Postmodernism versus psychotherapy
Frosh, Stephen (1995) Postmodernism versus psychotherapy. Journal of Family Therapy 17 (2), pp. 175-190. ISSN 0163-4445.
Abstract
‘Postmodernism’ has made a substantial impact on various schools of psychotherapy, including family therapy.‘Postmodern’therapists tend to focus on the productive capacities of language, developing narrative styles for their work.‘Postmodern’family therapy is differentiated from modernist approaches by its disavowal of truth claims and its encouragement of alternative‘voices’or narratives. In this paper, it is argued that this represents too narrow an approach to psychotherapy and to postmodernism. Postmodernism takes as a central concern the limits of symbolization, so a postmodernist therapy would deal primarily with failures of language. Language-based therapeutic procedures such as those to be found in family therapy are consequently not postmodernist. This state of affairs should be welcomed, as a truly‘postmodern’mode of therapy would probably celebrate irrationality.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| School: | Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences |
| Depositing User: | Sarah Hall |
| Date Deposited: | 07 Aug 2017 13:25 |
| Last Modified: | 02 Aug 2023 17:34 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/19319 |
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