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Counselling Psychology Quarterly

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Social constructionism in the counselling

context
a
Robert A. Neimeyer
a
University of Memphis , Memphis, TN, USA
Published online: 27 Sep 2007.

To cite this article: Robert A. Neimeyer (1998) Social constructionism in the counselling context,
Counselling Psychology Quarterly, 11:2, 135-149, DOI: 10.1080/09515079808254050

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 Counselling Psychology Quarterly, Vol. 11, No. 2, 1998, pp. 135-149 135

Social constructionism in the

counselling context
ROBERT A. NEIMEYER
University of Memphis, Memphis, TN, USA
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ABSTRACT Social constructionism (SC), with its redefinition of social realities as constituted
through discourse, and its challenges to traditional notions of a stable and essentialized self, carries
sweeping implications for applied psychology. M y aim in this paper is to clanyy the basic agenda of
SC, and to suggest that a judicious cross-fertilization with concepts and procedures originating in
constructivistforms of psychotherapy can provide a useful and relevant frame for counselling practice

What is social constructionism, and what use might it have in the counselling
context? My purpose in the present article is to provide at least preliminary answers
to these questions by (a) outlining the basic agenda of the social constructionist
movement, (b) considering its distinctive view of language as a matrix of meaning-
making, and (c) sketching its implications for a fundamental reappraisal of concepts
such as self and h u m a n agency. I will then advance the claim that complementing this
social constructionist approach with a more personal form of constructivism helps
address certain deficiencies in either orientation taken alone, and provides a more
comprehensive and useful frame for counselling and psychotherapy.

The constructionist agenda

Every intellectual tradition can be viewed as having a negative identity (defined in
terms of other traditions from which it seeks to distinguish itself), as well as a positive
identity (expressed in terms of the particular positions or knowledge claims it
advances) (Stam, 1998). In the case of social constructionism (SC), this ‘definition
by contrast’ is especially important, because it represents such a deep-going reaction
to traditional forms of social theory that are viewed as one-sided, idealized, and
deficient in studying or describing the interpersonal, linguistic and political dimen-
sions of the human world. Let me therefore begin by painting in broad brush strokes
the negative identity shared by most forms of social constructionism, before consid-
ering in more detail some specific authors and positions that have contributed to its
positive agenda as a form of social theory.

Correspondence to: Robert A. Neimeyer, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Memphis,

Memphis, TN 38152, USA. E-mail: neimeyer@cc.memphis.edu

0951-5070/98/020135-15 0 Carfax Publishing Ltd

 136 Robert A. Neimeyer

SC’s negative identity: the rejection of modernism

The traditional framework from which social constructionists differentiate them-
selves has been summed up under the label of modernism. As the name implies,
modernism is a broad concept, almost too broad to define with any precision,
because it encompasses so many domains of social life. However, as applied to the
human sciences, modernism embodies the Enlightenment faith in technological and
human progress through the accumulation of legitimate knowledge. From this
perspective, psychology for most of this century concerned itself with the develop-
ment of logical and empirical methods (particularly featuring quantification, statisti-
cal inference and controlled experimentation) for discovering objective, verifiable
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facts about its specialized subject matter. If successful, such a research program was
presumed to be increasingly unified and progressive, leading to the discovery of
generalizable laws of human behaviour, whose validity was established by their
correspondence with observable, extratheoretical realities. At the core of this mod-
ern program was the belief in a knowable world, and with it, a knowable self.
In sharp contrast to this world view, social constructionism endorses a form of
postmodernism (Anderson, 1990) that turns nearly every aspect of this modern
psychological program on its head. Gone is the faith in an objectively knowable
universe, and with it the hope that elimination of human bias, adherence to canons
of methodology, and reliance on a pure language of observation would yield a ‘true’
human science, mirroring psychological reality without distortion. Gone too is the
modern notion of an essentialized self, an individual ego who is the locus of choice,
action and rational self-appraisal. In their place is a panoply of perspectives cutting
across the human sciences and humanities, whose common threads include an
acknowledgement (even a celebration) of multiple realities, socially constituted and
historically situated, which defy adequate comprehension in objectivist terms. Lan-
guage, in this view, actually constitutes the structures of social reality, requiring the
cultivation of new approaches (hermeneutic, narrative, deconstructionist, rhetorical
and discursive) appropriate to analysing the ‘text’ of human experience in social
context. The resulting image of psychological ‘science’ is in some respects more
humble (aiming only for the production of ‘local knowledges’ that are more
bounded and closer to the domain of practice), and in other respects more ambitious
(involving more consistent self-criticism and reflexivity) than its modernist prede-
cessor. It is also more disquieting, holding out the promise of only a shifting,
fragmentary and constructed knowledge, without the bedrock certainty of firm
(logical or empirical) foundations. Even the self is dethroned from a position of
agency, freedom and conscious self-determination, vanishing into a proliferation of
inconsistent social roles on the interpersonal and cultural stage. If there is a positive
thrust to this postmodern project, it is in the direction of viable (if not valid)
knowledge and the pursuit of responsible social action.
If the reader feels a bit disoriented by this whirlwind survey of the social
constructionist agenda, then it has had its intended effect! Indeed, one often senses
in constructionist writing that producing temporary conceptual vertigo in the reader
is one implicit goal of the work, which often proceeds by criticizing, undermining
 Social constructionism 137

