggressive, abnormal behaviors. Again, the therapist at
once employs this script and develops or produces it as she engages in therapy
with the children and/or the children’s parents.

Throughout this process, there is evidence that the therapist’s common
sense knowledge outlines a particular plot or storyline within each script for the
IPV child witnesses. A script is employed and produced during the course of the
therapy to fit a particular story line that is, in essence, known to the therapist in
advance. The work of producing the script reinforces the story line and validates
the therapeutic literature, professional experience, and academic training that
make up the therapist’s common sense knowledge. And like the case of the
Mambila spider divination, the production of the script both documents and

contributes to a particular presupposed body of common knowledge.

57

Gendered Scripts
Weaved within the Traumatized IPV Child Witness Script are gendered scripts.
That is, the case notes suggest that the therapist understands female IPV child
witnesses to have specific category-bound attributes and characteristics that are
distinct from those of male IPV child witnesses. This emerges and is evidenced

by the different therapeutic assessments that are made of boys and girls and the

different therapeutic treatments that are offered to them.

In a session with Emily, the therapist records the following therapeutic

intervention.

 

Therapist Case Notes:

Expansion Analysis:

 

Getting along with sister, not with
brother. He hates me. Mom makes
him go in time out.

In the therapy session today, Emily
indicated that she gets along well with
her sister, but she does not get along
well with her brother. Emily indicates
that she feels that her brother hates her.
She also indicated that when he is
misbehaving, their mother requires him
to go to a time out where he is isolated
from others for a period of time as a
form of discipline.

 

Had her draw picture of her new
house and family.

A therapeutic tool that the therapist
employed during the session today was
to have Emily draw a picture of her
family in their new house.

 

Gave her “Girls Only” daily book.
Had Jenna come in and she will
read it to Emily each day. She made
a promise. Emily gave permission
before I asked Jenna.

 

 

The therapist presented Emily with a
therapeutic tool, a book that is written
for girls and has something that is to be
read each day likely with the intent to
help increase self-esteem. The
therapist asked Emily if she would like
her to ask her sister to read the book to
her every day and she agreed. The
therapist asked the child’s sister to
come into the therapy session and
proceeded to ask her if she would read
the book to the child each day, she

 

58

 

 

 

 

agreed and made a promise to read it to
her sister each day.

 

It is significant that the therapist makes a point to identify the therapeutic

workbook as being for girls. This pattern emerges in subsequent sessions as

well.

 

Therapist Case Notes:

Expansion Analysis:

 

Feeling happy. Watched “I Like
Being Me.”

At the session today, the child indicated
that she was experiencing feelings of
happiness. The child and the therapist
viewed a therapeutic positive self-
esteem video titled, “I Like Being Me.”
The therapist apparently assesses that
the child is in need of increasing her
self-esteem and the video is intended to
assist her with that need.

 

Did nine pages in her workbook
(Girls).

During the session, the child completed
nine pages of activities in her
therapeutic workbook. The workbook
that the child worked in is a workbook
designed specifically for girls. There is
a different workbook available for boys.
The therapist appears to understand
boys and girls to respond differently to
the experience of witnessing IPV and
have different therapeutic needs and
therefore need different workbooks.

 

Talked about saying no to adults
(she had marked that kid’s shouldn’t
say no to adults.)

 

 

In one of the workbook exercises, the
child had made mark in the book
indicating that it was her understanding
that children should not say, ‘no’ to
adults. Recognizing that the child’s
perception about this as incorrect, the
therapist spoke with her further about it
to try to teach her otherwise.

 

We also see this specific gender identification with regard to the therapeutic

workbook in the case notes from sessions with boys.

59

 

 

 

Therapist Case Notes:

Expansion Analysis:

 

Ethan came in and we did a feelings
check. He said he is happy today.

Ethan is a child that is seen in therapy.
Upon Ethan’s arrival at the therapy
session, the therapist administered a
therapeutic technique aimed at
assessing his emotional state. Ethan
reported feeling happy today.

 

He listened to Spinoza “You Are All
You Need To Be”. I reinforced the
message, “You are a fine person
even if someone says mean things
to you. Everyone is good just
because they are.”

Ethan listened to an audio tape titled,
“You Are All You Need to Be” during the
session today. The tape had a
character named, Spinoza. The
message that the tape communicates to
the listener is, “You are a fine person
even if someone says mean things to
you. Everyone is good just because
they are.” The therapist reviewed this
message with Ethan and likely
attempted to state it in different ways so
that it would make a deeper impression
on him.

 

He began to complete a workbook
with help from the counselor. “My
Own Thoughts and Feelings (for
boys)”

 

 

One of the therapeutic tools that the
therapist uses with children who are IPV
witnesses is a therapeutic workbook
called “My Own Thoughts and Feelings”
There are two versions of this
workbook, one for girls and one for
boys. Since Ethan is a boy, the
therapist gave him the version for a boy
understanding that girls and boys need
different workbooks because they
process feelings differently and have
different reactions to experiences of
IPV.

 

The identification of gendered therapeutic tools for girls and boys suggests that

there are different scripts for girls and boys. Certain therapeutic interventions

and assessments recorded in the case notes give us further clues into the

specific characteristics that are featured in the girls’ script and in the boys’ script.

For girls, we are more likely to see an encouragement to express angry feelings,

6O

 

which would suggest that the therapist understands girls to repress anger related

to their IPV witnessing experiences.

 

Therapist Case Notes:

Expansion Analysis:

 

Laura asked to play with playdoh so
we did. I encouraged her to
squeeze and “pound" it to get out
feelings.

During the therapy session today, Laura
requested to play with some play dough
that the therapist keeps in her office.
She agreed to let her play with the play
dough. Apparently recognizing that
Laura has negative feelings and a
difficulty expressing those feelings due
to the trauma of being an IPV witness,
the therapist took the opportunity to
encourage her to play rough with the
play dough so that she could expend
physical energy acting out the negative
feelings. This physical expression of
negative feelings is likely understood to
help the child to become more aware of
her repressed negative feelings and
deal with them in a healthy way. It is
also understood that failure to express
negative feelings manifests in unhealthy
ways for IPV child witnesses.

 

She seemed to enjoy doing this.

 

 

Laura took the therapist’s suggestion to
play rough with the play dough and the
therapist could tell from observing her
that it was a positive experience for her
and that it was having the desired
therapeutic effect of helping her to
express negative feelings that she
would othenivise have been unable to
express.

 

Similarly, Hannah is encouraged to punch a punching bag to release anger

during one of her therapy sessions.

 

Therapist Case Notes:

Expansion Analysis:

 

Hannah used remote controlled car.

 

 

During the therapy session today,
Hannah played with a remote control
car that is in the office.

 

61

 

 

 

Hugged Sasha and petted her. Was Hannah showed affection by hugging
happy to be with Sasha. and petting Sasha, the dog that is
frequently present during therapy
sessions with the children. Hannah’s
verbal and/or nonverbal communication
indicated that she was pleased to be
interacting with Sasha.

Been fine not too many mads, sads, During the therapy session, Hannah

or loneliness. communicated that she had not recently
experienced significant amounts of
anger, sadness or loneliness.

