This paper addresses the capacity of cognitive therapy to engage with issues of social power. Some indicators of ‘power‐sensitised counselling’ are proposed and these are discussed with reference to cognitive therapy. ‘Power‐sensitised counselling’ for the purposes of this paper is described as counselling that takes account of power differentials, both across society and within the counselling room. The paper opens a discussion about the potential developments of cognitive therapy that could facilitate an engagement with issues of social power. The significance of these issues for research into cognitive therapy is discussed.
Aim: It is only relatively recently that discourse analysis has begun to rise to prominence in the fields of counselling and psychotherapy. This paper briefly explains ways of understanding discourse analysis, discussing what the approach can offer counselling research and practice. Approach: An initial categorisation of recent discourse analysis studies is offered, to demonstrate diverse ways in which this type of research can address issues relevant to counselling practice. The five categories proposed range from the examination of language use in therapy to analyses that focus on the social structures, meanings and power relations related to therapy. Implications: The paper demonstrates that through the critical analysis of counselling sessions, research interviews, written texts and other materials, discourse analysis can provide insight into ways in which counselling operates as a social practice, and so help counsellors to contextualise their work within broader social structures and processes.
Feminist counselling has an uneasy relationship with mainstream counselling approaches. Feminist counselling/therapy is diverse both in theory and in the practice of those who refer to themselves as feminist counsellors, which means that many counsellors outside the feminist tradition are unclear about what it entails. There are also tensions between the discourses of feminism and of therapy (Maracek and Kravetz, 1998). This makes for confusion in the wider counselling population about the nature and validity of feminist counselling. In this study I asked counsellors (not selected on the basis of feminist identifi cation) about their understanding of feminist counselling. They attached four main meanings to feminist counselling: exclusivity, imposing a viewpoint, broader perspectives and a commitment to equality. In exploring the validity of feminist counselling the participants drew on competing meanings of equality, namely relational equality and external equality. This contrasts with much feminist counselling writing, which claims these as complementary.
The theory of cognitive counselling makes little reference to issues of social power but, nonetheless, we are likely to find ideas about social power (whether implicit or explicit) embedded within cognitive counselling discourse. Fo r this research five cognitive counsellors were interviewed about the social context of counselling. The transcripts were analysed using a discourse analytic approach, and four interpretative repertoires around social power were identified. In this paper we discuss how these four repertoires are used by the interviewees to manage the ideological dilemma of individualism and social responsibility described by Billig (1988). We conclude with a discussion of the potential significance for counselling of the multiple and flexible explanations of social power construed in these interviews.
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