and ‘deconstructing’ taken-for-granted assumptions that ordinarily sustain our fam-

iliar sense of self, world, and the quest for knowledge.
But in most forms of social constructionism, the rejection of modernist assump-
tions is not undertaken for its own sake. Instead, the aim is to ‘clear a space’ for
alternative methods, theories and ‘readings’ of social reality, which collectively offer
fresh possibilities for psychological research and practice. Let me therefore sketch
part of the positive identity of the SC movement, to provide a backdrop for a
discussion of its possible relevance to counselling practice.

SC’s positive identity: language and the self

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T o appreciate the extent to which SC casts radical doubt on our everyday assump-
tions about social life, it is helpful to focus on two arenas of human experience that
are utterly transformed when viewed through a constructionist lens. The first of
these is language, understood as the contingent, situated and shifting symbolic order
that structures our relationship to ‘reality’, as well as to ourselves. The second arena
is that of the sev, which loses its familiar personalism, stability and integrity in a
constructionist account, in part because it is itself shaped by the very linguistic
operations that bring into being the social world. It will soon become apparent that
SC’s characterization of these two concepts carries sweeping implications for coun-
selling and psychotherapy, insofar as these ‘helping professions’ rely on conversa-
tional practices whose explicit goal is to help clients transform or revise their
problematic personal identities.

Language and reality. In both formal and informal theories of language, two
views have predominated: the idea that language represents an abstract structure of
linguistic signs and grammatical rules that members of a culture learn to refer to a
‘real world’ beyond language, and the notion that public language expresses personal
feelings and thoughts resident within the individual. With characteristic audacity,
SC begins by rejecting both of these formulations. Instead, following the structural-
ist linguistics of Saussure (1974) and its poststructuralist embellishments (Burr,
1999, constructionists view language as a network of ‘signifiers’ whose relationship
to the things they signify is essentially arbitrary, rather than fixed and obvious. From
this perspective, different language communities can ‘carve up’ the world in quite
different ways. For example, while it may seem obvious to speakers of Indo-Eu-
ropean languages that ‘emotions’ are something ‘real’ that correspond to specifiable
internal states, there are some languages that have no word that can be translated as
‘emotion’ (Lutz, 1982). Even within related language communities, subtly different
discriminations can configure the world of experience differently. T o pick but a
single example, the Portuguese word ‘saudade’ conveys a quality of ‘homesickness’,
or bittersweet yearning that arises in the absence of a special person, which is only
crudely captured by the English language expression of ‘missing’ someone.
But to say that language has no necessary and specifiable relationship to an
extralinguistic observable reality is not to say that the way in which we talk about our
experience is capricious or haphazard. While “there are no principled constraints over
 138 Robert A. Neimeyer