Punched punching bag with boxing The therapist administered a

glove (getting out mads). therapeutic exercise with Hannah to
assist her in releasing feelings of anger.
This exercise involved Hannah putting
on a boxing glove and punching a
punching bag. The exercise appears to
have been conducted because it is the
therapist’s assessment that Hannah has
feelings of anger that are repressed and
need to be released and that physical
aggression conducted in a controlled,
safe environment will assist her with
achieving the release of anger.

Began My Thoughts and Feelings The therapist provided Hannah with a
for Girls. therapeutic workbook designed
specifically for girls and their unique
reactions and needs resulting from
experiencing trauma. The therapist
provided Hannah with this workbook
because it is likely her assessment that
she has experienced trauma as a result
of the IPV witnessing experience.
Hannah began to complete some of the
workbook during the therapy session.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is particularly interesting that Hannah reports not having many feelings of anger
just prior to being encouraged to punching the punching bag to “get mads out”.
This represents an attempt to maintain the script and suggests that the therapist
is understanding Hannah to have feelings of anger despite her self-report that

she did not. Further, it suggests that the therapist believes it is in the best

62

interest of Hannah to acknowledge the anger, and to release it through physical

aggression toward an inanimate object.

For boys, we see parallel evidence in the case notes that the therapist

understands them to have feelings of anger around the IPV witnessing

experience. As discussed above, her common sense knowledge also frames

boys as lacking methods for healthy or appropriate expressions of anger.

However, rather than efforts to just release the anger as we see with girls, the

therapeutic efforts directed toward boys appear to be generated from a script that

casts boys as a potential physical danger to self and others. Consider the

following session with Owen.

 

Therapist Case Notes:

Expansion Analysis:

 

Gave Owen affirmations poster. Say
it everyday.

During the therapy session today, the
therapist seems to have recognized that
Owen has low self-esteem due to his
IPV witnessing experience. The
therapeutic course of action she took
was to present him with a poster that
had a positive, self-affirming message
on it. The therapist instructed Owen to
repeat the saying to himself everyday
apparently with the intent that it would
become second nature and he would
begin believing it, thereby increasing his
self-esteem.

 

Watched “Lean Mean Machine”.

An additional therapeutic tool that the
therapist employed was to have Owen
watch a video entitled “Lean Mean
Machine.” This video has a message
about being “mean” and is intended to
positively impact Owen in some way.

 

Talked about ways to process anger
that won’t hurt self and others.

 

 

The therapist apparently understood
Owen to inappropriately express anger
as a result of his IPV witnessing
experience. She also understands him
to be in danger of physically or mentally
hurting himself or other people because

 

63

 

 

of his abnormal expressions of anger.
The therapist discussed with him some
ways to process anger that are healthier
and more appropriate. If he complies
with the suggestions, the danger posed
to himself and others is understood to
be diminished.

 

He admitted that sometimes he During the discussion, Owen disclosed
slams doors and yells. to the therapist that one of the ways that
he negatively expresses anger during
the course of his everyday life is by
physically slamming doors and verbally
yelling at other people. His disclosure
confirms the therapeutic observation
that the child is engaging in
inappropriate behaviors brought on by
his IPV witnessing experience.

 

We will look at ways to get out angry In future therapy sessions, the therapist
feelings. will continue to engage in therapeutic
discussions and activities aimed at
getting Owen to move from abnormal
expressions of anger to more normal
and appropriate expressions of anger.
Once Owen is able to address these
anger-related feelings appropriately, it is
apparently understood that he and other
people will be at less risk of becoming
physically or mentally injured by his
expressions of them.

 

 

 

 

Owen’s admission that he slams doors and yells serves as documentary
evidence of the therapist’s common sense knowledge about his potential for self
or other-directed violence. In this situated dialogue, the therapist is able to
achieve particular meaning about Owen. At the same time, her common-sense
knowledge about IPV child witnesses is validated, and more specifically her
common-sense knowledge about male IPV child witnesses and their reactions to
IPV is elaborated. This all contributes to the script she produces for male IPV

child witnesses. For the therapist, the script may be understood as relatively

64

fixed, but as we see from the excerpt above, the script is only the underlying
pattern, the meaning itself is produced throughout the course of each individual
interaction.

The therapist receives additional validation for this script in a session with

an older male IPV child witness, Kevin.

 

Therapist Case Notes: Expansion Analysis:

 

At the session today, Kevin and the
Talked about feelings and how we therapist talked about feelings.

all have them and we need to Recognizing that Kevin has had
express them or they come out in difficulty expressing his feelings

bad ways like kicking a chair across appropriately as a result of his IPV
the room. witnessing experience, the therapist

told him that everybody has feelings
and that they all need to express
feelings in a positive way or they will
manifest in a negative way. The
therapist referenced a recent incident
where Kevin kicked a chair across the
room as an example of his feelings
being expressed negatively and

 

inappropriately.
Kevin acknowledged that his Kevin had kicked the chair across the
response to the younger kids at room during a group therapy session at
group was out of proportion to the some point prior to this individual
incident. session. He kicked the chair in

response to something that the younger
children in the group had said or done.
He indicated during the individual
therapy session that his response of
kicking the chair was not appropriate
and was an overreaction to what the
other children had said or done that
made him upset.

 

l acknowledged that it is hard for Apparently sensing that Kevin needed
boys (and everyone else) to talk to be reassured that his abnormal
about their feelings. reaction and inability to express feelings

was normal for children, especially
boys, who had witnessed IPV, the
therapist indicated to him that boys in
particular have difficulty expressing their
feelings. Given that Kevin is a boy, the

 

 

 

 

65

 

therapist intended for him to identify
with the statement.

 

He agreed.

Kevin made some verbal or nonverbal
communication indicating his agreement
with the statement.

 

I told him about ways to express
feelings and not hurt self or others.

Because of the incident with kicking the
chair and his IPV witnessing
experience, it is apparently the
therapist’s assessment that Kevin is in
danger of hurting himself or others. In
order to address this danger, she
explained to Kevin some appropriate
ways to express feelings that would be
alternatives to him acting violently and
hurtirghimself or other people.

 

I agreed to create unsent letters to
Mike, Harold, Mom and others he
has strong feeling toward.

One of the therapeutic interventions the
therapist suggested as a way to
appropriately express feelings and
avoid violence, was to write letters
explaining negative feelings to the
target of the feelings and then not send
the letters. The therapist agreed to
assist Kevin with this exercise of writing
letters to the people he indicated he
was having negative feelings toward.
Three of the people he identified having
negative feelings toward were Mike,
Harold, and Kevin’s mother.

 

I showed him affirmations for self—
esteem and l assisted him in
creating an affirmations tape for
himself.

It is apparently the therapist’s
assessment that Kevin is experiencing
low self esteem as a result of his IPV
witnessing experience. The therapeutic
intervention she used to assist with
increasing his self esteem was to show
him affirmation statements that are
intended to improve self esteem. She
then assisted him with recording
affirmations onto a cassette tape so that
he could continue to listen to the
affirmation statements outside of the
therapy sessions.

