Therapeutic Discourse

This book addresses the premise that therapy can be understood, practiced, and researched as a discursive activity. Using varied forms of discourse analysis, it examines the cultural, institutional, and face-to-face communications that shape, and occur within, therapies that are discursively understood and practiced. By first providing an overview of commonalities across discursive therapies and research approaches, the authors discursively examine general aspects of therapy. Topics explored include subjectivity, psychological terms, institutional influences, therapeutic relationships, therapists’ ways of talking and questioning, discursive ethics, and assessment of therapeutic processes and outcomes. This book offers a macro-analysis of the conversational practices of a discursively informed approach to therapy; as well as a micro-analysis of the ways in which language shapes and is used in a discursively informed approach to therapy. This book will interest practitioners seeking to better understand therapy as a discursive process, and discourse analysts wanting to understand therapy as discursive therapists might practice it.

This collection of original papers by scholars who closely analyze the talk of the clinic features studies that were conceived with the aim of contributing to clinical practitioners' insight about how their talk works. No previous communication text has attempted to take such a practitioner-sensitive posture with its research presentations. Each chapter focuses on one or more performances that clinical practitioners -- in consort with their clients or colleagues -- must achieve with some regularity. These speech acts are consequential for effective practice and sometimes present themselves as problematic. Rather than calling for research to be simplified or reoriented in order for practitioners to understand it, these authors interpret state-of-the-art descriptive analysis for its practical import for clinicians. Each contributor delves deeply into clinical practice and its wisdom; therefore, each is positioned to identify alternative clinical practices and techniques and to appreciate practitioners' means of performing effectively. When reflective practitioners encounter these new pieces of work, productive alterations in how their work is done can be stimulated. By reading this work, reflective practitioners will now have new ways of considering their talk and new possibilities for speaking effectively. The volume is uniquely constructed so as to engage in dialogue with these reflective practitioners as they struggle to articulate their work. A practical wisdom-as-research trend has recently emerged in the clinical fields stimulating these practitioners to explore new and more informative ways -- communication and literary theory, ethnography, and discourse analysis -- to express what they do in clinics and hospitals. With the studies presented in this book, the editors build upon this dialectical process between practitioner and researcher, thus helping this productive conversation to continue.

Based on the complete transcripts from a marital therapy session, this analysis examines the constructivistic nature of conversation, rhetorical devices used in pursuit of a therapeutic agenda, and dialogue as a systemic process. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Drawing on feminist, postmodern, and psychoanalytic theories, White traces the impact of television's therapeutic and confessional discourses on family construction and consumer culture. In a comprehensive analysis of cable, network, and syndicated progra

Theory and Practice is one of Habermas's major works and is widely recognized as a classic in contemporary and social and political theory. Through a series of highly original historical studies, Habermas reexamines the relations between philosophy, science and politics. Beginning with the classical doctrine of politics as developed by Aristotle, he traces the changing constellation of theory and practice through the work of Machiavelli, More, Hobbes, Hegel and Marx. He argues that, with the development of the modern sciences, politics has become increasingly regarded as a technical discipline concerned with problems of prediction and control. Politics has thus lost its link with the practical cultivation of character, that is, with the praxis of enlightened citizens. Theory and Practices includes a major reassessment of Marx's work and of the status of Marxism as a form of critique. In an important concluding chapter Habermas examines the role of reason and the prospects for critical theory in our modern scientific civilization.

This comprehensive book describes well-defined models of music therapy for working with families in different clinical areas, ranging from families with special needs children or dying family members through to families in psychiatric or paediatric hospital settings. International contributors explain the theoretical background and practice of their specific approach, including an overview of research and illustrative case examples. Particular emphasis is placed on connecting theory and clinical practice and on discussing the challenges and relevance of each model. This practical and theoretically anchored book will prove valuable for music therapists, students and researchers in the fast developing field of music therapy with families.

This volume brings together analyses of governmentality from different angles in order to explore the multiple forms, practices, modes, programmes and rationalities of the ‘conduct of conduct’ today. Following the publication of Foucault’s annual lecture series at the Collège de France, scholars have attempted to critically rethink Foucault’s ideas. This is the first volume that attempts to revisit and expand studies of governmentality by connecting it to the theories and methods of discourse analysis. The volume draws on different theoretical stances and methodological approaches including critical discourse analysis, conversation analysis, dialogic analysis, multimodal discourse analysis, the discourse-historical approach, corpus analysis and French discourse analysis. The volume is relevant to students and scholars in the fields of critical discourse studies, conversation analysis, international studies, environmental studies, political science, public policy and organisation studies.