Abstract: This study explores the archetypal dimension of nursing reality in nurses' stories through a window of nurse-nurse relations. The thesis argues the existence of the unconscious psyche and its importance for nursing, and the study unfolds a methodology that attends to unconscious processes and is congruent with analytical psychology and its practice. It is a two strand inquiry informed by general hermeneutics and Jungian thought engaging a synthetic interpretive methodology using interweaving intellectual and imaginistic processes. In the first strand of the inquiry five female registered nurses share their individual stories which become the text for a nursing narrative that reveals the what-is of nursing reality in essences of Story and Kinship, and a Lifeworld undermined by high levels of Stress. In the second strand of the inquiry the researcher engages imaginistic process to access the archetypal dimension of the nursing narrative, resulting in a sub text from which archetypal images emerge to reveal the more-than of nursing reality. The emergent images are amplified to reveal their symbolic meanings, and their connection to the nursing narrative is explored. An interpretation that is consistent with analytical psychology is offered in a synthesis of the material arising from the nurses' stories and the imaginistic process. The author notes that this synthetic understanding is teleological in nature and directs attention to the need for nursing to grow a differentiated consciousness that is honouring of the feminine principle in the psyche in contradistinction from an overweaning masculine patriarchal consciousness that compromises the nursing endeavour.

Abstract: 'No suicide contracts' take the form of a 'guarantee of safety', along with a 'promise' to call specified persons if the suicidal ideation becomes unmanageable for the person concerned. They are commonly used in community crisis situations with suicidal people in New Zealand. This article describes and analyses the use of 'no suicide contracts' in these settings. It is argued that the theoretical base (transactional analysis) of the 'no suicide contract' is likely to be deleterious in the community crisis situation.

Abstract: This research is an exploration and interpretation of the lived experiences of family members since they lost a close family member to suicidal death. The findings have implications for nurses and counsellors working in the area of suicide bereavement. Heidegger's hermeneutic phenomenology was utilised and informed by van Manen's and Benner's work. Data from in-depth interviews with six participants, the researcher's journal entries and published literature were analysed. Findings gave rise to a grief model where suicide survivors moved through four modes of being-in-the-world characterized by 13 lifeworlds or themes. Surviving suicide was a transformative process that in time enabled survivors to discover new ways of understanding and relating to the world.

Abstract: This paper explores the creative opportunities children might have to attend to their emotions and feelings following the death of a parent, grandparent or close friend. It presents the position that often children are left out of the process of caring for an adult when they are terminally ill and that has long term psychological implications. It also suggests that this has antecedents for the white New Zealand culture that were noted historically. In this research the author describes a personal journey that has shaped her current work as a hospice practice manager. The writer explores literature in psychological aspects of removing children from the dying room, creative therapies and the importance of sacred memories for the living child. The need to create memory that will embrace the child as a cloak enfolds them in their crisis stimulated the writer to offer a text in the personal narrative form. This text is presented in this form to enable other clinicians to access their own memories as survivors of grief in their own families. It is suggested that by enabling children and family to explore the importance of relating in the palliative phase of a person's life journey, good memories are created for the survivors.