 

 

I gave him a cassette player to use
it.

 

In order to listen to the cassette tape
with affirmation statements that Kevin
and the therapist created during the
therapy session, Kevin would need to
have a cassette player. She gave Kevin

 

66

 

 

a cassette player to ensure that he
would be able to listen to the tape
outside of the therapy sessions.

 

 

 

This excerpt from Kevin’s session appears to coincide with research cited above
that suggests that children who experience violence as children are more likely to
perpetuate violence as they become adults. This research is undoubtedly
known to the therapist and has become part of her common sense knowledge
about IPV child witnesses and she likely has investment in its validity. As such, it
becomes part of her script for Kevin as she engages in the therapy session with
him. Meaning is produced around that script as she interacts with Kevin and he
affinns her assessments regarding his difficulty expressing feelings (especially as
a male) and his subsequent inappropriate violent behavior.

The gendered scripts produced and employed by the therapist can be said
to cast female IPV child witnesses and male IPV child witnesses as experiencing
different reactions to their witnessing experiences and as needing different
therapeutic regimens in response to those reactions. Girls are understood as
repressing anger and in need of physical aggression to release it. Boys, on the
other hand, are cast as expressing their anger but doing so in ways that
represent physical harm to themselves or others.

One final feature of the gendered scripts was not as explicitly evidenced in
the data, but the allusions to it are interesting and worth noting. There are two
references to children feeling physically ill in the case notes. In both instances,
the children noted as feeling ill were female. In the case of Annie, her report of

illness appears to be treated as psychosomatic in nature by the therapist.

67

 

 

Therapist Case Notes:

Expansion Analysis:

 

Things are okay. Grandma took us
to see dad at treatment. He likes
treatment.

During the therapy session today, the
child in treatment, Annie, indicated that
things are not going either particularly
well or particularly poorly. Annie’s
grandmother took her to see her father
in a treatment center. While there, her
father indicated to her that he liked the
treatment he was participating in.

 

When Annie talked with him, he
wanted her to tell me something. He
wants Annie to be in a stable home.
She felt sick to stomach. We did
deep breathing affirmations. She
didn’t want to say what he told her to
say.

While Annie was visiting her father, he
told her to tell her therapist something.
One thing he told her to tell the therapist
was that he wanted her to have a stable
home. Annie was uncomfortable with
something else that her father told her
to tell the therapist. She was so
uncomfortable that it made her feel
physically ill with a sick stomach.
Recognizing this as a psychosomatic
symptom, the therapist helped the child
by treating with therapeutic breathing
that theydid together.

 

I told her no one (adults) should be
putting that on her. Tell dad to call
someone himself (or mom if she
does this) or he can call me and I’ll
explain to him why he shouldn’t put
her in the middle.

 

 

The therapist explained to Annie that
adults should not expect her to relay
their messages for them. She also
explained to her that if her father or her
mother wanted to say something to
another adult, then they should say it
themselves rather than having her do it
for them. The therapist told Annie that
she could tell her father to call her
directly if she wanted the therapist to
explain to him why it is inappropriate for
him to have her deliver his messages
for him.

 

In the other reference to a child experiencing physical illness, there is not

necessarily a direct link made to a psychosomatic cause, however, there is

reference to the possibility of something worrying the child.

68

 

 

Therapist Case Notes:

Expansion Analysis:

 

Mom and Tina came in.

Tina and her mother arrived for the
therapy session together today. Both
Tina and her mother were present
during the session.

 

Tina was not feeling well. Looked
tired and pale.

It was communicated to the therapist, or
she observed that Tina was not feeling
well. It was the therapist’s assessment
that Tina appeared to be tired and her
skin was pale. This visual assessment
appears to have confirmed for the
therapist that Tina was not feeling well.

 

We talked about her weekend and
the fun she had at grandma’s.

Tina, her mother and the therapist
discussed the events that took place
over the weekend. It was
communicated to the therapist that Tina
spent time at her grandmother’s house
and that she had an enjoyable time
while visiting there.

 

Then I asked her what her worries
were?

The therapist apparently assessed that
Tina was worried about something and
so asked her what was worrying her.

 

Mom probed in different areas —
mom and dad, the kitties, school,
etc.

Tina’s mother also began inquiring
about specific areas that she thought
might be worrying Tina including the
relationship between her mother and
father, some kittens, something at
school, and other areas of Tina’s life.

 

Tina denied having any worries.

 

 

Tina indicated that she was not worried
about anything.

 

 

In this excerpt, the therapist appears to acknowledge physical illness through her

observation of Tina’s tiredness and paleness. The case notes then reference a
question on what might be worrying Tina, which could suggest that the therapist
felt there might be an underlying psychosomatic cause. However, the case notes
lack sufficient detail to determine if that is indeed the script that the therapist was
working from. Again, while there were only two references to females

experiencing physical illness, and only one of those references could be said to

69

explicitly point to psychosomatic causes, it is an interesting allusion and one that
could be explored as a possible feature of a female IPV child witness script in a

future inquiry.

The ‘Healing IPV Child Witness’ Script

As described above, one feature of the Traumatized IPV Child Witness
script is that it understands the child witnesses to have a difficulty expressing
feelings, especially negative feelings. Another script that emerges from the data
is that of the Healing IPV Child Witness. In this script, children receiving therapy
are compliant with the therapeutic regimen being administered to them by the
therapist. They willingly participate in therapeutic exercises and present little if
any challenges to the therapist’s assessments of their emotional well-being.

You will recall Ethan who was initially resistant to admitting his negative
feelings and later given the workbook specifically for boys in earlier sessions. In
a subsequent session, Ethan is able to sail through the exercise pages and

therapeutic activities with ease.

 

Therapist Case Notes: Expansion Analysis:

 

At the therapy session today, Ethan
Ethan identified himself as “happy” indicated that he was feeling happy
during the feelings check. when the therapist administered a
therapeutic technique to assess his
emotional state.

 

He identified many activities he can At some point during the therapy

do by himself and identified as session today, Ethan completed an
having had every feeling listed at exercise that asked him to list the
some time or another. activities he is able to do by himself.

Ethan was able to list several activities
in response to this. He was also asked
to indicate if he had experience a
number of feelings by identifying them

 

 

 

 

70

 

from a list on a worksheet. Ethan
indicated that he had experienced every
feeling that was listed on the worksheet.

 

He also easily completed the page
that asks for examples of time the

child has felt scared, happy, mad,

sad,bad,good.

During the therapy session, Ethan
completed a page in his workbook that
asked him to give examples of
instances where he has felt various
emotions including scared, happy, mad,
sad, bad, and good. Ethan completed
the workbook page with no obvious
reluctance or difficulty.

 

He chose making Disney pictures on
the computer as his “fun” activity and
made several posters of Mickey and
Minnie at the beach, etc. He had a
snack and chose several small toys
for his prize.

Ethan was offered one of several fun
activities to complete during the therapy
session. He chose to make posters on
the computer from the choices he was
offered. The posters he made included
pictures of the Disney characters,
Mickey and Minnie. At least one of the
posters depicted Mickey and Minnie at
the beach.

