Breakdowns to Breakthroughs: Growth After Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) of Filipino Women (Published)
Many Filipino women experience trauma from their past romantic relationship and grow from that experience, however local literature about this phenomenon is still lagging. This study aimed to describe the experiences of Filipino women who experienced intimate partner violence and its psychological impact, understand the factors that influenced their psychological growth, and identify domains of posttraumatic growth. Fifteen participants were interviewed about their experience and themes were formed through thematic analysis. The themes that emerged in the dataset were divided into four categories: (1) intimate partner violence experienced; (2) psychological impact of the trauma, (3) trauma to recovery; and (4) domains of posttraumatic growth experienced. Results are interpreted using the framework of Posttraumatic Growth by Tedeshi and Calhoun (2004). Clinical implications were discussed based on the results.
Keywords: Domestic Abuse, Empowerment, Filipino women, Intimate Partner Violence (IPV), Resilience, gender-based violence, post-traumatic growth, psychological recovery
THE POLITICS OF MOURNING AND RESILIENCE IN ZAKES MDA’S WAYS OF DYING: PSYCHOANALYTIC, PHILOSOPHICAL, AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES (Published)
This paper sets out to get to grips with how one of the foremost postliberation South African writers, i.e. Zakes Mda, grapples in his fiction with two glaring societal features of the rainbow nation: mourning and resilience. Ways of Dying on which this research article is based is, doubtless, a reproach on democratic era South Africa. The author resorts to the pervasiveness of violence and its attendant string of deaths as a stepping stone to lay bare his gut-feeling that his country is, sad to say, continuously in mourning. On the flip side, Mda makes the contention that, for all its woes pertaining to crime and deprivation of any ilk, South African society is conspicuous by a mind-blowing bend for resiliency. Arguably, Mda’s Ways of Dying represents a cautionary tale about the mind-boggling intricacies of the work of mourning and the driving necessity for a sense of bouncebackability in hostile world
Keywords: Decathexis, Mourning, Plastic Force, Resilience, Trauma Loss Withdrawal