Self research the intersection of therapy and research ian law, routledge, 2014 scan

Engaging in therapeutic work with those who experience their sense ofself as problematic can be transformative in two main respects: it enablesthem to produce a sense of self which ackno

Self Research

‘Self Research’ is both a therapeutic and a research endeavour that enables

the subject of the research to interpret and validate their own data In Self Research, Ian Law outlines and draws together the theoretical, institutional

and practical elements of this work, and offers illustrative examples of howdifferent elements of the methodology can be applied in practice He pro-poses a methodology for the practise of self research that is based on anepistemological approach, thereby closing the interpretative gap betweenthe researcher and the researched

Engaging in therapeutic work with those who experience their sense ofself as problematic can be transformative in two main respects: it enablesthem to produce a sense of self which acknowledges that an understanding

of one’s self is discursively produced, and it helps locate that sense of selfwithin its historical, political and social context

Self Research will be essential for advanced students of counselling,

along with practising therapists in psychotherapy across different schools ofpractice

Ian Law is a qualified social worker and has a PhD in Critical Psychology.

He has practised as a psychotherapist for over 20 years and has lived,worked and taught in Australia, the UK, Canada and the USA He was inau-

gural editor of GECKO: A Journal of Deconstruction and Narrative Ideas

in Therapeutic Practice and is on the editorial board of the Annual Review

of Critical Psychology.

Concepts for Critical Psychology: Disciplinary

Boundaries Re-thought

Series editor: Ian Parker

Developments inside psychology that question the history of the disciplineand the way it functions in society have led many psychologists to look out-side the discipline for new ideas This series draws on cutting edge critiquesfrom just outside psychology in order to complement and question criticalarguments emerging inside The authors provide new perspectives on subject-ivity from disciplinary debates and cultural phenomena adjacent to traditionalstudies of the individual

The books in the series are useful for advanced level undergraduate andpostgraduate students, researchers and lecturers in psychology and otherrelated disciplines such as cultural studies, geography, literary theory,philosophy, psychotherapy, social work and sociology

Social Identity in Question

Construction, Subjectivity and Critique

Parisa Dashtipour

Cultural Ecstasies

Drugs, Gender and the Social Imaginary

Ilana Mountian

Self Research

The Intersection of Therapy and Research

Ian Law

Forthcoming Title:

Ethics and Psychology

Beyond Codes of Practice

Calum Neill

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Taylor & Francis Group

LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 2014

by Routledge

27 Church Road, Hove, East Sussex BN3 2FA

and by Routledge

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2014 Ian Law

The right of Ian Law to be identified as author of this work has

been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the

Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered

trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Law, Ian.

Self research : the intersection of therapy and research / Ian Law.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1 Psychotherapy 2 Self I Title.

2 Family therapy as a potential disciplinary site

6 Elements of practice: ADD, addictions and the DSM 78

8 Reflexivity: A critical analysis of self research 110

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This book provides an archaeology and overview of some crucial ological resources that have been dear to the hearts of criticalpsychologists – studies of discourse and reflexivity – and it brings theseresources together to show us why they are so useful in practice, in workwith people who struggle to make sense of themselves in therapeutic andresearch contexts The ‘turn to discourse’ is not at all, we can see from thisbook, an approach which excludes reflexivity – the subjectivity of thoseinvolved in the research process – but it provides an entirely new way ofthinking about the puzzle that is the ‘self’ And we can see now why

method-‘discourse analysis’ is not at all an approach to language that is confined toacademic study, but it resonates with the practise of a new generation offamily therapists This discourse analysis is also a kind of ‘discursive ther-apy’, and Ian Law shows us how developments in the therapeutic worldthen loop back and provide new ways of thinking about language and theself in the discipline of psychology itself

You learn here why ‘post-structuralism’ and ‘critical theory’ speak totherapeutic practitioners, and how those ideas have immediate conse-quences for the way that those who seek help from professionals can findnew ways of speaking, thinking and feeling about themselves And, in astriking reflexive ‘self-critical’ move, we also learn how the therapist andthe researcher is also enabled to find a completely different way ofconceptualising what they are doing when they think they are helpingsomeone else or – as is more commonly the case in mainstream academicpsychology – when they think they are merely discovering and describingsomething about other people

Psychology is a discipline with immense influence in a number of the

‘helping professions’, and much of that influence has been malign; it hastended to reinforce the claim that we know what the ‘self’ is as the core ofthe individual, and the assumption that the task of the professional is tocorrect faulty thinking or promote a kind of happiness that they,

professionals, are able to define This means that the focus of muchpsychological therapy is resolutely individual and normative, and it meansthat the research that is conducted on the self is already loaded in favour

of what psychologists already know In this book, Self Research: The Intersection of Therapy and Research, we find profound scepticism about

mainstream psychology and, in its place, new ways of working withlanguage The book is therapeutically rich, and it connects conceptual andmethodological debates ‘outwith’ psychology – on the very borders of ouracademic discipline – with what we have been trying to do in our ownresearch which connects our ‘others’ with ‘ourselves’

Ian ParkerUniversity of Leicester

x Preface

I owe an ongoing debt of gratitude to Ian Parker for his encouragement,support and critique over a significant period of time that has helped theideas and arguments in this book to eventually see the light of day, to DrRob Evans for his generosity of self, to Jess Law for being proud of her Dadand to Amber Stewart for not letting me drop the ball in the final yards

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… a history of the way in which individuals are urged to constitutethemselves as subjects of moral conduct would be concerned withthe models proposed for setting up and developing relationshipswith the self, for self reflection, self knowledge, self examination,for the decipherment of the self by oneself, for the transformationsthat one seeks to accomplish with one’s self as object

(Foucault, 1985: 29)

What is self research?

So, what does the term self research mean in the context of this book? Toput it simply: in its practise, self research is simultaneously a therapeuticendeavour with the intention of ameliorating a problem sense of self oridentity, and a research endeavour that enables the subject of the research

to interpret and validate their own data This is important in two mainregards One, it renders the practise of psychotherapy more accountable interms of its claims to efficacy, and who gets to determine its efficacy Two,the practise of research is more meaningful in that it is the subject of theresearch who interprets and validates their own data

This books sets out the theoretical underpinnings of such an approachand outlines examples of applying elements of the methodology of selfresearch in various contexts, such as problem identities in relation togambling and psychiatric diagnosis Such examples provide multipleviewpoints in examining the practical application of the theoreticallycomplex methodology of self research

What I am concerned with here is how to develop a methodology forcarrying out talk therapy, and researching the self, which are one and thesame This methodology will be available to those wishing to engage inresearching their own sense of self whether it is as an individual, or in rela-tionship with others, and allows those who are both the subject and object

of their own research to have the authority to determine its meaning, vance and validity This closes the interpretative gap between the

rele-researcher and the researched as the interpretation is the data This book

outlines the epistemological, rather than the historical, conditions for thedecipherment of the self and proposes a methodology for the practise ofself research that is based in such an epistemology

How does it work?

