‘Doing family therapy’: A Foucauldian discourse analysis

Abstract

This paper draws on a study that asked twenty family users about their first session of family therapy. Analyses of the interviews indicated that families entered therapy with a pre-existent knowledge about therapy, which did not always chime with those of professionals and which positioned speakers in ways which governed their expectations and perceptions of therapy. This paper, therefore, is concerned with the acquisition and deployment of knowledge: specifically, the knowledge involved in being a user of family therapy. Three key discourses were identified through this analysis: medical, counselling and consumerist. We aim to illustrate how these discourses served as a resource for members of the family in constructing therapists, therapy and themselves in relation to their experience. The examination of the rhetorical, ideological and practical effects of the positions chosen and the objects constructed, in terms of how speakers wanted to present themselves, with what enhanced or diminished status as patients, shows users actively engaging with the power of therapeutic institutions. Users' accounts suggest that while most speakers felt anxious about the prospect of therapy, there were clear differences in overall satisfaction/dissatisfaction with the experience according to the synchrony between speakers' construction of the therapist, and themselves as client/ patients. Those who seemed to take a traditional view of therapy within a medical discourse valued therapists who offered diagnosis and a cure; those who sought and experienced a counselling relationship with the therapist found their experience to be constructive in terms of enhanced selfknowledge. We believe that the research findings discussed in this paper have implications for family therapists in accommodating to parental and child positions to maximise the effectiveness of therapy and so minimise drop-out.

A poststructural analysis: Current practices for suicide prevention by nurses in the emergency department and areas of improvement

“…As multiple truths exist under this lens, there is also no single poststructuralism; as Foucault (1994) himself states, “I take care not to dictate how things should be,” (p. 288) poststructural frameworks are evolving and have been applied various ways. This has been subject to criticism but has allowed us to discover multiple truths and invisible meanings (Cresswell, 2005; Moore & Seu, 2010). In other words, under a Foucauldian PS framework, different realities are constructed that are socially and institutionally specific and maintained through discursive practices.…”

Who has naming rights? The framing of children's mental health issues in discursive therapy with their caregivers

“…Critical forms of discourse analysis demonstrate how talk in therapy and its associated meaning is mediated through the social, cultural and political context surrounding the therapy encounter. For example, critical research illustrates the influence of dominant discourses including psychiatric (Avdi, 2005), medical (Moore & Seu, 2010) and developmental discourse (Avdi, 2015) in the formulation of the referred child's mental health issues. Such research draws our attention to the weight of words spoken by adults in the therapy room and their influence in shaping the presenting issue(s) and what solutions are legitimized.…”

The Primacy of Discourse in the Study of Gender in Family Therapy

“…Although there is a burgeoning body of discursive empirical work on gender/diversity outside of family therapy, including in the study of the family (Adjei, 2016;Dalgaard, 2016), family therapy has trailed behind in using discursive methods in general (Tseliou, 2013) and in examining gender/diversity in particular. None of the existing discursive analyses of family therapy (Lawless, Gale, & Bacigalupe, 2001;Moore & Seu, 2010;O'Reilly, 2014;Singh, 2009) directly address the construction of gender/diversity and power relations. For example, Lawless et al (2001) investigated how talk about race and ethnicity was built and negotiated in supervision meetings, leaving the discursive production of client and supervisor/supervisee race and ethnicity unexplored.…”