Heuristic Research in Psychotherapy

Heuristic Research in Psychotherapy showcases the power of heuristic enquiry to deepen through discovery, critique, create, and reimagine psychotherapy research. Building on the interdisciplinary foundation of previous volumes in the Qualitative Research Approaches in Psychotherapy and Allied Disciplines series, this book focuses specifically on heuristic methodology-a form of research grounded in personal experience, reflexivity, and embodied insight. Across 11 chapters, contributors explore phenomena including aesthetics, colonisation, cultural hybridity, motherhood, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and spiritual transformation. Each chapter exemplifies how lived experience and rigorous methodology intersect, offering readers a richly textured and intellectually provocative resource. Edited by Keith Tudor, the volume brings together psychotherapists, researchers, and practitioners across diverse cultural and theoretical contexts. This book challenges medicalised, positivist research models, foregrounding relational, critical, and situated approaches to therapeutic enquiry. It will be essential reading for postgraduate students, practitioner-researchers, and psychotherapy educators seeking alternatives to conventional methods.

Keith Tudor is Professor of Psychotherapy at Auckland University of Technology (AUT), Aotearoa New Zealand, where he is also a co-lead of the AUT Moana Nui Psychological Therapies Research Group. A qualified social worker and psychotherapist, he is also a certified and teaching and supervising transactional analyst and a supervisor and trainer of supervisors. Keith has authored or edited over 400 peer-reviewed publications and currently co-edits the Advancing Theory in Therapy series (Routledge) and Qualitative Research Approaches in Psychotherapy and Allied Disciplines series, and edits the Ancestors of the Mind series (Karnac). His work blends scholarly rigour with political and clinical insight, and he is widely recognised as a leading voice in critical psychotherapy research.

Introduction Part I Methodology Chapter 1. Explicating and expanding heuristic research methodology Keith Tudor and Luke Oram Chapter 2. Explicating heuristic methodology through enquiry into unintentional racial microaggressions Keith Tudor and Malik McCann Chapter 3. Resistance and surrender: Explication and synthesis from a heuristic enquiry into conversion to Islam Keith Tudor and Georgina Cardo Chapter 4. In (my own) time: The implicit and inevitable context of time on heuristic research methodology Luke Oram and Keith Tudor Part II Method Chapter 5. Gestating discovery: The heuristic journey, from conception to birth and beyond Alana West and Keith Tudor Chapter 6. A self-search heuristic enquiry into racial microaggressions Malik McCann Chapter 7. Heuristic method and a Samoan sense of self Karlene Schwenche and Julia Ioane Part III Method and methodology Chapter 8. The heurism of help-seeking: Disclosing and concealing obsessive-compulsive disorder Chris Lorigan Chapter 9. The burden of chronic pain on heuristic methodology and method Tzach Maya-Chipman and Keith Tudor Chapter 10. Allowing time and space for heuristic and aesthetic enquiry: A psychotherapy trainee's self-search Sian Haydon and Keith Tudor Chapter 11. A heuristic self-search enquiry into abrupt endings: An unwavering search for what feels true Dana Chue and Keith Tudor