Self Research is a dangerous project if not conducted with clearly

arti-culated theoretical and political rigour Such a practice could easilybecome a disciplining of the self, producing accounts of the self in linewith conservative moral and psychological ideologies For example,Giddens (1991) argues that therapy has become a secular version of theconfessional Additionally, psychotherapy has been described by some as

a new form of authority for either governing the soul (Rose, 1990) ortransforming the many by the few (Miller and Kurtz, 1994) The ideas forthis book have developed as a consequence of my own attempts to findways of working with people who are structurally and psychologicallydisadvantaged, particularly in relation to how such disadvantage affectstheir identity and sense of self, and how these effects can serve to disad-vantage them further

The question becomes; how do you know that you are having an effect?And who gets to say whether what you do has an effect or not? This expe-rience of working within disciplines that purports to ‘help’ individuals,families and/or communities fuelled a desire on my part to address thefollowing two dilemmas:

Therapy can be seen as something that is ‘done’ to people How, then,

to create and conduct a process that is directed towards the subject of apy having a greater degree of say in what happens in the therapeuticprocess and who is in a better position to interpret their own experiencerather than have it interpreted for them?

ther-The second problem is: how can an approach claim to be helpful? Whogets to say it is (un)helpful and how is it (un)helpful Research has oftenbeen used, historically, as a stick with which to beat ‘talk therapy’ and hasproduced a defensive reflex within the therapy profession (Kennedy, 1998a/b; Pinsof and Wynne, 1995) How then can research be crafted as a tool

to assist therapy to say something meaningful about its practise?

Each methodology needs to be set within a theory of its stated subject

In this book it is a theory of the ‘self’

2 Self research

What is this book trying to say?

The first four chapters of the book outline the theoretical, institutional andpractice elements of this therapeutic and research process, which I call selfresearch, before drawing them together in the fifth chapter Chapter 6outlines how different elements of the methodology of self research can beapplied in practice Chapter 7 is an illustration of some of these ideas inpractice Engaging in therapeutic work with those who experience theirsense of self as problematic to them allows for the creation of a context forsomeone to produce a sense of self that both acknowledges that an under-standing of one’s self is discursively produced and can also be locatedwithin its historical, political and social context It also examines theprocess of self research as being an emergent process rather than a finishedproduct The eighth and final chapter gives a reflexive consideration of thebook

Chapter 1 is concerned with establishing the theoretical context within

which a methodology for self research is located Those engaged in such amethodology need to be able to justify the processes they apply against astated theoretical position If they do not, then they will most likely repro-duce the status quo of dominant discourses of notions of the self andidentity that reinforce, rather than challenge, the disadvantage that a prob-lem sense of self produces In this way the practise of self research is bothcritical and politicised This chapter identifies some of the dominant andnaturalised theories of the self that are ‘discovered’ in much talk therapypractice These epistemologies are to be questioned and justified in order

to determine whether or not they provide the subject of self research with

an adequate explanation of their experience In contrast the practitioner of

a self research methodology would locate their questions, responses andguidance in the research process within the traditions of poststructuralistand critical theory This chapter outlines how elements of each of thesecanons of thought can be applied to inform a self-research methodology It

is argued that the recognition of the historical materialist context of thehuman subject can be combined with the poststructuralist discursive con-struction of the human subject to provide a theoretical understanding of theself that has great utility in producing accounts of the self that are experi-enced by the person as less problematic by virtue of being coherent with amaterial historical context and discursively produced

Chapter 2 is concerned with what professional and disciplinary context

self research can be practised in, and why It is argued that family therapy

is a candidate discipline within which to practise self research as a

conse-Introduction 3

quence of its history of tolerating and encouraging radical practice as well

as being an inherently conservative force just like any other discipline.Consequently this chapter charts the development of family therapy fromits beginnings as a radical break from traditional psychotherapies andpsychiatric treatment and shows how many contributors to its history havestarted on the margins of their original discipline before moving to thecentre of the emergent discipline of family therapy However, Chapter 2also warns of the constant pull of recuperation back into the mainstreamthat has eroded the socio-political principles of radical therapeutic practiceover time In this way the discipline of family therapy is both a regulatorymechanism and site of resistance The task is to remain in one while avoid-ing being drawn in to the other

Chapter 3 takes the theory of Chapter 1, particularly Foucault, and applies

it to a critical understanding of the subject of family therapy, namely, thefamily This chapter demonstrates how the family fulfils Foucault’srequirements for discursive formation in relation to its reproduction of thediscourses of pedagogy, the military, medicine, psychology and psychiatry,with its own archive and specific sets of family discursive practices TheFoucauldian notion of positive power, the ability of a discourse to produceits subject rather than the power to oppress, is applied in outlining how oursense of self is discursively produced through the discourses mediated viathe political institution of the family This process can produce a sense ofself that can be experienced as problematic in many ways Where this isthe case, a process of self research, conducted in line with clearly articu-lated principles, holds the potential to review and revise this sense of self

in a way that is subsequently experienced as being less problematic

Chapter 4 outlines what it is that makes self research a research

method-ology rather than just a therapeutic modality This is a major point in thebook as it provides the justification for self research being, contermi-nously, a therapeutic endeavour and a research process, which means thatone activity does not have to be suspended in order to engage in the other

If self research qualifies as a research methodology then it is not just one

that has secondary therapeutic effects It is a therapeutic process

Con-sequently it subverts the historically antagonistic application of positivistresearch methodologies disingenuously applied in an attempt to discreditthe worth of talk interventions as a ‘treatment’ modality over other empir-ical methods, such as behavioural conditioning In order to justify selfresearch as a research methodology it must, like all other methodologies,

be located in terms of its theoretical components This chapter identifiesvarious elements of research, such as ontology, epistemology, epistemo-

4 Self research

logical stances, methods and methodologies It places self research withinsubjectivist rather than objectivist ontology, a constructionist rather thanpositivist epistemology and, therefore, identifies it as a qualitative, ratherthan quantitative, methodology.

Chapter 5 is concerned with bringing together the various strands of the

previous four chapters such that the theoretical framework for ing how a sense of self is discursively produced can inform the practise ofself research as a therapeutic endeavour within a clearly articulatedmethodology, which questions taken-for-granted formulations of self andseeks to negotiate its change Six areas of convergence between researchand therapy in a self-research methodology are identified and discussed.These are that: in self research the object of research is the self; if theobject of self research is someone’s self then its subject must be the person

understand-to whom the self relates; if this signification of roles is understand-to be extended thenthe role of the person who takes responsibility for managing the process ofself research, and providing knowledgeable assistance and guidance to theParticipant who is engaged in researching their sense of self, should bereassigned; this move shifts a greater degree of authority towards theParticipant and puts a greater degree of explicit responsibility towards theTherapeutic Consultant and Research Supervisor to be accountable fortheir theoretical and epistemological stance; the practise of self researchrequires the articulation of an ethic that allows for the intricate power rela-tionships between researcher and researched, client and therapist, to berecast within the distinction between Participant and Research Supervisor

or Therapeutic Consultant; and, finally, the practise of self research is icated upon Participants’ questioning of their self, the Research Supervisor

pred-or Therapeutic Consultant’s questioning of Participants and, reflexively,the Research Supervisor and Therapeutic Consultant’s questioning of theirselves

Chapter 6 outlines elements of the practise of self research in the explicit

politicisation of the context of the production of versions of the self Itprovides a rigorous political analysis of the category of attention deficitdisorder (ADD) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), with-

in the meaning of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) project,from a poststructuralist and critical theory perspective This critique pro-duces the identification of three discursive practices in the construction ofthe ADD metaphor, namely: the pathologising of behaviour, the infant-ilisation of children and mother blame

