Assumptions of Collaborative Therapy: A Postmodern Tapestry
“Your attitude towards your life will be different
according to which understanding you have.”
Suzuki
Collaborative Therapy—sometimes referred to as postmodern, social construction, dialogical, or conversational therapy--has grown from assumptions in the broader postmodern movement in the social and human sciences, as well as from related assumptions from social construction and dialogue theories (Bahktin, 1981, 1984; Derrida, Edwards, 2005; Gadamer, 1975; Gergen, 1999; Hacking, 1999; Lyotard, 1984; Shotter, 1984, 2005, 2006; Vygotsky, 1986; Wittgenstein, 19 ). These assumptions inform the way the therapist conceptualizes and approaches therapy and have relevancy regardless of the designated system or the number of people involved in it.
I do not use a single definition of postmodern, instead I refer to a set of abstract assumptions that I think of as a “postmodern tapestry.” These assumptions—the threads of tapestry--challenge our inherited traditions of knowledge and language, and provide a contemporary alternative. The central challenge is to reexamine these traditions of knowledge as fundamental and definitive, the top-down nature of knowledge systems, language as descriptive and representational, and the stability of meaning. Following, I discuss seven assumptions of a postmodern tapestry.
1. Maintaining skepticism
Postmodernism asserts the importance of holding a critical and questioning attitude about knowledge as somehow fundamental and definitive. This includes knowledge of inherited and established dominant discourses, meta-narratives, universal truths, or rules. We are born, live, and are educated within knowledge traditions that we mostly take for granted. A postmodern perspective suggests that unwittingly buying into and reproducing institutionalized knowledge can lead to forms of practice that risk being out of sync with our contemporary societies and possibly alien to humanity as well. This is not to suggest that we abandon our inherited knowledge or discourses (i.e., psychological theories, a priori criteria), or that these can be discarded for that matter. Any and all knowledge can be useful. Nor is it suggested that postmodernism is a meta-knowledge narrative. The invitation is simply to question any discourse’s claim to truth, including the postmodern discourse itself. And, hopefully, to minimize the risk that we carry our knowledge errors forward.
2. Eluding generalization
The probability that dominant discourses, meta-narratives, and universal truths can be generalized and applied across all peoples, cultures, situations, or problems is suspect. Thinking in terms of ahead-of-time knowledge (i.e., theoretical scripts, predetermined rules) can create categories, types, and classes (i.e., people, problems, solutions) that inhibit our ability to learn about the uniqueness and novelty of each person or group of people. Instead, we might learn about the distinctiveness of others and their lives directly from them and see the familiar or what we take for granted in an unfamiliar or fresh way. We are accustomed to viewing, wittingly or unwittingly, many people and the events of their lives encountered in therapy as familiar rather than exceptional. Familiarity tempts us to fill in the gaps and proceed based on our pre-assumptions about what is in these gaps; this knowing can put us at risk of depersonalizing the client and preventing us from learning about their specialness—limiting our and the client’s possibilities.
3. Knowledge as an interactive social process
Embedded as it is in culture, history, and language, knowledge is a product of social discourse. The creation of knowledge (i.e., theories, ideas, truths, beliefs, or how to) is an interactive interpretive process in which all parties contribute to its creation, sustainability, and change. Knowledge is not fundamental or definitive; it is not fixed or discovered. Instead, it is fluid and changeable. So, instructive interaction is not possible; knowledge cannot literally be transmitted from the head of one person to another. Knowledge transforms as we share it with each other, in our interactions with each other, and in the dynamics of the relationship be that a relationship with an author on the pages of a book or with a teacher at the head of a classroom.
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