our characterization of states of affairs”, it is none the less the case that the “terms
and forms by which we achieve understanding of the world and ourselves are social
artifacts, products of historically and culturally situated exchanges among people”
(Gergen, 1994 p. 49). T o ‘make sense’ to others, we have no choice but to position
ourselves within a symbolic order that precedes us as individuals, that establishes for
us a world of socially warranted meanings.
Does this lead us inevitably to the view that language unproblematically gives us
access to a common, agreed upon frame of reference through which to co-ordinate
our relations to others? By no means. In a social constructionist account, the
meanings of things remain open, contested, and sites of significant conflict between
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participants in the same linguistic community. For example, the meaning of state
‘welfare’ programs is currently being contested among American politicians and the
electorate, with some groups defining them as ‘essential economic safety nets for the
poor’, while others characterize them as ‘systematic disincentives to personal re-
sponsibility’. Clearly, the very different rhetoric of these two camps conveys the idea
that language does not neutrally reflect a shared reality, so much as constitute social
reality in different ways according to the positions and interests of the groups and
individuals involved. Thus, language in this sense is more pe$ormative than represen-
tational, sensitizing us to what people are doing or attempting to do in their speaking
and writing (Edwards & Potter, 1992).
Constructionists who are drawn toward the study of language use as a form of
social action analyse the way in which it is structured into different discourses, or
systems of statements (stories, images, metaphors, representations) that together
produce a particular version of events (Burr, 1995). For example, traditional
Western discourses of gender specifL appropriate roles, responsibilities and respect-
ive positions of power for men and women, which are further buttressed by sources
as diverse as Biblical authority and biology. Although these presumed sex differences
have their basis in cultural discourse rather than any immutable physical reality, they
are none the less substantial, and have ‘real effects’ for those who live within them
(Foucault, 1970). By way of illustration, a discourse of women as naturally more
nurturing and emotional, while men are construed as more achievement-oriented
and rational, can be used to legitimate the allocation of low-paying caretaking and
service positions to women, while men are given more direct access to high status
employment in business and government. Thus, prevailing discourses cannot be
simply ignored or redefined without challenging existing institutions and social
organization. Of course, this may be precisely the agenda of competing interests,
such as feminism, which attempt to undermine the taken-for-granted validity of
dominant discourses and seek to replace them with ways of ‘languaging’ about
gender that are less ‘totalizing’ for the persons who are subject to them (Kitzinger,
1987).
Such a view of language-in-use leads inevitably to an analysis of power relations,
whether at the level of individuals (e.g. within a marriage), groups (e.g. professional
societies), or cultures (e.g. competing nations). Seen in this frame, power is not so
much the property of persons, groups, or institutions, as it is the process of construct-
ing a discourse that legitimates some form of social control over others, or even
 Social constructionism 139

oneself. Significantly, such attempts are typically successful only to the extent that
they succeed in hiding the very mechanisms by which they are produced, so that
their outcome goes unquestioned as a natural expression of ‘the way things are’
(Foucault, 1970).
As a specialized form of social criticism, SC analyses spoken or written ‘texts’
using the concepts and procedures of discursive and rhetorical analysis (Edwards &
Potter, 1992; Simons, 1989). But unlike traditional systems of ‘content analysis’ of
narrative (Gottschalk et al. , 1986), discourse analysis does not try to penetrate to the
‘truth’ of the text, to yield a single, objective meaning through the use of formal or
quantitative procedures. Instead, in keeping with a constructivist epistemology
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(Neimeyer, 1995b), the goal is typically to search for a pragmatically useful ‘reading’
of the text that supports valued social change. One influential approach to this effort
has been modelled by Derrida (1978), who ‘deconstructs’ literary texts by revealing
their internal tensions, hidden contradictions, and concealed assumptions. Thera-
pists inspired by similar traditions have borrowed such procedures to undermine
cultural discourses that subtly encourage such destructive behaviours as alcohol
abuse (Winslade & Smith, 1997).
In summary, a social constructionist view promotes a Copernican shift in our
understanding of language, from seeing it as a medium for merely reflecting or
labelling an independent reality, to viewing it as the very medium by which social
reality is constructed. Moreover, because language-as-discourse (covertly) instanti-
ates and sustains existing power arrangements, constructionists tend to adopt a
critical, analytic stance toward written and spoken texts, searching for their sociopo-
litical implications. Among the most important of these implications are those that
various discourses carry for personal identity, a topic to which I shall now turn.

