Dance Therapy Association of Australia

The experience in dance movement of three individual women with Turner Syndrome: a phenomenological inquiry

M.A. thesis, La Trobe University
Date submitted: 1998
Author / Researcher: Elizabeth Loughlin

Abstract:
The thesis aims to establish more understanding of living with Turner syndrome to use in my clinical counselling with girls and women with this endocrinology condition. An examination of the literature finds that it offers a deficit picture, with gaps in experiential knowledge about the meaning of the daily lives of those with the syndrome. The inquiry seeks to go beyond the clinical context to tap the personal knowing of three individual women with Turner syndrome, through an arts phenomenological approach that offers summary verbal descriptions of an experiential event. The inquiry offers a cycle of dance movement experiences to access a pre-reflective experience of the existential self. Phenomenological procedures translate the dance movement experiences into verbal text, and also analyse the data of the verbal text following the approaches of Giorgi and Moustakas, with additional procedures from experiential inquiry to find the meanings in the experience. Results are expressed as synthesised descriptions of the experience in dance movement for each woman. They point to the centrality of the body in the experience of dance movement and also in the experience of daily living. The results indicate that the emotional response to the initial diagnosis and its subsequent medical management is a continuing theme in two of the three women in the inquiry. Selected literature about body image and the chronically ill body in the health setting is examined in order to reflect on and discuss the results. The inquiry concludes that a body image approach may contribute to a clearer understanding of the impact of the syndrome, and offer a useful focus for my counselling role and for other health professionals at large.

Thesis available in hard copy at the La Trobe University Library, Bundoora, Vic.