A further critique of the DSM project is undertaken as it relates to theconcept of addiction where it is applied in constructing a problem sense of

Introduction 5

self in relation to behaviour rather than the ingestion of substances Theparticular example used is that of gambling It is argued here that, at best,addiction can only be justified as a metaphor whose appeal lies in its power

to provide an explanation to the subject and to their community for their

‘behaviour’ and an absolution of guilt and responsibility in its tion of personal agency

externalisa-Chapter 7 selects various passages of interaction from transcripts of two

interviews with Dr Rob Evans as a demonstration of self research Theseinterviews range across a multitude of facets of Rob’s experience and hisinterpretation of his own sense of self It provides a commentary on theprocess as it relates to such areas as the application of an epistemologicalstance, researching the role of institutions in the discursive production ofself, power and resistance and the use of metaphor and challenging discur-sive practices, such a pathologising of behaviour, among others This moreclearly illustrates various elements of self research throughout the process.This is not intended to be an interpretation of Rob’s experience or ametaview of his self and identity Rather the purpose of the commentary,and the choice of sections of transcript to reproduce here, is to highlightand comment upon elements and aspects of the process of self research asoutlined in this book

Chapter 8 looks back over the previous chapters and attempts to apply the

concept of reflexivity to a critical consideration of the book Applyingreflexivity here does not require giving an autobiographical account of theauthor It requires a critical analysis of the context within which the author

is writing and what this might produce in the text This leads to a review

of what possible ironies the writing of this book runs, whereby the writingand presenting of self research might reproduce some of the conservativeand discursive practices that it seeks to challenge and how some of thejustifications of its claims to epistemology, and being a research process,might be used against it

6 Self research

1 Theorising the ‘self’

Introduction: Poststructuralism, critical theory and the

problem of subjectivity

This chapter is concerned with the theorising of the self, how it is theorised

in everyday experience and how it could, or should, be theorised within thepractise of self research Some epistemological formulations of the self,which are commonly encountered in therapeutic practices, are outlinedalong with the major problem of accounting for subjectivity It is arguedhere that if a theory of self is to be chosen then the criteria for such achoice, both positive and negative, need to be articulated (Curt, 1994;Hartsock, 1987) These criteria are then applied to the choice of two theo-retical traditions – poststructuralist and critical theory – which havestruggled with the matter of politics and subjectivity if theorising the self

A consideration is also given to the dominant influence of the axis betweenFreud and Marx in current Western thought A rapprochement is proposedbetween these two traditions at the various points they appear to converge.Finally, these theoretical traditions are applied in formulating a set of prin-ciples for theorising the self that can act as an ‘ethic’ in the practise of selfresearch

Theorising the ‘self’

The rhetorical question: ‘why attempt to theorise the self ?’ can be answeredwith the counterclaim that we cannot not theorise the self The notion of ‘theself’ is itself a theoretical category, a symbol, a signifier (Hacking, 2002).Indeed to entertain such a notion as the self is to begin to theorise it It is asignifier so well naturalised that, to many, asking what is the ‘self’ would notmake sense But theorising the self in terms of subjectivity and identity hasbeen a constant theme in Western philosophy and social and political theory(Danzinger, 1990) Prior to the period known, in the West, as the

Enlightenment what may have passed for a self was more likely to be thedomain of the Church and a theory of the self was predominantly theology’sconceptualising of the soul (Foucault, 1997; 1988) One of the effects of theEnlightenment was to loosen theology’s monopoly on theorising that made

it possible for a series of secular philosophies to compete with the sacred inthe search for meaning (Taylor, 1992) These secular theories have beeninformed either by the scientism of ‘modernism’, or the mystifications of

‘romanticism’ Currently, these traditions of thought continue to dominatepopular conceptions of what it is ‘to be’, and how we should be, as a

‘natural’ person, like two sides of a coin of self and identity continually ning One side may land face up for a while but its obverse is ever present.Following Gergen (1991), the current manifestation of the twotraditions of romanticism and modernism can be identified as occupyingone or more of eight strands of thought in relation to their application invarious psychotherapy practices: the theological; Aboriginal-spiritual;New Age; community-relationship; the psychological; biological deter-minist; social determinist; and the intrapsychic If we research the self wemay bump up against these taken for granted theories of self that, if leftunquestioned, bring the research to an end as they are commonly presented

spin-as ‘off the rack’ explanations of self that beg no further questions andrequire no further explanation A more ‘critical’ approach would interro-gate these theories Consequently it is important than anyone managing theprocess of self research should be familiar with these epistemologies andmatch them against their ability to account for the recursive interplaybetween volition and determinism that is subjectivity They are nowoutlined briefly below

Theories of the self: Eight epistemologies

Theology

In terms of sheer numbers of adherents, theology still has a place in Westernthought The congregations of fundamentalist, charismatic and spiritualistchurches continue to rise steadily This is combined with mainstreamtheology’s attempts to regain a mainstream relevancy (Blond, 1998) byattempting to identify spirituality in current philosophical thought and socialtheory indicative of Derrida’s (1978) claims that ‘difference produces God inthe same way it originates “identity” ’ (Hart, 1998: 273) Pastoral counsel-ling, although in many ways an insular practice retaining a position outsidethe professional secular mainstream, still occupies a significant place in theprovision of counselling and therapy practices

8 Self research

Within the context of Western modernism, traces of aboriginal culture persistand have, indeed, undergone a renaissance within definable cultural groupssuch as Native North Americans and Aboriginal and Torres Strait IslanderAustralians Theories of the self relating to spirituality see identity in rela-tionships between the cultural, spiritual and physical world (AboriginalHealth Services, 1994)

New Age

Gergen (1991) has critiqued the ‘new-age movement’ as constituting abacklash – a reaction to the excesses of the modern scientific era Ratherthan being ‘new’ it is, largely, a return to certain cultural practices andbeliefs that would have been dominant in the Western world at the height

of the romantic era Trying to flip itself over into cultural view New Agetherapies fit with US individualism in their encouragement of ‘self-actualising’ and ‘self-development’ (Furedi, 2004)

Community and relationship

Many people could not entertain a sense of their self outside of their tionship to gender, race, sexuality, position in the family or the community

rela-to which they experience a sense of belonging (Myerhoff, 1986) pology (Crotty, 1998), ethnography (Altheide and Johnson, 1994) andsocial role theory consider how identity is shaped and maintained within acontext of culture and relationship Such theories of self might focus ongroup and cultural experience, action and resistance in the identification ofthe effects of class, race, gender and other forms of collective oppression

Anthro-Psychology

Psychology has been the instrument for the scientising of self, primarilythrough quantification and compartmentalising of personhood intocharacteristics of personality (Rose, 1985) Dominated by positivistmethodology and the technology of psychometric testing, mainstreampsychology has, as its subject, the unitary, actualised, transcendent self andreflects Western popular cultural belief (Henriques, 1998; Curt, 1994)

Biological determinism

The ‘self’ is a psycho-biological entity with a biological aetiology Fixed

Theorising the ‘self ’ 9

character traits, cultural identity, IQ, personality characteristics, genderdifferences, sexuality and compulsive behaviours and a host of others areseen to be genetically inherited A cultural faith in a biological deterministepistemology provides a basis for the credibility of the DSM project of theAmerican Psychiatric Association (APA, 1994) and the InternationalClassification of Disease used by European psychiatry (WHO, 1999)whereby reductionist thinking leads to determinism (Read, 2005).