Self and identity. If one takes seriously the social constructionist thesis that we
have no direct access to an extralinguistic reality, then it follows that we also have
no unmediated recourse to a ‘real self beyond the language operations that appear
to give it substance. Indeed, SC theorists contend that the very notion of an
independent, individualistic, stable and knowable self is a product of the modern
era, which in effect ‘produced’ a view of persons as isolated and autonomous agents
capable of self-determination, in keeping with the requirements of progressive,
capitalist economies (Sampson, 1989). As a product of this same modern ethos,
early twentieth century psychology followed in this tradition, dutifully positing
myriad ‘theories of personality’ which attempted to delineate the development,
dynamics and disorders of such self-contained individuals. Humanistic psychology,
with its celebration of human agency, freedom, self-actualization and personality
integration as hallmarks of maturity, represented one logical extension of this same
paradigm. Likewise, the current popularity of cognitive behavioural therapies can be
explained in part on the basis of their compatibility with a traditional Western
cultural discourse that attributes responsibility for rational self-control to isolated
individuals, supported by a professional ‘technology of behavior change’ whose goal
is to efficiently restore greater ‘reality contact’ to those suffering from ‘irrational
beliefs’ (Neimeyer, 1993b, 1998).
 140 Roben A. Neimeyer

From a social constructionist viewpoint, this modern view of self is both overly
idealized and insufficiently contextual. In particular, it errs in ‘essentializing’the self
as a generally consistent set of traits, motives, needs, attitudes and competencies
located within the person, and taken as a kind of irreducible unity worthy of study
in its own right. In sharp contrast to this ethic of individualism, SC theorists taking
the linguistic turn view the self as deeply penetrated by the language of one’s place
and time. Like a foetus floating in an amnion of culturally available signs, symbols,
practices and conversations, the ‘self symbiotically depends for its existence upon a
living system that precedes and supports it.
In its more radical forms, this view of the ‘saturated self as populated by the
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often contradictory discourses into which one is born, and in which one remains
immersed, threatens the very conception of the individual as a unified entity with
identifiable boundaries and properties (Gergen, 199 1). The extreme postmodern
vision of the ‘death of the self (Lather, 1992) heralds the demise of personal
subjectivity and its replacement by ‘the more anonymous sense of irreality carried by
the flood of media images which surround us like an atmosphere’ (Sass, 1992).
Passing through the postmodern mirror, “we enter into a universe devoid of both
objects and selves: where there is only a swarming of ‘selfobjects’, images and
simulacra filling us without resistance’’ (Sass, 1992, p. 176).
This reconstruction of selfhood is both disquieting and liberating. On the one
hand, it raises urgent questions about the defensibility of deeply inscribed cultural
assumptions concerning individuals as independent and rational moral agents,
assumptions on which such critical social institutions as British common law, not to
mention traditional psychotherapy, depend. On the other hand, a conception of
personality as socially constructed also opens the possibility of more profoundly
relational views of selfhood (Curtis, 199l), which view identity as constituted by the
living web of connections we create and sustain with the people, projects, and places
that give our lives meaning (Attig, 1996). This more affirmative view of the social
self accords persons the status of discourse users, manipulators of ‘interpretive
repertoires’ for constructing preferred versions of their motives and actions in
relation to others (Wetherell & Potter, 1988). Such a view is compatible with at least
a modest form of human agency and self-determination, insofar as people are seen
as ‘choosing and implementing forms of representation appropriate to their immedi-
ate goals’ (Burr, 1995, p. 120). I will consider the implications of such a view for the
practice of counselling and psychotherapy after arguing briefly for the complemen-
tarity of social constructionist and personal constructivist approaches in the follow-
ing section.

Social constructionism and agentic constructivism:

conflict and complementarity
It is tempting, especially in a brief article like the present one, to discuss the SC
agenda as if it were a unified counterpoint to traditional forms of social theory. But
fortunately or unfortunately, “any close listening to the postmodern chorus reveals
a polyphony of voices-not all of which are singing in the same key” (Neimeyer,
 Social constructionism 141

1995b, p. 30). As Stam (1998) reminds us, we are “awash in a whole variety of
constructivisms and constructionisms, some of which bear a family resemblance to
each other whereas others are downright antithetical”. My remarks here are no
substitute for the careful scholarship that is beginning to consider both the bridges
and barriers between these alternative formulations (Botella, 1995; Chiari & NUZZO,
1996; Lyddon, 1995; Stam, 1998). Instead, I will simply argue that a selective
cross-fertilization of some forms of SC theory with more agentic forms of psycholog-
ical constructivism can provide a more useful frame for counselling practice than
does either approach considered alone.
Like SC, constructivism takes as its point of departure a rejection of ‘objectivist’
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psychologies, with their commitment to a realist epistemology, correspondence