 

ASSESSMENT: Ethan identifies his
feelings easily

Based on Ethan’s success in
completing exercises in the therapeutic
workbook, it is the therapist’s
assessment that Ethan does not have
difficulty in identifying the feelings that
he experiences. This is apparently
viewed as positive because it is
understood that most IPV child
witnesses do have difficulty identifying
their feelings and Ethan has
demonstrated this difficultyin the past.

 

 

PLAN: to continue with feelings, self-
esteem building and social skills.

 

Despite Ethan identifying feelings
easily, it is the therapist’s plan to
continue to explore his ability to express
and process feelings in future therapy
sessions. Since IPV witnesses tend to
have low self-esteem, and poor social
skills, the therapist apparently plans to
use therapeutic techniques to assist
Ethan with developing positive self-
esteem and social skills in future
therapy sessions.

 

71

 

Ethan appears to comply with the therapist’s assignment of tasks. The only
challenge he really presents to her common sense understanding of IPV child
witnesses is that he now does not deny negative feelings, whereas we had seen
that feature become incorporated into the Traumatized IPV Child Witness script
above. While it is not explicit in the case notes, there is a positive tone that
suggests that the therapist believes this willingness to identify feelings, both
negative and positive, represents progress for Ethan and is a desired outcome
and indeed a goal of therapy for IPV child witnesses. It is interesting however,
that while Ethan clearly accomplishes the goal of identifying negative feelings,
the therapist’s plan continues to contain additional therapeutic work on feelings
for Ethan. This is perhaps an indication of how steadfastly the therapist holds a
fundamental understanding of IPV child witnesses as emotionally traumatized.
Again, the scripts are produced in such a way as to validate the “pre-determined”
efficacy and necessity of the therapeutic environment according to all of its
foundations. Nowhere in the case notes is it evident at which point any IPV child
witness would not benefit from more work on feelings. There is no sense of what
a ‘healed’ IPV child witness might look like. However, we do see glimpses of
what a child headed down the correct path - a healing child might look like in
excerpts such as Ethan’s above.

We see further evidence of a healing child in the therapist’s case notes
from her sessions with Carter. During intake with Carter’s mother, she had
indicated that Carter was frequently getting in trouble at school for hitting and

spitting on other children. After several sessions where the therapist

72

administered videos and workbook exercises to Carter, suggested a reward

system to his mother, and discussed appropriate reactions to anger, the case

notes reflect the therapist’s assessment that Carter is making positive progress.

 

Therapist Case Notes:

Expansion Analysis:

 

Feelings check — happy.

During the therapy session today,
Carter indicated that he was happy
when the therapist administered the
therapeutic technique aimed at
assessing his emotional state.

 

Showed Carter how to use the “bop”
bag to express anger.

The therapist demonstrated to Carter
how to physically punch a bag designed
for punching and explained to him that
punching the bag was intended to
express anger in a healthy way. It is
apparently the therapist’s assessment
that despite reporting feeling happy,
Carter is still needs to learn healthy
ways to express anger due to his IPV
witnessing experience and the
inappropriate expressions of anger he
has exhibited in the past.

 

He used it for several minutes

Carter proceeded to punch the bag for
several minutes after the therapist
demonstrated how to use it.

 

He listened to Spinoza “Do You
Wonder?” while we completed
several pages in his workbook on
mistakes, happiest times, changing
things.

Carter listened to a therapeutic tape
with a character named, Spinoza. The
title of the tape was “Do You Wonder?”
At the same time the tape was playing
and Carter was listening to it, the
therapist assisted him with completing
pages in his therapeutic workbook. The
topic of the exercises in the workbook
were related to the child’s experience
and understanding of making mistakes,
his happiest times, and his experience
and/or expectations of going through
changing times.

 

He used stickers to decorate the
pages when he was finished.

Upon completion of the workbook
pages, Carter placed stickers on the
pages in a decorative manner.

 

ASSESSMENT: Carter is willing to
look at feelings, thoughts, etc. He is
able to tell me what he should do

 

 

Apparently based, at least in part, on
Carter’s successful completion of
exercises in the therapy session today,

 

73

 

 

when he is mad. (Walk away, tell a it is the therapist’s assessment that he
grownup, etc.) is progressing in a positive manner
because he is willing to openly identify
his feelings and thoughts. He is also
able to verbally express to the therapist
how he should react when he is mad.
He correctly indicated to the therapist
that he should walk away or tell an adult
when he is feeling mad.

 

 

 

 

Here we see an apparent validation that the therapy is having a positive benefit
as Carter is making progress, presumably as a result of the interventions that
have been provided to him. We see evidence of a healing child in Carter as he
willingly participates in therapeutic exercises and, as with Ethan, he is able to
identify his feelings to the therapist. Further, Carter is able to recite healthy
responses to anger which is cited as additional evidence that he is making
progress toward healing from his IPV witnessing experience. The Healing IPV
Child Witness script attaches certain category bound characteristics to children
that can be considered to be healing from their IPV witnessing experience.
Those characteristics include; the ability to identify negative feelings as well as
positive feelings, a willingness to engage in therapeutic exercises, the ability to
recite healthy ways to express anger, and a need for additional therapeutic

intervention to continue the healing process.

The ‘Grateful IPV Child Witness’ Script
A final script that emerges from the data is that of an IPV child witness
who is grateful to be removed from the situation where the violence was

occurring. This script is layered with a bit more ambiguity and tenuousness. To

74

this point, the various scripts described have established IPV child witnesses as
experiencing a multitude of negative emotions, behaviors, and reactions to
violence witnessing. Those scripts have also recognized the IPV child witnesses
as having a number of the same difficulties related to the aftermath of IPV that
often results in the children having to leave their homes, having to live separately
from siblings and other family members, leaving pets, friends, and personal
belongings behind, going to another school, and sometimes being forced to live
in a crowded shelter environment with other families. But this recognition that
leaving the violent situation is difficult for the children is tempered by an
underlying common sense understanding that, at a basic level, the children are
glad that the IPV is no longer occurring, or at a minimum, it is no longer occurring
in their presence.

We see evidence of this grateful lPV child witness script throughout the

therapist’s case notes. The following excerpt is from Emily’s initial session with

 

 

the therapist.
Therapist Case Notes: Expansion Analysis:
In the therapy session today, the
therapist gave Emily a poster with a
I gave her affirmations poster and positive message on it. The therapist
asked her to say it everyday. She appears to understand the child as
said the shelter is hectic, but not needing to internalize the positive
fighting so she likes it. message to mitigate her low self-

esteem. The therapist asked Emily to
read the message aloud every day to
help her internalize it. Emily spoke
about what it is like to be in the shelter.
She indicated that she feels like it is
hectic, but the negative feelings
associated with the chaos are
outweighed by her relief that there is no
fighting. Her previous living situation

 

 

 

 

75

 

 

 

exposed her to fighting which is less
preferable than the chaos of living in the
shelter.

 

We see similar evidence of this ‘gratefulness’ with Bradley’s intake session

during an assessment of sorts that is being conducted by the therapist.

