UNIVERSITY OF LONDON–BIRKBECK COLLEGE AND INSTITUTE OF FAMILY THERAPY LONDON.doc

UNIVERSITY OF LONDON – BIRKBECK COLLEGE AND INSTITUTE OF FAMILY THERAPY LONDON HOW FAMILY THERAPISTS ENCOUNTER AND RESPOND TO HEGEMONIC MASCULINITY IN FAMILY THERAPY. DOCTORATE IN FAMILY AND SYSTEMIC PSYCHOTHERAPY By: Ged Smith Supervisor: Professor Stephen Frosh Date: July, 2011. _____________________________________________________________________ ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to mention a number of people without whom this thesis would not have been completed. My supervisor, Professor Stephen Frosh is particularly due many thanks for his patience and ongoing guidance and encouragement throughout this entire process. His expert advice has been invaluable. I also feel indebted to my friends, work colleagues, and my partner Clare for their support and patience with all the effects that doing such a thesis had on me and on them. I am also very grateful of course to the seven participants here who gave so much time and effort to the questions I asked and helped me produce such interesting data. And finally I am forever grateful for the inspiration I always derive from my four children in ways they cannot even imagine, but which never cease to amaze and delight me, and I dedicate this to them. To Sam, Tom, Dan and Kate. ABSTRACT. While issues of gender and masculinity have been written about widely in the psychotherapeutic literature generally and in systemic literature specifically, the issue of challenging men who display hegemonic masculinity or patriarchal attitudes or behaviours in therapy has been under-represented. Masculinity is seen here as a discursively produced phenomenon; the socialisation of destructive power in men in western cultures, as well as elsewhere, is powerful, insidious, and so deep rooted that it is easily mistaken for being natural. This study sets out to investigate ways in which qualified, experienced and practising system