theory of truth, unificationist philosophy of science, reactive theory of human
behaviour, associationist models of mind, and mediational view of language. In their
place, constructivists endorse a view of knowledge as a personal construction, a
coherence-based, neo-pragmatic theory of truth, a pluralistic conception of science,
proactive models of human functioning, a view of persons as self-organizing systems,
and a constituitive view of language (Mahoney, 199 1; Neimeyer, 1995b). Working
within this frame, constructivist clinicians and counsellors practice various forms of
psychotherapy, defined broadly as “the variegated and subtle interchange and
negotiation of (inter)personal meanings ... in the service of articulating, elaborating,
and revising those constructions that the client uses to organize her or his experience
or action” (Neimeyer, 1995c) (p. 2). This focus on the ‘coordinated management of
meaning’ (Pearce & Cronen, 1997) as the basis for counselling practice dovetails
with the linguistic, discursive emphasis of SC, while adding greater procedural
specificity regarding therapeutic strategy and technique (Neimeyer, 1993a). In
exchange, SC can interject into the practice of constructivist counselling a height-
ened awareness of the rhetorical nuances and implications of both the client’s and
therapist’s discourse, as well as greater sensitivity to the broader cultural, institu-
tional and power arrangements in which counsellors inevitably work.
But given the profusion of divergent forms of SC and constructivist theory, the
possibility of their conflict and inconsistency is at least as great as the prospect of
their complementarity and integration. For example, constructivist theories predi-
cated on a model of the ‘evolving self (Guidano, 1991; Kegan, 1982) may make
uneasy bedfellows with SC positions that glory in the demise of any form of
selfhood, just as constructivist therapies that conceptualize meaning making in terms
of unconscious motivation (Ecker & Hulley, 1996) or internal ‘felt senses’ (Gendlin,
1996) may rest uncomfortably alongside SC approaches that situate meaning and
discourse wholly in the space between persons, rather than within them. Thus, in
keeping with the goals of a ‘theoretically progressive integration’ of psychotherapy
(Neimeyer, 1993c), I believe a meaningful juxtaposition of concepts from both
camps is feasible only if serious attention is given to their metatheoretical compati-
bility.
One candidate among SC theories for conceptual exchange with psychological
constructivism is the work of Harre and Gillett (1994). In their recent position
statement, these authors present a view of mind as the nexus of socially structured
 142 Robert A. Neimeyer

discourses, out of which individual meanings and subjectivities are constructed. Like
families furnishing a home, we draw selectively or opportunistically upon a broad
but finite range of conceptual ‘furnishings’ afforded by our place and time, and then
configure them according to cultural, subcultural and personal aesthetics. Also like
our homes, the contents of our minds remain open to reshuffling and replacement
as we continue to interact with an evolving historical context and the people and
ideas who inhabit it. Thus, while they continue to grant primacy to interpersonal
discursive processes as the primary site for the construction of emotions, decisions,
and self-presentation, Harre and Gillett acknowledge the role of the self in orches-
trating such activities. As they note, the “task for discursive theories of agency is ...
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to reinsert the agent into the story, the one who initiates the action, the one who, in
some way, is significant in giving meaning to what he or she does and who they are
... We must find a way of understanding a person as an individual focus of discourse
and as having a productive role in their own conscious activity” (pp. 116-117).
Their attempt to reintroduce a self into a socially constructed world leads them to
examine discursive activity at many levels of functioning, ranging from the cultural
to the personal, and beyond to the ‘subdiscursive’ level of brain activity.
The primary limitation in this form of SC, as Bhatia and Mascolo (1998) argue,
is that it fails to examine the specific character of functioning at each level, and the
ways in which the various levels interact in the creation of discursive activity. For
example, how is it possible for a middle aged survivor of domestic abuse to resist
powerful gender, cultural and perhaps even religious discourses that position her to
sacrifice her own safety for the ‘well-being’ of her family, and instead begin an
independent life of self-determination? Surely, these patterns of self-change involve
complex internal processes (e.g. struggling with the threat of radical shift in personal
identity required by such a move), interpersonal transactions (e.g. the recruitment of
tangible and emotional support from significant others), and recourse to discourses
of liberation (e.g. in the form of feminist literature, or talk-show interviews with
other oppressed women who have re-established control over their lives). But as an
essentially social psychological, rather than clinical perspective, Harrk and Gillett’s
version of social constructionism sheds little light on such questions, or on the
elements of discursive skill upon which individual actors must draw to negotiate
each of these levels.
It is for this reason that a selective bridging of social constructionist theory with
constructivist psychotherapies can be helpful to the practicing counsellor. I will
therefore close by outlining a few approaches to constructivist counselling that
resonate with a discursive form of SC as advanced by Harre and Gillett (1994), and
that in turn can benefit from the fuller importation of constructionist concepts and
procedures.