Social determinism

Social determinism shows itself as the obverse of biology in the coinage ofdeterminism pointing to our socialisation as the determinant of our person-ality, behaviour and sense of self (Sayers, 1986) Pop-psychology and folkwisdom informed by forms of social learning theory assert such beliefs aswatching violence on television will make children more violent (Bandura,1977) Therapies that draw on social determinist notions of self seek tounderstand the individual as a product of his or her environment

Intrapsychic

The structuralist and functionalist theories of Freud put aspects of our selfbeyond our reach in his theorising of the unconscious, and then offered ushope of catching glimpses of it through his methodology of psychoanaly-sis In some ways Freud bridged the mystical and scientific at a time whenthe romantic era was giving way to the modern Psychoanalytic notions ofintrapsychic forces, drives and symbolism have permeated Western culture(Parker, 1997) to the extent that they have become naturalised ideas oftenoperating invisibly and unnamed (Steedman, 1995)

All ‘talk therapies’ apply theories of the self One or more of the aboveepistemological positions will be represented in part or full in any giventherapeutic approach These theoretical positions may be applied deliber-ately and methodically or unwittingly as the expression of naturalisedbeliefs, common sense and folk-wisdom in a piecemeal and contradictorytheoretical tangle Giddens calls this ‘slippage’ (1984: 374) between lay

and professional frames of meaning ‘double hermeneutics’ (1991) If we

do not hold this taken for granted reality up to scrutiny we risk ing it blindly as part of the cultural norm Consequently it is important toclarify what theoretical conception of the self are being employed andwhat justification we have for adopting any given theoretical stance.The cursory tour of eight epistemologies of the self as previouslyoutlined illustrates how theories of the self operate and have effects, whichare experienced as ‘real’, on any therapeutic engagement whether the theo-

reproduc-10 Self research

retical formulations are coherent, contradictory, unwitting or intentional.

This leads us to another question Not: why theorise? But, how should a theoretical position be chosen? This is an ethical question of how theory is

selected and justified rather than an epistemological question of whattheory is right and true Taking politics and personal agency into accountinvolves praxis: a collapsing of theory and practise into theory as practise

In this way theories of the self are then used rather than simply defined

The problem of subjectivity

Most of the theoretical positions outlined above act to construct a self that

is unitary, fixed and immutable This can lead to modernist practices ofpromoting the achievement of insight, reliance on psychotropic treatment

or, alternatively, a romanticist practise of actualisation through development Yet determinist and individualist epistemologies alike havefailed to adequately address the problem of subjectivity This can be putsimply as the problem of how a subject can be theorised as experiencingvolition and agency within the context of biology, culture, relationship andspirituality (Weedon, 1987) Morrow and Brown (1994) identify the

self-‘dialectic between human agency and social structure’ (p 218) A theory ofthe self must, then, theorise this dialectic and allow for the subject to expe-rience a recursive relationship between personal agency and theconstituting of these determining parameters For example, Walkerdine’s(1981/1990) research demonstrated how girls and women teachers ‘are notunitary subjects uniquely positioned, but are produced as a nexus ofsubjectivities, in relations of power which are constantly shifting, render-ing them at one moment powerful and at another powerless’ (p 3)

The criteria for choosing a theory

If we believe that theory has real effects and that to theorise is an act initself then, like the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, theorising can

be seen as a deliberate political activity This activity of theory-as-actioncan be called praxis

I would further suggest that theories of the self are inseparable from the

act of various talk therapies In fact, the work of theorising is the therapy and the therapy is the continuous process of theorising If this much is true

then it requires us to be clear about what theory we choose and what work

we intend it to do

In choosing what theories, and critiques of theories, of the self to apply

in this discursive approach to self research I have applied two negative and

three positive criteria I do not want to select theory on the basis of its 1)

Theorising the ‘self ’ 11

author’s politics or practices, 2) its logocentrism and its author’s acolyte

status However, I do want to select theory on the basis of its 1) cultural

appropriateness and specificity, 2) its stated politics of emancipation,resistance and critique of power and 3) its utility, or the work it can do

Negative criteria

Theory production cannot be seen outside of the context within which itwas produced and it is important to understand the social, political, culturaland historical contingencies of the formulations of theorists and philoso-phers However, there is also a point beyond which the biographical details

of the author become a distraction to understanding and relating to theirtheory and ‘moral transgressions’ are used to discount the validity of theirwork For example, the US-based academic Paul de Man was largelyresponsible for popularising Derrida’s notion of deconstruction in literarycriticism in the US When it was revealed that de Man had written pro-Naziand, therefore, anti-semitic views in his book review column in the Belgian

newspaper Le Soir in the early 1940s (Derrida, 1998; Norris, 1988), those

who had opposed the popularity of deconstruction dismissed Derrida’swork as amoral and reckless Louis Althusser (1993) was vilified afterspending the remaining years of his life in a psychiatric institution instead

of standing trial for the strangulation of his wife Foucault’s ity and his attendance at Californian bathhouses were referred to indismissing his work on discipline, punishment and the history of sexuality

homosexual-as merely personal interests (Eribon, 1992; Halperin, 1995; Macey, 1994).Similarly an idea can be overvalued if it is not recognised as being locallycontingent It can become vulnerable to logocentrism and theorists can berevered as cult figures so that a follower of Foucault becomes aFoucauldian rather than a person interested in Foucauldian ideas

Positive criteria

Theory is culture bound and, as such, requires us to recognise the culturaland historical conditions of its production and take care in our attempts todemonstrate its relevance beyond its own cultural–historical context.Theory is informed by politics so it must be recognised that the conditions

of possibility for critical theory involved pre-Second World War Nazismand post-war attempts to understand how such fascism and anti-semitismcould have flourished Stanley Milgram’s (Milgram, 1974; Blass, 2000)work on obedience to authority, and the notion of an authoritarian person-

ality (Adorno et al., 1950), was used to provide an explanation of the ‘I

was just following orders’ testimony at the Nuremberg Trials It should

12 Self research

also be recognised that poststructuralist theory emerged at a time of studentrevolt and discontent with French Communist Party theory and practise.The German heritage of critical theory and the French heritage of post-structuralist theory also need to be situated in the context of the culturaland political history of Franco–German relations (Poster, 1989).

