Existential uncertainty in the patient cancer experience: Delimiting the concept.

Objective: To delimit the concept of existential uncertainty in the patient cancer experience from other, related aspects of uncertainty in the context of an existing framework of health-related uncertainty.

Methods: In-depth interviews were carried out with six people living with cancer and analyzed using theory-driven, concept-focused thematic analysis.

Results: Our analysis suggests that existential uncertainty is concerned with meaning rather than information; with the person rather than the disease; and with the fundamental nature of our human being-in-the-world rather than the more practical aspects of our relationships with others.

Existential uncertainty in health care: A concept analysis.

Rationale, Aims And Objectives: According to an influential taxonomy of varieties of uncertainty in health care, existential uncertainty is a key aspect of uncertainty for patients. Although the term "existential uncertainty" appears across a number of disciplines in the research literature, its use is diffuse and inconsistent. To date there has not been a systematic attempt to define it.

Surrender to win: Constructions of 12-step recovery from alcoholism and drug addiction.

This article focuses on the ways in which members of Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous construct themselves as being in recovery from addiction. In this original study, data were taken from 19 participants. They were analysed using Willig's six-stage Foucauldian discourse analytic method.

What can qualitative psychology contribute to psychological knowledge?

This article reflects on what qualitative research in psychology can contribute to the accumulation of psychological knowledge. It provides an overview of qualitative research in psychology and discusses its potential value to quantitative researchers. It also reviews the differences and similarities between qualitative and quantitative research and explains how qualitative research can be differentiated from other forms of knowing that are concerned with human experience.

Liminality as a dimension of the experience of living with terminal cancer.

Objective: This paper is concerned with the phenomenology of death awareness within the context of being diagnosed with terminal cancer. The objective of the research presented here is to provide a deeper insight into terminally ill cancer patients' engagement with their mortality.

Method: The analysis forms part of a wider project that involved conducting a metasynthesis of 23 phenomenological studies of the experience of living with the awareness of having terminal cancer published between 2011 and 2016.

A meta-synthesis of studies of patients' experience of living with terminal cancer.

Objective: The aim of this research was to produce a synthesis of phenomenological studies of the experience of living with the awareness of having terminal cancer to gain a more complete understanding of the parameters of this experience.

Methods: This research used meta-synthesis as a method for integrating the results of 23 phenomenological studies of the experience of living with the awareness of having terminal cancer published between 2011 and 2016.

Results: The meta-synthesis generated 19 theme clusters that informed the construction of four master themes: trauma, liminality, holding on to life, and life as a cancer patient.

"My bus is here": a phenomenological exploration of "living-with-dying".

Objectives: This article has 2 aims. The first is to demonstrate how the application of an innovative qualitative methodology generated novel insights into the experience of living with advanced cancer. The article's second aim is to challenge the idea that the identification of shared themes provides the researcher with access to the meaning and significance of the experience of "living-with-dying.

'Feel the Feeling': Psychological practitioners' experience of acceptance and commitment therapy well-being training in the workplace.

This empirical study investigates psychological practitioners' experience of worksite training in acceptance and commitment therapy using an interpretative phenomenological analysis methodology. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight participants, and three themes emerged from the interpretative phenomenological analysis data analysis: influence of previous experiences, self and others and impact and application The significance of the experiential nature of the acceptance and commitment therapy training is explored as well as the dual aspects of developing participants' self-care while also considering their own clinical practice. Consistencies and inconsistencies across acceptance and commitment therapy processes are considered as well as clinical implications, study limitations and future research suggestions.

The personal experience of dysmenorrhoea: an interpretative phenomenological analysis.

This study explored six women's experiences of primary dysmenorrhoea using semi-structured interviews analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Rather than focusing on pain, participants broadened the study focus to coping with the menstrual process as a whole. This was seen to be mediated by menstrual taboos and by the theme of 'order', arising from a strong feeling of a menstrual timetable and the need for rational explanation.

Cancer diagnosis as discursive capture: phenomenological repercussions of being positioned within dominant constructions of cancer.

This paper is concerned with the phenomenological repercussions of being positioned within widely available discursive constructions of cancer. One of the many challenges of being diagnosed with cancer is that it requires the person to make sense of the diagnosis and to find meaning in their changed circumstances. From a social constructionist point of view, such meaning is made out of discursive resources which are available within one's culture.

'Unlike a rock, a tree, a horse or an angel ...': reflections on the struggle for meaning through writing during the process of cancer diagnosis.

In this article I present some reflections on my experience of the process of wresting meaning from meaninglessness. My reflections are both personal and scholarly in that I trace my own experience of struggling with meaning-making and attempt to illuminate them with reference to published work, drawing on concepts from existentialist philosophy in particular. Much of what is contained in this article is based upon reflections recorded in my personal diary written during the process of being diagnosed with cancer.

A phenomenological investigation of the experience of taking part in 'extreme sports'.

This article is concerned with what it may mean to individuals to engage in practices that are physically challenging and risky. The article questions the assumptions that psychological health is commensurate with maintaining physical safety, and that risking one's health and physical safety is necessarily a sign of psychopathology. The research was based upon semi-structured interviews with eight extreme sport practitioners.

Older women and everyday talk about the ageing body.

This discourse analytic study shows how 10 older women, who exercise regularly or attend the University of the Third Age, adjust to the ageing body in their ;everyday talk' through taking a dualist position. The part of the body which is discursively constructed as ageing becomes objectified through appealing to a wider cultural discourse of ageing as biological decline. This dualist position is embedded within a wider cultural discourse of personal agency.

Women's collective constructions of embodied practices through memory work: Cartesian dualism in memories of sweating and pain.

The research presented in this paper uses memory work as a method to explore six women's collective constructions of two embodied practices, sweating and pain. The paper identifies limitations in the ways in which social constructionist research has theorized the relationship between discourse and materiality, and it proposes an approach to the study of embodiment which enjoins, rather than bridges, the discursive and the non-discursive. The paper presents an analysis of 25 memories of sweating and pain which suggests that Cartesian dualism is central to the women's accounts of their experiences.

Discourses in the European Commission's 1996-2000 Health Promotion Programme.

This article is a discourse analysis of 'The Community Action Programme on Health Promotion, Information, Education and Training 1996-2000'. The analysis uses six stages to discourse analysis. A religious discourse is used to construct the Programme and a military discourse is used to construct its implementation.