Personal constructivism and the elaboration of role relationships

As the original form of constructivist counselling, personal construct theory (PCT)
(Kelly, 1955; Neimeyer 8z Neimeyer, 1987) can be distinguished from other broadly
‘cognitive’ forms of psychotherapy not only on the basis of its nonobjectivist
 Social constructionism 143

epistemology, but also in the central role it assigns to the social domain in the
construction of self (Neimeyer, 1993b). Kelly viewed identity as organized around
‘core role constructs’-pivotal, if often preverbal means of discriminating a sense of
self and world which were rooted in one’s earliest dependency relationships. More-
over, the ongoing effort to discover commonality with the meaning-making efforts of
other persons and to indwell the perspectives of others in order to establish
meaningful role relationships with them were essential corollaries of his basic theory.
Thus, while Kelly was chiefly concerned with the structures and processes by which
self-contained subjectivities constructed and reconstructed their personal worlds of
meaning, his theory can none the less be viewed as an “essentially individualistic
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approach that strains in the direction of a genuinely social ‘two person’ psychology”
(Mascolo et al., 1998). Subsequent elaborations of PCT have further refined and
enhanced its relational and social implications (Feixas, 1992; Kalekin-Fishman &
Walker, 1996; Leitner, 1995).
In keeping with this focus on the elaboration of personal identity in the context
of role relationships, therapeutic change strategies originating in PCT might be
drawn upon to flesh out a form of counselling consonant with social constructionist
principles. For example, Kelly’s (1955) original fixed role therapy, which required
the client to enact in the medium of daily life a hypothetical identity discrepant with
his prevailing identity constructs, can be viewed as a direct implementation of a
postmodern view of self as a fictional and provisional construction. As an illus-
tration, a client who construes role relationships chiefly in terms of angry dominance
versus grudging submission might be asked to enact the part of ‘Ed Venturous’, a
hypothetical ‘anthropologist of the mind’, whose major quest is to explore novel
outlooks and practices in others that differed as much as possible from his own
(Neimeyer, 1993d). Significantly, personal construct therapists are explicit in view-
ing such enactments as merely temporary immersions in an alternative reality, whose
purpose is subtly but safely to dislodge clients from a view of self as having any
essential or inherent character (Neimeyer, 1995a). Viewed from a social construc-
tionist perspective, fixed role therapies of this kind could be expanded to acknowl-
edge the multiple, often contradictory roles we develop and sustain in response to
the different discursive contexts we inhabit. Recent innovations in fixed role proce-
dures that emphasize and orchestrate this form of ‘multiple self-awareness’ seem to
move precisely in this direction (Sewell et al., 1998).

Developmental constructivism and the evolving self

As Cox and Lyddon (1997) note, ‘the postmodern paradigm offers psychology a
new vision for understanding identity-one that underscores the importance of
context, interconnectedness, and evolutionary process’ (p. 2 16). One psychotherapy
theorist who incorporates all three features in his work is Guidano (1987; 1991),
who grounds the human evolution of self-reflective functioning in our essential
intersubjectivity with others. To an even greater extent than other primates, he
believes, the protracted and emotionally charged dependency of human infants on
their caregivers gives rise to significant bonds of attachment, which in turn shape the
 144 Robert A. Neimeyer