The theory elaborated here needs to relate to theories of the self thathave direct application and is required to sit within a context of the politics

of emancipation, provide a credible critique of the practices and effects ofpower and provides a working basis that facilitates acts of resistance to theabusive application of power Consequently, the appropriateness of atheory of the self, when these criteria are applied, lies in its utility Theeight epistemologies previously outlined can commonly be found inaccounts of the production and articulation of a self

Two of the traditions of critical thought that, in my view, have suchutility are ‘poststructuralist’ and ‘critical theory’ What follows is a con-sideration of how aspects of each of these traditions might be combined

to provide a working theoretical frame that places a notion of the ‘self’ in

a political context, which has direct application in a therapeutic context,and provides us with an understanding of the self that can inform the prac-tise of self research

Critical and poststructuralist theory

It is proposed here that the two traditions of critical and poststructuralisttheory have a number of points of convergence that can be useful to apply

in the development of an epistemology from which a self-research ology can be developed and then practised within the discipline of familytherapy There are also considerable tensions for which no attempt at reso-lution is made here In order to outline the points of convergence it isnecessary to provide a brief history of these traditions, particularly in rela-tion to their respective struggle with subjectivity and politics

method-Critical theory beginnings

What has become to be known as critical theory emanated from theInstitute of Social Research founded in 1923 Its founders are widelyrecognised as being Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse and MaxHorkheimer (Parker, 1997) Horkheimer replaced the first director, CarlGrunberg, in 1931 Adorno joined in the 1920s and Marcuse in 1932 TheInstitute moved to New York in 1936 following the Nazi’s rise to power in

1933 and returned to Germany after the war becoming more widelyreferred to as the Frankfurt School They derived their tradition from the

Theorising the ‘self ’ 13

social theory of Marx and sought to provide a critical rather than atory theory of political economy (McCarney, 1986) Horkheimer (1972)defined critical theory as the promotion of emancipation through the theo-retical critique of domination begun in the Enlightenment and continued

explan-by Marx As such, critical theory often implies the use of specific Marxistconcepts, such as dialectics, and requires the frame of some stage of capi-talism

Critical theory’s philosophical framework

There are many summaries of the philosophical framework, scope anddevelopment of the Frankfurt School Two such summaries are particularlyhelpful in the context of drawing out ideas for the development of a theory

of the self The first is Roiser and Willig’s (1996) tripartite description ofcritical theory that identifies it as: a project of research and writings thatseek to re-establish an authentic Marxism based on truth, dialectics andphenomenology; with an analysis that late capitalism has moved into statemonopoly capitalism; and a formulation of the resulting socio-culturalcharacteristics The central importance to critical theory of putting anytheoretical analysis or consideration within a socio-politico-historicalcontext is a major justification, in this thesis, for situating any theorising

of the self, during a process of self research, within such a context.The second is Parker’s (1997) outline of the theses apparent in criticaltheory’s analysis of the historical development of society Namely, socialscience cannot be neutral, therefore our theoretical position should bedeclared; the analysis must move beyond economic determinism to con-sciousness; dialectics operate in every significant cultural form; Westerncapitalism individualises and separates people from their cultural context;and the ‘false’ experience of individuality can be explained by psychoana-lytic theory These five elements demonstrate the importance to criticaltheory of theorising the self and of addressing the gap of subjectivity byresisting epistemologies that represent the self as fixed, immutable and freefrom any context However, I regard the attempt made to plug the gap ofsubjectivity with psychoanalytic theory (Poster, 1989) to be problematicand will, later in this chapter, consider an alternative in the contribution ofpoststructuralist theory attempts to theorise the subject

Critical theory’s struggle with subjectivity

From its inception, critical theory has engaged with, and attempted toaddress the problem of, subjectivity and searched for a theoretical concept-ualisation that would provide a satisfactory explanation of an individual’s

14 Self research

experience, agency and volition within his or her social and economicdeterminants However, in contrast to the liberal view of the ‘subject’ asrational, singular, autonomous and in possession of rights, the Marxistformulation of the ‘subject’ is as a collective agent For the first generation

of the Frankfurt School (Parker, 1997) psychoanalytic social theory wasused to address the problem of subjectivity However the second genera-tion of the Frankfurt School turned away from psychoanalytic socialtheory and Habermas (Habermas and Nicholsen, 1989; Habermas, 1987)subsequently attempted to reconstruct the subject as an agent of socialchange by privileging communications over labour and defining the

‘public sphere’ as an arena for consensual reform He returned to the ect of the Enlightenment by theorising the subject as an autonomous,rational individual in, ideally, a context of communicative rationality in the

proj-‘ideal speech situation’

A critical theory frame for theorising the self

The critical theory project of political analysis highlights thesocio–historico–economic forces that shape and determine aspects of ourcultural and individual experience This theory can provide a frame fortheorising the self However, these attempts by critical theory to plug thegap of subjectivity have failed (Frosh, 1997) because of its reliance onstructuralist theories of the self In order to understand and theorise theplace of individual experience, volition and agency we should turn instead

to poststructuralist theorising

Poststructuralist theory

‘Poststructuralist’ is a US term (Derrida, 1985) used to identify a tion of certain post-1968 French theory assimilated into its academiccanon Theorists such as Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, Guattari, Lyotard,Baudrillard and Lacan are all grouped as poststructuralists in US academiaalthough their theorising might, at times, be antagonistic to each other andall might have vigorously resisted being grouped together under such abanner If there is an aspect of commonality in the various theoretical proj-ects it might be identified as being a common interest in Marxism, aresponse to structural linguistics (Poster, 1989) and a protest againstFrench Communist Party ideology (O’Donnell, 1982; Ryan, 1982) Thisconceptual link might be evident in the expression of critiques of tradi-tional presentations of subjectivity and the critique of attempts to presenttruth as a transcendent unity Truth is enunciated in discourses that areforms of power that shape practices Within this loose poststructuralist

collec-Theorising the ‘self ’ 15

canon (Weedon, 1987; Norris, 1988), Foucault (1988) in particular, hasfocussed on the place of language in the creation of the theoretical subject.

A cornerstone of the theories on subjectivity, identified as poststructuralist,

is characterised by Poster’s (1989: 4) assertion that the ‘theoretical subject

cannot generate a discourse that represents the real and unmasks the nation in the real without introducing new forms of domination’ It is forthis reason that apparently ‘naturalised’ conceptions of self produced in thepractise of self research should be interrogated from an articulated ethic

rationalist in his early work such as Madness and Civilization (Foucault,

1965) using the term archaeology This was to become genealogy in hiscritiquing of the self as a centred consciousness and, finally, in his later

work, such as the three volume History of Sexuality (1990a, 1985, 1986)

and his continuing posthumous publications Foucault spoke of historicism

as a hermeneutics of the self and was concerned with the process of constitution through discursive practice ‘After first studying the games oftruth in their interplay with one another … I felt obliged to study the games

self-of truth in the relationship self-of self with self and the framing self-of oneself as asubject’ (Foucault 1985: 6) He was interested in teasing out the variouspractices and rules by which we form a sense of our ‘self’ and are, in fact,

in a relationship with our ‘self’ He was interested in how we become thesubject and object of the constitution of our ‘self’ and wrote that ‘a history

of the way in which individuals are urged to constitute themselves assubjects of moral conduct would be concerned with the models proposedfor setting up and developing relationships with the self, for self-reflection,self-knowledge, self-examination, for the decipherment of the self byoneself, for the transformation that one seeks to accomplish with oneself

as object’ (Foucault 1985: 29)

Poststructuralist theory responds to the problem of subjectivity, ing to Weedon (1987), in that ‘individuals are both the site and subjects ofdiscursive struggle for their identity Yet the interpellation of individuals as

accord-16 Self research

subjects within particular discourses is never final It is always open tochallenge The individual is constantly subjected to discourse In thought,speech or writing individuals of necessity commit to themselves to specificsubject positions and embrace quite contradictory modes of subjectivity atdifferent moments’ (p 97).