 

Therapist Case Notes:

Expansion Analysis:

 

Glad to be at [Shelter] and out of
situation. Likes: Gym, science,
recess, writing workshop. Dislikes:
Advanced math, social studies,
homework.

 

 

During the therapy session today,
Bradley relayed to the therapist that he
is pleased to be living at the shelter.
The reason he is pleased to be living at
the shelter is because he was
previously living in an environment
where he either witnessed or
experienced violence in the home. He
did not like witnessing/experiencing the
violence. Living at the shelter means
that he and his mother are presumably
no longer living with the person who
perpetrated the violence, so the
violence has ceased. Bradley is glad
that the violence is no longer occurring.
The therapist proceeded to assess
Bradley’s likes and dislikes related to
school. He indicated that the things he
enjoys in school are gym, science,
recess, and writing workshop. The
things he reported disliking about school
are advanced math, social studies and
homework.

 

In another intake session, Nathan discusses his reaction to the IPV that occurred

at his home prior to coming to the shelter.

 

Therapist Case Notes:

Expansion Analysis:

 

About mom and dad’s fighting...me
and my brother hide. I hide where I
can see. I feel scared for mom, mad
at dad for hitting mom, sad because
there is fiwng and mom gets hurt.

 

 

The therapist engaged Nathan in a
discussion about the IPV that had been
occurring at his previous home between
his mother and his father. Nathan
indicated that, during the incidents of
violence, he and his brother would hide.

 

76

 

 

 

 

He further indicated that he would hide
somewhere in the home where he
believed he was out of sight of his
mother and father, but where he could
still see them, and he would still witness
the violence as it occurred. Nathan
relayed to the therapist that he felt fear
for his mother during the violence and
he felt anger toward his father for
perpetrating the violence against his
mother. He also relayed feelings of
sadness because the violence was
occurring and because his mother
would be physically injured by his father
during the incidents of violence.

 

Misses dad somewhat but doesn’t
miss the abuse. ls glad to be at
[Shelter] with mom.

 

 

The therapist inquired (or Nathan
volunteered) as to how Nathan was
feeling now that he no longer lived in
the violent situation since he and his
mother had moved into the shelter and
his father was no longer living with them
and could not perpetrate violence
against his mother. Nathan indicated
that he missed his father, but the
therapist appears to have interpreted
Nathan’s verbal and/or nonverbal
responses to mean that those feelings
of missing dad were not very strong.
Nathan indicated that he did not miss
being in a situation where his father was
perpetrating violence against his mother
and that the feelings of relief about
being out of the situation outweighed
the feelings of missing living with his
father. Nathan further indicated to the
therapist that he was pleased to be
living at the shelter with his mother,
presumably in the absence of his father.

 

As evidenced in the excerpts above, a fundamental characteristic of the grateful

IPV child witness script is that it casts the child as disliking the violent situation

they had been living in and preferring even less- than-ideal living situations (e.g.

77

 

hectic shelters, away from other family members who are missed) to those that
include IPV. The importance of this feature of the script is underscored when a
child fails to fully comply with it. Consider the following excerpt from a session
with Carrie.

Carrie had been dealing with a very difficult situation where her step-sister
was sexually abused by her stepfather, George. Once her step-sister came
forward, Child Protective Services became involved and Carrie and her mother
moved into a small apartment while the step-siblings moved in with a relative.
During this particular session, Carrie was relaying to the therapist the
disappointments of her new living situation which included missing her friends

and step-sisters and having to share a room with her mother.

 

Therapist Case Notes: Expansion Analysis:

 

During the therapy session, the

We discussed her prior fears. She therapist talked to Carrie about what
said she is not afraid anymore. made her fearful in her prior living
situation. Carrie indicated that she is no
longer fearful, presumably because her
living situation had changed and she no
longer lives with George who is alleged
to have perpetrated sexual abuse on
Carrie’s step-sister.

 

She is disappointed because she Carrie indicated to the therapist that she
believes George is using her old thinks that now that she no longer lives
bedroom to sleep. in the previous home with George,

George has begun sleeping in the
bedroom that used to be hers when she
lived there. The therapist interpreted
Carrie’s feeling about this assumption
as one of disappointment.

 

Reframed- she has a new bedroom Apparently sensing that Carrie was not
and he can’t come in there. fully convinced that her current situation
(away from the abuser) was necessarily
better than her previous situation where
the abuser was present but she had,
among other things, a bedroom that she

 

 

 

 

78

 

liked, the therapist attempted to reframe
Carrie’s perception of her current living
situation. In order to do this, the
therapist reminded Carrie that her
current bedroom was a new bedroom
and that one positive feature of it was
that it was a place that George did not
have access to. This was understood to
be a positive benefit because Carrie
had expressed some fear of George
coming into her bedroom when she was
in her previous living situation.

 

 

 

Here, we see the therapist attempting to assist Carrie with following the ‘Grateful
IPV Child Witness’ script. Carrie expresses some negative feelings (however
mild) toward her new living situation and some nostalgic positive feelings toward
the people and things she had in the previous living situation despite the
presence of the alleged abuser whom she admittedly feared. The therapist,
likely believing that there is therapeutic benefit for children when they adhere to
the script, is explicit in the case notes about her deliberate work to maintain it and
even notes that she “reframed” Carrie’s concerns. She goes on to identify
reasons why Carrie should be grateful for her new living situation despite the fact
that it has meant she has had to leave certain people and things behind.

The ‘Grateful IPV Child Witness’ script features category-bound
characteristics that include IPV child witnesses feeling relieved to be out of the
situation where IPV was occurring. Further, the script acknowledges and allows
for negative feelings about leaving the previous living situation related to missing
friends, family, and belongings. Ultimately, however, the script requires that the

child prefer, or at least see the benefit of, leaving the violent living situation.

79

 

Indeed, it strikes our “common sense” that it should be the most basic desire for
a child living in a violent household to want to move to a non-violent living
situation. It is almost unthinkable that a child would prefer to stay in the situation
if given a choice, and even if they might prefer to stay, both the therapeutic
literature and the cultural notions about IPV suggest that it would not be in the
child’s best interest. The grateful IPV child witness script is really at the heart of
the current IPV child witness therapeutic culture, and certainly employed by the
therapist in this study. First and foremost, the IPV living situation is understood
as less preferable than almost any other non-violent living situation. The
remaining scripts that aim to assess, treat, and heal the IPV child witness are
predicated on the understanding that the child should be glad to leave, or at least

eventually be grateful that they had been forced to leave.

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CHAPTER FIVE
CONCLUSIONS
This dissertation has explored the process of providing therapy to lPV

child witnesses in a rural safe haven through the Community Coordinated
Response Projects to Prevent Intimate Partner Violence. The analysis used an
ethnomethodological approach to understand the sense-making procedures used
by the child therapist as she engaged in the therapeutic process with 58 IPV child
witnesses. What follows is a summary of the theoretical tenants of the study, the
methodology used in the analysis, key findings, and implications for future

thinking about the theory and practice of IPV child witness therapy.