‘hard core’ of our theories of reality. It is the problematic implications of these

systems of personal knowledge that become the focus of later psychotherapy, as
clients seek assistance in maintaining a sense of coherence in the face of experiential
challenges to the adequacy of their models of self.
A distinctive feature of Guidano’s therapeutic approach is his focus on the
discrepancies that arise between a client’s tacit awareness, and his or her explicit
structuring of that awareness in more abstract terms. Central to this method is the
client’s self-observation of the dynamic relationship between the Z and the me, that
is, between immediate, momentary, bodily experience on the one hand, and more
symbolically organized reflections on the other. Accordingly, Guidano (1 995) makes
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use of a movieo2a technique to explore and reconcile these discrepancies between the
client’s experience of a situation and explanation of it. For example, he may move a
client step-by-step through a slow-motion ‘replay’ of a marital quarrel, ‘panning’
across a series of scenes, before ‘zooming in’ on one that has special emotional
significance. This could involve guiding the client through a careful exploration of
the immediate feelings and perceptions registered in the moment (stiffening of the
body, the partner’s expression, etc.), and then shifting to the level of the client’s
explicit understandings of the argument (why it occurred, attributions regarding the
partner’s intentions, etc.). This reconstruction of the experience as both lived and
interpreted promotes greater emotional openness and reflective self-awareness,
gradually modifying the client’s usual view of self (the me) to make it more adequate
to the experiential complexity of the experienced I.
Guidano’s therapeutic approach thus enables the counsellor to facilitate a
client’s evolving self-theory, in keeping with a postmodern view of identity as a fluid
process rather than a static process. However, his work might be extended by a
greater appreciation of the discursive processes that contribute to the client’s explicit
self-understanding in the first place, and that may militate against the assimilation
of tacit experiences that threaten it. In the above illustration of a marital quarrel, for
instance, prevailing discourses about what emotions or intentions are appropriate for
men and women to have in relation to their spouses could make certain restructur-
ings of one’s identity (e.g. as jealous or angry) problematic. Moreover, a failure to
examine broader cultural discourses (e.g. about the presumed subservience of
women to their husbands’ needs, or concerning men’s responsibility for their
family’s financial well-being) might lead both client and counsellor to misattribute
certain tacitly experienced feelings (e.g . lingering resentment) to the unique struc-
ture of the marital relationship, rather than recognizing the extent to which both
partners may be constrained by gender expectations that predated them as individ-
uals.

Systemic constructivism and the management of conversation

In keeping with the constructionist and linguistic trends that have begun to trans-
form family therapy, increasing numbers of therapists now conceptualize families as
language generating, self-organizing systems (McNamee & Gergen, 1992). From
this perspective, meaning arises through communicative action rather than residing
 Social constructionism 145

within individual knowers, and therapy itself becomes an exercise in the co-con-
struction of meaning among all members of the ‘problem-determined system’
(Anderson & Goolishian, 1992).
If family construct systems (Procter, 1987), family paradigms (Reiss, 1981), or
family premises (Penn, 1985) are language-determined, then the role of the counsel-
lor is to elucidate and subtly perturb those contractual agreements, maintained in
language, that maintain family members’ dysfunctional relationships to one another
(Efran et al., 1990). Through the use of circular questions (Selvini-Palazzoli et al.,
1980) posed from an attitude of ‘not knowing’ (Anderson & Goolishian, 1992), the
therapist functions as a conversation manager in developing a new story with the
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family that has a sense of coherence, that is relevant to the concerns of those
struggling around the problem, and that provides a sense of elaborative possibility
(Loos, 1993).
While this systemic conversational paradigm clearly reflects a postmodern
concern with languaging, it stops short of a full integration of discourse analysis into
its present methods. In particular, rhetoricians and social constructionists working in
the discursive tradition use a wide variety of strategies for uncovering the hidden
contradictions, self-justifications and identity implications in spoken or written text
(Burr, 1995), many of which might have therapeutic potential. For instance, a
discourse analysis of a wife’s complaints of her husband’s thoughtless disregard for
putting his dirty clothes in the laundry hamper might consider the ‘subject positions’
she is implicitly assigning each of them, positions that have ramifications in a larger
moral order. In this case, this persistent but seemingly innocuous complaint might
be used as part of a larger discursive strategy to portray him as insensitive, selfish and
unconcerned with her needs, and may ultimately be recruited to justify the decision
that she should divorce him. Attention to the larger discursive and moral implica-
tions of client remarks might then help counsellors answer the question, “What is
the client trying to achieve, and how is he trying to position himself, in this
account?’’ Similarly, greater awareness of their own use of language might help
therapists extend their conscious repertory of ‘process interventions’ for facilitating
the conversational reconstruction of client meanings (Neimeyer, 1996).