The poststructuralist struggle with politics

However this radical perspective on subjectivity has been interpreted bysome as having conservative effects One reading of poststructuralisttheory sees the destabilising of concepts such as self and identity as mean-ing that we can no longer have certainty or truth, and that ethics or moralconduct can no longer be expected as a given but is, itself, destabilised as

a category Equal concern is expressed over the notion of multiplicity inself and identity

Something may be gained then by poststructuralist theory looking at ical theory’s overtly politicised project The politics may be inferred frompoststructuralist theory but need to be stated as a explicit prerequisite if thistheory is not be high-jacked by, or misinterpreted as part of, the conservativeagenda Something may be gained from contextualising poststructuralisttheorising on subjectivity within the political project of critical theory

crit-Poststructuralist and critical theory: An attempt at

rapprochement

Poster (1989) proposes a rapprochement of poststructuralist and criticaltheory in an attempt to better theorise subjectivity and the self in asocio–politico–historical context This is in contrast to how theories of theself, as outlined in the eight epistemologies, are frequently presented Thisattempted rapprochement is at the point of their intersection, which issubjectivity, while at the same time the integrity of their tensions anddifferences is recognised Poster (1989), for example, argues that, since theEnlightenment, the French and Germans have ignored each other intellect-ually and their respective theories In this context much has been made ofthe supposed antagonism between poststructuralist and critical theory; forexample, following a period of studied indifference, Habermas, who isidentified as the main player in the second generation of critical theorists,sustained a systematic critique of poststructuralist theory He accused post-structuralists of being conservative, claiming that they theorise without aguarantee of certain truth (Isenberg, 1991) Poster outlines how Habermasand the poststructuralists had opposing views of the student revolt in 1968.Where the French saw it as the ‘new left’, Habermas, in Poster’s view, saw

Theorising the ‘self ’ 17

them as middle class reactionaries The contradiction, at least in part, maylie in Franco-German relations and academic politics Yet this is anotherexample of negative criteria being applied to theory selection In this case

it is the stated views of the personalities However, Poster attempts arapprochement Poststructuralist and critical theory may be different intheir analysis of power, their use of structuralism and their position on theEnlightenment More specifically, the differences between Habermas andFoucault may be found in their epistemologies, or their theories of knowl-edge, and their theories of change However, a rapprochement can beattempted, not to collapse the two approaches into one, but to show thatthey are not inherently contradictory

The reason for attempting this rapprochement, according to Poster(1989: 3), is because ‘poststructuralism has much to offer the reconstruct-ion of Critical Theory in the context of late 20th century developments’,and its ‘critiques of western reason needs to be integrated into CriticalTheory along with its attention to language.’ He believes that post-structuralist theory contains some of the elements of a critical analysis ofthe present in that it contextualises rather than universalises the theoreticalsubject; it critiques earlier theory’s practice of positing a rational socialsubject, be it the bourgeois subject or the proletariat as the reference pointfor freedom; and, theorists constitute themselves as textual agents through

a critique of discursive practices that celebrate contemporary hegemonicinstitutions

This is not intended to be a full-scale bringing together of critical theoryand poststructuralist projects but a rapprochement at certain points of inter-section Such an intersection, or what Poster (1989) might call the ‘politicalconjuncture’, is at the theorising of the political context of the self and theproblem of subjectivity At this intersection it seems possible to combineelements of both traditions with the specific purpose of developing a morepolitically overt theorising of subjectivity that accounts for elements ofsocial, biological and economic determinants in relation to individual,group and community experience of agency, volition and distinct identity

The Freud–Marx axis

Continental philosophy and social and political theory have been defined insympathy or in opposition to this Freud–Marx axis and a combination of thetheoretical positions of Freud and Marx has been presented as a response tothe problem of subjectivity Consequently, it is impossible to ignore theFreud–Marx axis when considering the contribution of poststructuralist andcritical theory to the problem of subjectivity as this axis has structured bothtraditions of thought and has been employed by each of them in their

18 Self research

respective attempts to combine the personal and political by integrating atheory of the self through psychoanalytic theory and placing it within thesocio-historical theory of Marxism (Marcuse, 1955; Whitebook, 2004;Derrida, 1994; Foucault, 1990b) The Freud–Marx axis may take manyforms and is dependent upon the cultural and historical specifics of itscontext For example, in the UK, the Freud–Marxist axis has been seen as

a site of activism and resistance to British empiricism that has dominatedsince Hume and an alternative to the logical positivism of Russell and thebehaviourist empiricism of Eysenck Wittgenstein’s linguistic philosophycan also be seen as a radical break from both traditions but his influence isseen more in US that in the UK (Monk, 1991; Sullivan, 1999)

US theory is dominated by the liberal humanism enshrined in the USconstitution pervading theory and critique at a naturalised level Critiques

of subjectivity based on US liberalism have eschewed the Freud–Marxaxis so that the Social Constructionist theory of Shotter (1992, 1993,1996), Rorty (1992, 1997) and Gergen (1985, 1994) draws more on acertain reading of Wittgenstein (Sullivan, 1999; Parker, 1996) and lacksthe political analysis of its European counterparts Cast in opposition toRealism (Greenwood 1989, 1991, 1992), during a series of public lecturesbetween Gergen and Greenwood in 1991, the relativism of social con-structionism thus struggles to have relevance in political debates involvingFreud–Marxist, poststructuralist and critical theories due to its perceivedrelativism (Burr, 1995, 2003)

On the other hand, Central and South American theory is entirelydependent on its praxis for its radical credentials The liberation theology

of Paulo Freire (1970), the liberation psychology of Martin-Baró (1994)and the philosophy of Ignacio Ellacuria (Burke, 2000) is formulated withthe express intent of resisting and fighting back against the ongoing effects

of colonial oppression through education and political mobilisation Notonly is this theory specific to the culture but is also specific for a politicalpurpose Marxist theory and psychoanalytic social theory have quite adifferent expression in a Central and South American context of revolu-tion, resistance, the State and the Church

The Freud-Marx axis and the Frankfurt School

The breach in critical theory is characterised by a question that perplexesMarxism: why do individuals, populations and communities not revoltagainst their class oppression and why, at times, do they act to perpetuatetheir own oppression against their interests? This breach was filled by thenotion of ‘false consciousness’ (Lukacs, 1920/67) as a stop-gap However,critical theorists, looking for a more secure and seamless theorisation,

Theorising the ‘self ’ 19

turned to the architecture of Freudian psychoanalysis It could be said thatthis breach in Marxist theory provided the ‘conditions of possibility’ forthe emergence of a Freudo–Marxist axis in critical theory with its attempts

to construct an explanation of human action that dovetailed with a political critique As previously outlined, psychoanalysis has been used toplug the gap between theory and experience Its strength and endurancelies in its ability to reproduce itself in the domain of uncertainty thusperpetuating the need to use it to understand itself

socio-According to Ingleby (1984) psychoanalysis offered the Frankfurt Schooltwo things First, a ‘critique of the collective psychopathology that makescapitalism tick (Reich, Adorno, Marcuse) and second, a mode of analysis,critical self-reflection, which provides a paradigm for ‘emancipatory’

thought (Habermas)’ (p 41) Parker (1997) states that Fromm saw it as one

of the main theoretical tasks of the Institute to synthesise Freud and Marx

By the 1950s the Frankfurt School was distancing itself from both Freud andMarx (Parker, 1997) yet the link between the first and second generations ofthe School is evident in Reich’s (first generation) and Habermas’ (secondgeneration) attempts to build an account of subjectivity that ‘connects theindividual with culture and how to build a bridge over the modern riftbetween the inside and the outside’ (p 135) This illustrates the endurance ofthe problem of subjectivity in critical theory and the ongoing attempts toaddress it beyond traditional Marxist and Freudian theory