Study Overview

This study drew on ethnomethodological theory as informed by social
construction and symbolic interaction to understand how meaning was produced
by the child therapist in one particular therapeutic setting. Ethnomethodology
served as both the theoretical underpinning of the study as well as the method of
analysis. At its core, ethnomethodology understands meaning as at once
employed and produced in social interaction. As such, the study approached the
case note data set not as a record of the pre-packaged meanings utilized by the
therapist during her therapeutic interventions with the children, but as evidence of
the various underlying assumptions that the therapist experienced as common
sense knowledge as she both employed and produced meaning anew through

the course of her interactions with the children in her care.

81

The data for the study consisted of case notes on therapy sessions with
58 IPV child witnesses. The case notes were recorded by one child therapist
during the Community Coordinated Response Projects to Prevent Intimate
Partner Violence. A secondary analysis of the case notes employed an
ethnomethodological methodology whereby the case notes were expanded to
reflect the unrecorded, taken for granted information that comprised underlying
patterns. The underlying patterns that emerged from the data were arranged into
a series of scripts for purposes of analysis. Each script represented the
culmination of interpretive procedures (common sense knowledge) used by the
therapist as she assesses and treats each child. In addition, the analysis pays
particular attention to how the therapist actively produces these scripts despite
the likelihood that she experiences them as predetermined, or predictable based
on her personal and professional training, experience, and common sense

knowledge.

Discussion of Findings
The data analysis revealed that the therapist employed a number of
procedures as she approached the IPV witnesses in her therapeutic care. The
procedures were organized into sets of category bound attributes,
characteristics, and activities loosely grouped together as scripts. The scripts
included the Traumatized IPV Child Witness script, Gendered Scripts for male
and female IPV child witnesses, the Healing IPV Child Witness script, and the

Grateful IPV Child Witness script.

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The Traumatized IPV Child Witness script understands the IPV child
witnesses as angry, sad, and guilt-ridden. Further it understands those feelings
to have manifest in such a way to cause the children to have low self-esteem,
exhibit aggression, deny negative emotions, and have difficulty expressing
feelings in appropriate, healthy ways. Threaded through this script is also the
understanding that the children are experiencing these abnormalities and
difficulties primarily as a result of having witnessed IPV.

Gendered Scripts assigns particular characteristics to IPV child witnesses
that are category bound based on the child’s gender. For female IPV child
witnesses, issues of concern are a reluctance to express anger and a need to act
out physical aggression in order to access and resolve repressed negative
emotions. Another potential, though less well-evidenced, characteristic of female
IPV child witnesses is the tendency to exhibit symptoms of physical illness that
are psychosomatic in nature. Male IPV child witnesses, on the other hand, are
understood in the script to express anger, but do so in ways that are
inappropriately aggressive. As such, male IPV child witnesses are thought to
present physical danger to themselves and others without appropriate
therapeutic intervention.

The Healing IPV Child Witness script is reserved for children who are
actively engaged in the therapeutic regimen. They are cast as making positive
progress, able to identify feelings and name appropriate ways to express them,
and can be understood to be recovering or healing from their traumatic IPV

witnessing experience. An interesting feature of this script, however, is that it

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appears to fall short of identifying a point at which an IPV child witness would be
completely healed. Indeed, this script suggests that IPV child witnesses can
always benefit from additional therapeutic intervention despite any amount of
positive progress toward healing that might have been made by an individual
child.

Finally, the Grateful IPV Chi/d Witness script centers around an
understanding that IPV child witnesses are grateful to be removed from the
environment where the IPV was occurring. The script recognizes that this
gratitude may not be immediate given the host of difficulties and challenges that
can surround the uprooting of the child from his or her previous living situation.
However, it does suggest that the child, if not initially relieved, will eventually
come to realize that the benefits of being separated from the individual
perpetrating the IPV far outweigh the disruptions that that separation may have
caused. Indeed, part of the therapeutic regimen appears to be aimed specifically
at helping reluctant IPV child witnesses to come to that very realization.

Together, the four scripts identified through the ethnomethodologic
expansion analysis of the data provide evidence of the common sense
knowledge employed by the therapist as she engaged in therapy with the child
IPV witnesses in this study. While these scripts do not likely exhaust the breadth
or full scope of that common sense knowledge, they do assemble a well-
documented comprehensive assessment of the therapeutic environment in which

the children were treated.

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Theoretical and Practical Implications

This study offers an opportunity to look at the traditional therapeutic
environment for child IPV witnesses and pose some important questions about
the central tenants of that environment. The data analysis revealed a
therapeutic regimen that approaches child IPV witnesses with a certain repertoire
of common sense knowledge. Without attempting to make an empirical
conclusion regarding the validity of that repertoire, the analysis contributes to
thinking in this area first and foremost by acknowledging that there are sense-
making procedures being employed in the therapeutic environment. This
acknowledgement challenges the notion that IPV child witnesses in fact present
with a certain host of empirically known abnormal characteristics as a result of
being traumatized by the IPV witnessing experience. Instead, we can
understand the therapeutic environment to approach these children ‘as if’ they
possess these characteristics even in instances where their interactions with the
therapist might not necessarily support such a conclusion. Instead, contradictory
actions are incorporated into the common-sense understanding of these children
in a way that creates meaning anew in order to fit the ‘as if” approach. By
making this observation, the analysis contributes to the body of IPV child witness
literature from a theoretical standpoint.

From a practical standpoint, the analysis begins the conversation about
the consequences of providing traditional therapy to IPV child witnesses. While
this study was not designed to tell us everything about child IPV witness therapy,

it does tell us something about it. Through this study, the manner in which

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therapy is accomplished has been shown to be a productive exercise, rather than
a purely interpretive exercise on the part of the therapist. This is a jumping off
point for further inquiries into how this type of therapeutic environment impacts
outcomes for the children receiving the interventions. From there, inquiries into
the efficacy of alternative approaches are certainly warranted.

Finally, while not a primary goal of the project, this study makes a
methodological contribution in that it was conducted as a true
ethnomethodological analysis. As such, it provides an example of using
ethnomethodology to investigate how, as Dorothy Smith (1987) suggests,
institutions serve to generalize local experience. In this case, the institution of
child therapy generalizes the local experience of certain children who have
witnessed IPV into particular scripts. We must look at what is lost in that process
of generalization when we actively/productively ‘fit’ a child’s individual experience
into a script. As a methodological contribution then, this study provides a

framework for future institutional inquiries to be conducted in a similar fashion.

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APPENDICES

87

APPENDIX A

“EMILY’S” CASE NOTES

March 2 2000
Mother, Linda, rescheduled intake 3 times. After leaving “Shelter”, she did not
continue therapy services.

 

October 11. 2000

I gave her an affirmations poster and asked her to say it everyday. She said the
shelter is hectic, but not fighting so she likes it. Emily drew pictures with very
prolific captions and messages. We talked about them. She had written to her
mother “You are very kind to us. You work hard for us and we still don’t forgive
you.” She told me she isn’t mad at mom but some others are. I explained that
sometimes it takes people time to get over being mad. She likes school and the
shelter and is looking forward to a safe new home. She likes to ride bikes but
doesn’t have one of her own. I will ask Jane to keep an eye out for one for her. I
thanked her for coming to see me and told her I will see her next week.