Narrative constructivism and the reauthoring of life stories

Of all the postmodern trends in counselling theory, narrative therapy may be the
most self-conscious in adopting a discursive framework for intervention. For authors
such1 as White and Epston (1990), culturally predominant internalizing discourses
attribute blame for problems to individuals, not only conferring on them narrow and
pathological identities, but also separating them from important persons in their
lives who might otherwise be sources of support and tangible assistance. The role of
therapy is then to muster resistance to the dominant narrative of such problematic
identities, typically by (a) externalizing the problem, (b) examining its real effects on
the lives of the individuals who are subjugated to it, (c) searching for unique
outcomes or ‘sparkling moments’ when dominated persons resist its influence, and
(d) hzstoricizing their excepti.ona1 accomplishments and recruiting a supportive audi-
 146 Robert A. Neimeyer

ence for these welcome developments (Monk et al., 1996). For example, an alienated
and ‘at risk’ adolescent might metaphorically externalize his problem as a ‘wall of
mistrust’ that separates him from others. A counsellor working within the narrative
frame might then engage in patterns of questioning that examine the effects of this
wall on his social, personal and academic functioning. This might take the form of
developing a metaphor of the mistrust as a kind of ‘jailer’ imposing on him a ‘life
sentence of solitary confinement.’ The counsellor might further remain vigilant for
scarcely visible signs of protest against this narrative of isolation, perhaps first
discerned in a casual greeting extended by the youth to a girl in whom he was
interested. By asking such questions as, “What made it possible for you to reach over
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the wall of isolation at this time?” and “If you continue in this way, would you
expect to stage a prison breakout at some point in the future? If so, would you tunnel
under the wall gradually, or climb over it in a sudden dramatic escape?”, the
counsellor both solidifies the initial signs of change, and sketches future possibilities.
Overall, the goal of such counselling is to help the client win freedom from the
dominant problem narrative, and achieve genuine authorship of his life.
Despite the extent to which the narrative model is imbued with postmodern
concepts of self-as-story and therapy as narrative revision, a still greater integration
with discursive principles might enhance its utility in the counselling context.
Specifically, the largely intuitive practice of therapy might be enriched and system-
atized by the incorporation of strategies borrowed from the domain of discourse
analysis, which is extensively concerned with the rhetorical construction of motives
and identities in various versions of events (Edwards & Potter, 1992). A beginning
taxonomy of such methods for incorporation into counselling conversations has
been provided by Freedman & Combs (1996), who describe and illustrate such
techniques as deconstructive listening, relative influence questioning, and exposing
the role of subjugating discourses.

Rhetoric and reflexivity

Like successful therapy itself, the importation of social constructionist ideas into the
counselling context can generate both discomfort and excitement for those who take
it seriously. On the one hand, it shares with effective therapy the uncomfortable
tendency to call into question those basic assumptions that support our customary
patterns of action. In the case of SC, this involves calling into question the realism
entailed in our usual linguistic practices, to the point that even our most ‘objective’
diagnoses of clients are seen as socially constructed discourses that often carry
destructive implications (Raskin & Epting, 1993). Likewise, it undermines the naive
hope that we can achieve a position of neutrality with respect to those we help, and
instead sensitizes us to the ways that we as helping professionals may both construct
and conceal our own power in relation to clients through our discursive practices as
a profession (Keen, 1997). Finally, and perhaps most basically, it undermines our
taken-for-granted belief in stable, singular, and sustainable identities, instead conjur-
ing an image of selves that subtly or dramatically shift with alternations in the
conversational context. In combination, these challenges perturb our view of coun-
 Social constmctionism 147

selling as a value-free process of correcting real personal problems through either the
application of proven technical interventions or the humane facilitation of a client’s
self-actualization.
On the other hand, an affirmative reading of SC partially compensates for this
loss of security by offering fresh images of social life and its possible transformation
in psychotherapy. With the demise of an essentialized self, persons are freed (and
challenged) to negotiate with others more fluid identities, striving to use the
narrative resources of their cultures to script more satisfying lives. Any of several
forms of constructivist psychotherapy can make a contribution to this effort, partic-
ularly if enriched by the discursive concepts and rhetorical procedures that selected
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forms of social constructionism offer. I hope that this brief paper will prompt other
couinsellors to explore these contributions further, and that the resulting examin-
ation of psychotherapy as a language-based and socially constructed practice will
enhance our reflexivity and creativity as helping professionals.

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