Poststructuralism and the Marx-Freud axis

There are many theorists identified as poststructuralist who have used ants on psychodynamic theory as an integral part of their theorising on thesubject, identity and the self Early poststructuralist thought was influ-enced by the structuralist writings of Althusser (1971) who proposed aFreud–Marx axis Some poststructuralists have rejected such an axis orproposed a version of psychoanalytic theory of their own The philosopherGilles Deleuze and the psychoanalyst and political activist Felix Guattari

vari-published Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Deleuze and

Guattari, 1977), which attacked the ‘doctrine of psychoanalysis’ offeringits own version of the Freud–Marx axis situating it in a political context ofliberation (Bogue, 1989)

A poststructuralist relationship with the Freud–Marxist axis might bebest characterised by their attempts to move between the theory of Marxand Freud, rather than towards either of them Much of poststructuralisttheory is concerned with a critique of the structuralist, functionalist foun-dations exemplified by traditional psychoanalytic and Marxist thought.Derrida (1994) stated that there are ‘intimate connections between decon-

20 Self research

struction and a certain “spirit” of Marxism’ and sought to inspire critiquesthat are Marxist in ‘spirit’ (p 38) and a theorising of subjectivity as multi-ply and discursively constructed.

Like Althusser, Lacan used structuralist notions and sought to sent subjectivity as decentred (Ingleby, 1984) and was influential tomany of the theorists now regarded as poststructuralist As such, theposition occupied by Lacan in relation to the Freud–Marx axis is neitherthat of poststructuralist or critical theory However, many of his formu-lations on the self may have a compatibility with other poststructuralisttheoretical conceptions of the subject For example, he critiqued therepresentation of the ‘self’ as a centre free of a social context with anexperience of ourselves as unitary (Parker, 1997) so that ‘the category ofthe subject is not the same as the “self ” or the “ego” and is not, inLacanian psychoanalysis, a single discrete entity’ (p 197) Lacan alsoused structuralist notions to revise psychoanalytic theory in his develop-ment of a symbolic order that places consciousness, and perhaps identityand a sense of self, in language

repre-Whither Marx and Freud?

The intention here has been to outline, albeit briefly and partially, thehistorical and cultural relationship various forms of Western critical theo-rising has with the combination of Freudian with Marxist analysis Whatcan be argued from this position is that critical theory has not succeeded

in resolving the problem of subjectivity through its combination ofMarxism with the theorising on subjectivity of traditional Freudiantheory Additionally, Poster (1989) has asserted that the frame of capital-ism does not take into account other forms of domination that have arisensince Marx and neither is his class analysis currently applicable to analy-ses that explicitly engage with discussions of decolonisation andfeminism (p 7)

Moreover the Freud–Marx axis as evidenced in poststructuralist andcritical theory does not currently provide an adequate theorising of theproblem of subjectivity I would like to propose that just as poststructural-ist and critical theory have turned away from structuralist forms of Marxistanalysis, we should turn away from structuralist forms of psychoanalysisand psychoanalytic social theory in our attempts to understand subjectiv-ity We should turn, instead, towards certain strands of poststructuralisttheory Rather than just shoo-in poststructuralist theory at critical theory’sfront door, while psychoanalysis exits out the back door, I am suggestingthat we might do well to encourage multiple positions on subjectivity onthe basis of their utility In this way poststructuralist theory might offer

Theorising the ‘self ’ 21

answers to the questions that frustrate and perplex critical theory in a waythat enhances its project in the ‘spirit’, if not the structure, of Marx.

Principles for theorising the self

Rather that construct another theory of the self that we may seek todiscover in self research, which would, of course, be vulnerable to all thecritiques I have presented, what is outlined here are some suggested prin-

ciples that may be utilised in developing an ethic in theorising about the

self This ethic can then guide the construction of accounts of the self inself research These principles are outlined below and are influenced by,rather than reflections of, aspects of the theory outlined in this chapter

We each have an experience of self

For Spivak (1999) ‘people are similar not by virtue of being similar, but byvirtue of producing a differential, or by virtue of thinking themselves asother than a self-identified example of the species’ (p 34) In this way weeach have an experience of the self or a relationship with the self that isreal even if it is transient, problematic, fractured or contradictory Toengage, therefore, in a consideration of a sense of self we need to theorise

it Theories of the self that are determinist do not recognise our experience

of volition or agency Theories that are individualistic do not recognise ourexperience of our ‘self’ in relation to historical and current context

A sense of self is experienced as unique

The uniqueness of an experience of self results from having different kinds

of relationships with the various elements that constitute the discoursethrough which our sense of self has been produced In this way we havethe experience of being similar to each other precisely by virtue of beingdifferent Or, to repeat the words of Spivak (1999), we think of ourselves

as ‘other than a self-identified example of the species’

The self must be described rather that explained

It is important to provide an analysis of what our experience of self is rather that of what self is Following Wittgenstein (1953) ‘we must do

away with all explanation, and description alone must take its place’ (p 9)

We need a description, rather than an explanation, as an explanation isvulnerable to being both generalised and universalised This processinvolves generalising from the specific and then specifying from the

22 Self research

general Alternatively a description of our relationship with ‘self’ allowsfor an understanding of experience that is both unique and shared incommon In this way multiple and contradictory descriptions of self can beexperienced as real without producing a crisis of identity or dissociation.

A sense of self is neither totally determined nor totally individualised

The problem of subjectivity, in the tradition of Freud and Marx, is duced at the intersection of volition and determinants Generalising anduniversalising our experience of this intersection will lose the nuances andcontradictions of each person’s ongoing experience that might be unstable

pro-over time and in the moment Henriques et al (1998) ask ‘what accounts

for the continuity of the subject, and the subjective experience of identity?’(p 204) They answer their own question by invoking psychoanalysis Iwould like to answer it by drawing upon the Foucauldian notion ofdiscourse, which is explored in detail in Chapter 3

The self is discursively constructed

Our experience of self is mediated by culture, able-bodiedness, gender,race, sexuality, community and family Each of these categories are discur-sively constructed concepts that, in turn, reproduce certain discourses(Parker, 1992) Discourse is a poststructuralist formulation but discoursesalso need to be seen as being mediated by the socio-political context,which is a notion from critical theory These discourses contain the pre-scriptions for how to be male-female, gay-straight, black-white ordisabled-able bodied They also specify how to be a parent, what consti-tutes an abnormal child, how to appropriately express emotions and so on(Rose, 1990) These collections of discursive practices shape and informthe sense of self we come to experience For example, the category ofgender discursively produces the reality of gender (Butler, 1994)

