Voices of the self in psychotherapy: A qualitative analysis

Abstract

Approaches that view the self as constituted by socio-cultural processes and as plural, consisting of a multiplicity of states, positions, functions, etc., have flourished in the last decades. This paper explores the multi-voiced nature of the self, drawing upon Lacan's theory of subjectivity and Bakhtin's concept of dialogism. Subjectivity is seen as constituted through language as expressed in the speech of the subject's important early others. The psychoanalytic concept of transference, understood as a semiotic process of enacting early interpersonal patterns in the subject's present relations, provides a link between the unfolding of subjectivity in the present and its historical continuity. The articulation of subjectivity is discussed through a micro-analysis of extracts from sessions of a long-term psychoanalytic psychotherapy. The analysis demonstrates the enactment of transferential dialogical positions at the beginning of the therapy and traces their recognition by the client through the gradual development of increasingly reflexive subject positions towards the end of therapy. It is argued that the aim of therapy should be the facilitation of a complex subjectivity, whereby the different subject positions can be fluently articulated within an overall reflexive frame.