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Thursday 17 May 2012

It Takes 2toTango: Deconstructing Clients Problems as Therapist-Client Problems?




I'm trying to come up with some research ideas at the moment that focus on deconstructing the way that novice therapists think about their clients problems in a way that reveals them as dyadic process relating more to the therapeutic alliance....ie: when a therapist is pathologising the client it maybe more about a rupture or misunderstanding between the two...

Here are some thought bubbles

When the term resistance comes up in the therapists mind.
When the terms narcissism or BPD first come up in the therapists mind
When new techniques are sought or a new model of therapy is being contemplated

I have turned to Ian Parker for abit of inspiration..his paper Constructing and deconstructing psychotherapeutic discourse (1998) is a classic (here) although may be a bit rich for my current work setting?

This  paper  reviews recent  work  on  the  social  construction  of  the  self  in 
counselling and psychotherapy, and argues that we need to attend to the ways 
in which the therapeutic self is fashioned ( a )  in relation to the ‘psy-complex’ 
as  the  network  of  theories and practices concerned with  psychological 
governance and  self-reflection  in modern Western culture and  ( b )  in  the 
context of ‘therapeutic domains’ outside the clinic and academe, domains of 
discursive regulation and self-expression which then bear upon the activities 
of  professional and lay counsellors. Therapeutic domains contain repertoires, 
templates and  complexes  within which counsellors and clients fabricate 
varieties of  truth  and story a  core of  experience into being. I  then  turn  to 
describe and  assess some of  the  various ways  in which this  kind  of  critical 
reflection  o n   therapeutic  discourse  and counselling practice  now  already 
underpins  the  work  of  social  constructionist ‘narrative’ therapists. Some 
attention  is  given  to the  different  pragmatic  and deconstructionist 
approaches  which make  the  discursive  constitution  of  the  problem  into 
the problem, either by  dissolving or by  externalizing the account the client 
presents. Here I  argue that the activities of social constructionist counsellors 
can  be viewed  as  forms  of  deconstruction-in-process ( a   deconstruction  of 
the discursive frames which have been constructed  by  the client), but that 
they should  not  be  viewed as stepping outside the discursive conditions  of 
possibility  which  ground  their  work.  The   psy-complex  and therapeutic 
domains still function as relatively enduring structures which limit the degree 
to which we may construct and deconstruct psychotherapeutic discourse. 


Got any thoughts on other possible issues for therapists that seem all about the client but can also be seen as dyadic?

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