| Summary: | The purpose of this study was to examine bank robbery events, based on first hand
descriptions from robbed staff, through elaboration of in-depth, rich and detailed respondent
narratives. Additional goals were to contribute to counselling theory by detailed exploration
and development of the essential structure of the respondents' robbery experience at the
foreshadowing/onset of the event, during the event, and after the event and to contribute to
counselling practice by providing detailed exemplifications of what meaning these traumatic
events had for the respondents. Phenomenological methodology was utilized for this study.
The goal was to record in detail the robbery experiences, discover the respondent's most
essential meanings of the robbery experience, and generate detailed specific and general
findings that revealed the core structure of their experience. Eight respondents were selected,
6 women and 2 men, ranging in age from 25 to 51. Respondent length of time in banking
ranged from Vh to 26 years. Nine categories were developed from the narratives which
reflected key features of the robbery experience. The study results validated, qualified, and
departed from existing research in five important ways. First, the results indicated that bank
robbery was experienced by robbed staff as a meaningful whole process rather than as one
or more isolated symptoms or symptom clusters. Second, the findings indicated the effects,
the experience of robbery, had a robust durational character rather than fitting the prevalent
picture which portrays robbed staff as having symptoms which disappear, or are greatly
reduced after several weeks or months. Third, the role of corporate empathic responding === Education, Faculty of === Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of === Graduate
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