I told Linda I will see all three of them each Wednesday.

October 18 2000

Got new house. She is excited. Drew — praised drawing. Listened to Spinoza
“You are All You Need To Be”. We talked about the message and that Stymie
the Skunk is mean (on the tape). I told her when people say or do mean things
to others it is because they have problems not because there is something wrong
with the person they are being mean to. She said a boy knocked her down. She
told the teacher. The teacher made him apologize. She felt better. I asked what
she does when she feels mad or sad - go play in my room. Sometimes kids are
made at mom. Is she? Yes, It’s okay to be mad. How does she feel? Guilty.
She has a right to feel mad. Mom is trying to make things better. When she
comes here we will help her not feel mad anymore. What are some things she
could do? Reviewed “25 Healthy Ways to Express Anger". She enjoyed my
“angry dance”. I told her I will give this to mom so she can help Emily and her
sibs get out their anger in healthy ways (which I did).

 

Novernfber 1, 2000

Good. Like new school, making friends. New house is good. Getting along
with sister, not with brother. He hates me. Mom makes him go in time out. Had
her draw a picture of her new house and family. Gave her “Girls Only” daily
book. Had Veronica come in and she will read it to Emily each day. She made a
promise. Emily gave permission before I asked Veronica. Misses dad. That’s

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understandable. Doesn’t miss Tom. That’s understandable too. He was mean.
School is good. Went there before. Misses dad, doesn’t miss Tom. Liked video.
Will play Amazon Trail next time. Likes jungle. May come to group after
Christmas.

November 15. 2000

Everything is good. Mom wanted her to tell me something but she can’t
remember. Asked to watch movie. Visit with dad was good. We watched “Letter
on Light Blue Stationary” (self-esteem). “You Are Very Special and You Are One
of a Kind”. We sang along with the video (she began on her own). I drew her a
picture that said “Emily is special” and gave it to her to put up in her room. I told
her she was special and she agreed. Veronica said she will help Emily read her
daily book this week also. I asked if Emily could remember what she wanted to tell
me but she couldn’t.

November 29 2000

Feeling happy. Watched “I Like Being Me”.

Did nine pages in her workbook (Girls). Talked about saying no to adults (she
had marked that kids shouldn’t say no to adults). I explained good,
uncomfortable and bad touch. That it is okay to say no to things that hurt or
make her feel uncomfortable. We did a lot of work on self-esteem and being
proud of oneself. She chose a doll.

The other two children were gone to friend’s tonight.

Gave her paper for drawing.

 

Decem_ber 6. 2000

Feeling good. Wanted to watch a movie “From Mad to Worse”. Drew pictures.
Discussed feelings — she gets mad at Mike, sad about dad. Happy she has a
different bed. I drew a picture of her that said Emily is a good person. She took
it home to hang on her wall. Discussed ways to handle sibs being mean. Helped
her pick out something to take home. She also picked out something for
Amanda.

December 13 2000

Emily — everything is good. She asked to watch a video and chose “From Mad to
Worse”. Did questions and answers. Emily drew during the movie. We talked
about ways to handle anger and using “I” messages. She is happy to be going to
grandma’s for Christmas.

 

89

Januarv 10. 2001

Asked to watch movie that Mike watched. She agreed to complete a worksheet
“Some Ways You Can Help Yourself Feel Happy”. Afterward I have her supplies
to draw while she watched the movie. I made affirmations poster for her while
she worked. I instructed her to put them up on the wall and say them every day.

END “EMILY’S” CASE NOTES

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APPENDIX B

“SAM’S” CASE NOTES

Februam 11I 2000

Jan outlined abusive relationship with Rob and answered interview questions. I
let her tell her story which took about an hour. She apologized for taking so
much. I explained that I wanted to hear what she had to say. She agreed to
come back to finish the assessment. She would like to provide transportation to
appointments for Sam to let him know she supports the counseling. As far as
Tuesday group, she and her ex-husband are taking Sam to the “Recreation
Center" on Tuesday nights to work out. They and his brother are encouraging
him to get in shape so kids will see that he is strong and leave him alone at
school. He is enjoying the attention from them. Sam, has underlying behavioral
problems that have been ongoing throughout his life. He appears to be
depressed and Jan would be open to meds for him as she herself has recently
begun taking antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds and sees that they are
working. Sam’s reaction with the bat is a normal reaction to the trauma he
witnessed. (Jan understands that.) Parents appear committed to their children —
questions remain, however.

PLAN: To see Jan next week to complete intake. Then set up a first
appointment for Sam at that time.

Februa 16 2000

Met with Jan regarding her son, Sam. Completed parent interview and
biographical information form. Asked her for feedback, questions, concerns, etc.
Sam responds to positive reinforcement best. Jan hopes he will learn better
social skills in therapy.

ASSESSMENT: Sam would be a good candidate of our therapy program. They
have not discussed the abuse in detail.

PLAN: Jan will call on 2/17/00 after she gets her work schedule, to make Sam’s
first appointment.

Februam 21, 2000
Client had not called on 2/17/00. Called Jan and left message on her phone to

call for an appointment.

Februa 23 2000

Sam was reluctant at first. Jan stayed for session. He didn’t answer when I
asked him to tell mom why he wanted to come. I had mom tell him what she
wanted to see for him. (Happy, not reacting to taunts, feeling safe - kids taunting
at school,. Told us he usually ignores it but it increases until he reacts. Got

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more frequent after he told the football coach this fall when one of this
teammates kept kicking sand in his face. The player and his friends have been
“ripping on him” continuously since then. He asked what precedes the attacks)
he said nothing, that they pick on other kids too. He used avoidance tactics such
as staying in the classroom to ask the teacher a question until the next class
begins or running out the door first to get away. I asked him to tell me about Rob
and the attack. He recounted the incident and mother brought up the bat. I told
him it is understandable that he is not feeling safe. Mom tried to make him say
he is now feeling safe. But he wouldn’t (he mentioned that Rob still calls there. I
asked mom if she could have Rob not contact her anymore so that Sam could
feel safe. Both Jan and Sam said Rob keeps getting the phone number. I
acknowledged Sam has been through an awful lot and to give himself credit for
what he has accomplished. I gave him an affirmations poster that I made for him
and a joke book. He said he would like to come back next week. Jan will have
to call me to set the appointment. I asked about ways he has tried to make
friends. No real answer. I asked if he could make friends with kids from the
middle school in “Riverton” through clubs, etc. or the Recreation Center in
“Prestonville” (they attend the Recreation Center in “Two Oaks” right now). Both
Jan and Sam said that any efforts to make things better for him at school will only
make things worse. Discussed high school and several “guys” he knows and
likes there so that next year he will be in the same school with them. Sam
thanked me for the poster and book. We made small talk about baseball which
really drew Sam out.

Jan said she would call with a day/time that would be good next week.

