If a Self Is a Narrative: Social Constructionism in the Clinic

Abstract

Abstract The articles in this special issue indicate that the self is best understood not as an empirical and transhistorical entity, but as a narrative, inextricable from its location in history and culture. This view has significant implications for psy-chotherapy. It suggests that therapy is a moral discourse, that its claim to authority is better understood as ideological than as scientific. But because it generally takes a reificationist stance on such matters as emotions, therapy is currently ill-equipped to take account of the self as a social construction and of itself as a moral practice. (Clinical Psychology)