The self is discursively constructed through institutions

Each of us has a sense of self that has in part been constructed discursivelythrough such institutions as family, media and school Each of us has adifferent relationship to those institutions partly due to biology in terms ofour skin colour, sex, physical attributes and abilities and partly to do withgeographical location of our birth, culture, community and the family weare born into However this is not the sum total of relevant factors We eachhave a relationship with those determinants and may have differingdegrees of awareness of their influence and make choices to accept, reject

Theorising the ‘self ’ 23

or be ambivalent about their influence and the identity they ascribe to our

‘self’

Problems of the self can be products of oppression and inequality

In line with both poststructuralist and critical theory, one of the effects ofthe systematic and organised dominance of one group over another is thetransformation of some of the effects of the oppression and inequality into

‘problems’ of the self such as psychiatric, psychological and moral defects(Harwood, 2007) An illustration of this can be seen in the critical analysis

of the DSM project and the pathologising of behaviour in Chapters 6.Psychological and psychiatric knowledge can inform and transform certain

kinds of experiences of the self (Cromby et al., 2007; Boyle, 2007; Bentall,

2007; Moncrieff, 2007) A man made redundant, for example, might feeldeprived of an identity as an adequate man This change in identity mightlead to a sense of self as worthless His response to this may be labelled asdepression and he may commit suicide This could be viewed as a mentalhealth problem The application of critical theory to this assertion mightchallenge how this symptom reductionist thinking ignores the economicmechanism of unemployment being used to control inflation in a capitalbased economy

The self is political

We are not free of the socio-politico-historical context in which we exist.Poststructuralist theory might describe a self produced by discourse, andcritical theory might regard a self as being produced in a system ofprivilege and inequality of class, race, gender, sexuality, etc However,these are, in part, dependent on a ‘sense of self’ whereby both oppressedand oppressor are informed by certain beliefs such as entitlement, equity,self-worth, blame, shame, responsibility and justice in a process of doubleconditioning In this way, a sense of self, discursively produced, whichexperiences lack of privilege as due to a personal lack of motivation,commitment or work ethic, is unlikely to protest against social inequality.This is the privatisation of experience, both personal and economic

Justice is un-deconstructable

Derrida (1994) sees the law as being deconstructable but justice is not

Justice ‘justifies’ and sets deconstruction ‘in motion’ (p 36) Here,

decon-struction is seen as an event (Derrida, 1985) rather than a method.Theorising the self can then be approached from the basis of an ethic of

24 Self research

justice that is overtly political (Cornell et al., 1992; Foucault, 1997).

Notions of justice, equity, abuses of power and systemic oppression can beemployed in coming to understand an individual’s unique experience ofself within a shared experience of the politics of discourse and the discur-sive construction of self This principle forms the bedrock of an ethic forthe practise of self research as it prevents the misreading of poststructural-ist theory as relativist and resonates with a critical theory imperative torecognise a social, political and historical reality

The principles outlined above, informed by poststructuralist and criticaltheory, combine to form an ethical basis for producing accounts of the self

in self research that assumes that we each have a sense of self that isneither totally determined nor completely individualised Our self hasbeen, and continues to be, discursively constructed and is both unique andshared in common The effects of inequality, oppression and injustice can,

at times, be expressed as problems of the self and identity Concepts such

as Derrida’s notion of ‘justice’, previously outlined, can then be used tomake sense of these problems and their political context In order that werecognise and negotiate the shifting matrix of these contradictions,harmonies and complexities we would do better to construct descriptions

of self and identity rather than attempt an explanation of self and identity

and subjectivity In this way the term self is not defined but used and

ther-apy and research might attempt to describe how, in the words of Foucault(1985: 6) the self establishes ‘the truth of itself’

Theorising the ‘self ’ 25

2 Family therapy as a potential

disciplinary site for the

practise of self research

Introduction

One cannot engage in research or therapy without that practice existing in,and being situated within, a discipline characterised by a set of discursivepractices For that reason, as well as identifying its theoretical underpin-nings as outlined in Chapter 1, a candidate discipline within which such aprocess of self research can be practised needs to be proposed and justified.This chapter argues that the discipline of family therapy is such a site, fromwhich the experience and expression of the concept of self can beresearched Other sites of psychotherapeutic practice such as psychiatry,counselling psychology, personal growth, New Age, self-help and body-work, or religious and spiritually based practices, such as those fromwithin Christian counselling, the teachings of Islam, Buddhism, Tao or anyother religion, philosophy, ideology or cultural practice could be assessedfor appropriateness The canon of psychoanalytic theory as practices in itsvarious forms through Europe, North and South America could also beproposed but, I would argue, the same process of justification would need

to occur

As my background is in family therapy I am choosing it as a candidatesite of practice I am qualified in both psychology and social work and I havebeen identified as a family therapist since 1990 In that time I have attempted

to find ways of engaging in family therapy practice that puts the individual

in a context – social, historical, political – and have followed the discipline’stransition from structural to poststructuralist theorising of the self as thesubject and object of family therapy What follows here is a history of familytherapy recounted in order to determine what family therapy is through ahistory of what family therapy has achieved The various foundationalplayers and developing schools of thought and practice are detailed in anattempt to show how therapy, although situated within an industry and anacademic discipline that is a conservative force, also has a radical tradition

Its origins lie in attempts to move away from an individualised construction

of the ‘self’ as pathology and to create a space for therapeutic practice thatconstructs a sense of self within a socio-political context This was carriedout initially with reference to the ‘family’ and, subsequently, any individual,group or community within a context of the politics of age, race, gender,

trans-generational disadvantage, disability, inter alia, and the politics of

power relations and the effects of capitalism At the same time, the dominantdisciplines of psychology and psychiatry that flourish in the administration

of populations in a capital-based economy recuperate radical practice byincorporating it within its conservative canon of theory and practice sub-sequent to the pruning of its radical thorns Family therapy, like anydiscipline, has had an ontological drift towards the culturally accepted normthrough the twin processes of the professionalisation of a new discipline andits recuperation by established disciplines This radical–conservative tensionwithin the history of family therapy is discussed along with the process ofprofessionalisation that facilitates it The question then is not: Is therapyconservative or radical? The question becomes: How do we situate ourselvesmore in the radical, rather than the conservative, when we choose to engage

in a therapeutic endeavour such as self research Finally, some of the tions that would enable the practise of self research to be situated within acritical, if not radical, family therapy epistemology resisting its recuperation

condi-by the mainstream are outlined

Family therapy: A history

From what, could it be said, did family therapy grow? In the US, in theearly 1950s, there were a number of psychiatrists who were dissatisfiedwith treating patients individually They were looking outside psychiatryfor answers, inspiration and a new epistemology Risking ridicule andcensure from within their profession they began to see patients with theirfamilies The co-incidence of the actions of such psychiatrists as NathanAckerman, Murray Bowen, Carl Whittaker and Lyman Wynne (Gurmanand Kniskern, 1981) across the US was neither a systematic nor an organ-ised movement But their search for something new, something moreeffective than psychiatry and psychoanalysis, led to points of coincidence.There was an attraction to anthropology in general, and history, as written

by the discipline itself, has family therapy sprouting from the germ of munication studies in particular And what was germane was the theorising

com-of Gregory Bateson (1972, 1979)

This is, of course, the version of history that has achieved dominanceover other versions It is the history of choice for the family therapyestablishment and is, in effect, a history of the ideas, practices and

Family therapy as a site for self research 27