Februagy 25, 2000
Jan’s voice sounded husky. She sounded “flat”. She apologized for not calling

and made an appointment for Sam for 4:00 pm. on Wednesday. I said it
sounded like she had a cold. She started to cry and said it’s probably from
yelling at Rob. He has been calling her the last few weeks and verbally
manipulating her and now she feels that the PPO is not in effect. (She had
answered her cell phone and in a moment of weakness - talked to him). I asked
if she was safe. She said yes. I reminded her that the PPO is against him, not
her. Even if she let him violate it in the past, it is still in effect. She has a 1:00
pm. appointment with Darcy to see what she can do to stop him from calling. I
asked if I could do anything to help her - she said if I could call Darcy to tell her
that Jan is running a little late.

March 1 2000

Called Jan. She confirmed that she is bringing in Sam today at 4:00 pm.

Sam and his mother, Jan came in and both seemed exhausted and down. (Both
slouched down on couch, kept jackets on, said things were bad). (Jan had been
here earlier in the afternoon with counselor from Shelter regarding PPO problems
— Sam may not know about this). Sam had an especially upsetting teasing

 

92

incident the day before. A group of his football teammates insulted him and
pelted him with snowballs while they were waiting for someone to come and
unlock the training building. No one could unlock it and Sam finally walked to the
Gas Station to phone mom to come and get him. Questioned what may have
happened in the incident. Sam said nothing. Jan said she went to the principal
last year when the teasing escalated to poking and pinching. The next day the
kids called Sam a squealer and the abuse intensified. Sam claims that teachers
usually don’t step in even when they see it occurring. He does not want
intervention with the school as he fears it will get worse. Looked at ways he can
cope (ignore it, reframe to keep from reacting, use affirmations to self while they
are teasing him, seek out friend at Recreation Center in “Prestonville”). Jan will
look into activities at the Recreation Center in “Prestonville”. Sam could meet
new boys his age to at least have friends for weekend activities. Asked Sam to
fill out a worksheet “Feeling Good About Myself” and bring it to next appointment.
Will try to meet with Sam alone for part of appointment.

March 10 2000

No one there to assist me (that has worked with her). Had them check crisis
sheets. Called on 3"d CPS report made by on _[date] . Rob was
drinking _[date] at _[time]_ a.m. talked to counselor about abuse,
depression and surprised she is in this situation as a professional. Upset about
police coming to her house as the incident had been put in PPO already.

 

_M_arch 8. 2000 (note: dates out of order in original case notes]
Rob had hearing, basically got a slap on the wrist. Last called on 3/8/00.

March 10 2000

Sam came in by himself and Jan (his mother) joined us the last 20 minutes. Sam
brought the feelings worksheet. He mentioned that he hadn’t filled in some
blanks. Things have been about the same at school. They checked the board
for activities at the Recreation Center. There are none that would work for him.
Began completing intake form. Sam began to discuss his fears for his mother
because he heard Rob’s voice in the night several times this week. He
suggested he would come to his mother's aid if Rob assaulted her. Explained
that the best way to help her would be to call 911 and get himself to safety.
Explored other options — call dad and stay with him, asked Sam if I could have
mom come in and share the safety plan and his fears with her. At first Jan was
very angry and threatened to stop all services at the Shelter if I was going to
threaten with a CPS report. I told her in a calm voice that l was not threatening
her with anything, that I was helping Sam with a safety plan and to voice his
fears, which I feel are justified. I had Sam tell her how he feels. Jan agreed not
to contact Rob or let him come over this weekend. She said she is trying very
hard not to have contact with him but is afraid if she stops speaking to him he will

 

93

take revenge on her in some way. Discussed Shelter support services,
encouraged the use of affirmations for both her and Sam and gave them each an
affirmations poster.

OTHER: Made an appointment to see Sam next week.

March 16 2000
OTHER: Referral to “Children’s Activity Group”.

 

March 16 2000

Family did not come to 4:00 pm. appointment. Jan had been here earlier and
met with Helen. Helen said that Jan indicated they were coming to see me.
PLAN: Will call Jan on Friday to see if they want to reschedule.

 

March 17 2000

Jan wants Sam to come here. Apologized for missing appointment. Things are
bad for Sam - has tried to spend more one-on-one time with him. Wonders if
she is rewarding his behavior - His acting out may be his way of letting her know
something is wrong. Gave referral to Children’s Activity Group. Jan took the
number and said she will call as soon as she gets off the phone. She said she
realizes he needs to have at lest one friend. She and her daughter will be taking
Sam somewhere tonight as his older brother is having his friends over and they
have already said they don’t want Sam to hang around and “bug” them.

 

March 24 2000

Asked if Sam needed safety plan or felt unsafe - has not (he appeared more
relaxed and less unhappy). Jan mentioned Children’s Activity Group to him. He
is non-committal. Asked about his weekend (Jan mentioned several things that
he did when he said he had done nothing.) I offered ideas — a party for his
softball team, a babysitting class through a Social Service Agency, a party for his
confirmation class at church. I asked him to go up to kids three times this week
who have reached out to him in the past and make small talk. I gave him a
chapter from “Building Self Esteem in Teens” to read and begin using the
affirmations. Gave him baseball cards, a case of jelly bean gum (suggested he
bring some to school for kids that haven’t been mean).

PLAN: Mom agreed to take him and any friend bowling. She also would be
willing to let him have a pizza party at their home or drive him to classes.
OTHER: Offered Jan safety plan - has forms. Knows what she needs to do.

 

94

March 31. 2000

Sam was upbeat, Jan seemed down (bags under eyes, not smiling). Jan moved
a box of toys off the couch to sit next to Sam (rather than one of them sit in the
chair). We made small talk for a while. I inquired about Children’s Activity
Group, bowling outing. They had not take action on either but Jan said Sam
wants to take the babysitting class through the Social Service Agency and she
will call on that. I asked Sam if he made an effort to speak to anyone. He said
he didn’t. He also hadn’t read through the affirmation until today. Both Jan and
Sam mentioned baseball coming up and how busy he will be and Jan and I
offered encouragement the high school will be better as he knows some older
boys there that don’t tease him. I mentioned that the last few weeks Sam has
been more upbeat, that things were rough a few weeks ago. What is different?
Sam explained happily “My mom is not seeing Rob anymore. She hasn’t seen
him in a few weeks.” Jan said “Yes everyone is really happy about it. Of course
I’m grieving and depressed but I’ll get over it”. I reminded her that the Shelter is
there for support and assistance with PPO violations. She said that won’t be a
problem. Toward the end of the session I asked if she wanted to set up another
appointment for Sam. She and Sam exchanged a few words regarding baseball
season and being busy. Jan said she would call me regarding a future
appointment. I made a point of telling Sam I am glad he is feeling better and that
l have enjoyed meeting with him (in case he doesn’t come back.)

M2902

I contacted Shelter regarding whether they are still serving Jan. They are not.
They have heard she went back with her abusive boyfriend. I got permission
from Karen to write a letter to Sam telling him that he could call the crisis line
anytime he needs to talk to someone about his feelings. I also invited him back
to therapy at any time. I included a copy of his safety plan.

END “SAM’S” CASE NOTES

95

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