Full Description
In this book, Dreier shows how clients make therapy work in their everyday lives. Therapy cannot fulfill its purpose until the clients can make it work outside the therapy room in relation to the concerns, people, and places of their everyday lives. Research on therapy has largely ignored these efforts. Based on session transcripts and interviews with a family of four about their everyday lives, Dreier shows the extensive and varied work the clients do to make their therapy work across places. Processes of change and learning are seen in a new perspective and it is shown that expert practices depend on how persons conduct their everyday lives. To grasp this, Dreier developed a theory of persons that is based on how they conduct their lives in social practice. This theory is grounded in critical psychology and social practice theory and is also relevant for understanding other expert practices such as education.
Contents
Introduction; 1. Researching psychotherapy as a social practice; 2. Theorizing persons in structures of social practice; 3. A study: its design and conduct; 4. Clients' ordinary lives plus sessions; 5. Therapy in clients' social practice across places; 6. Changes in clients' practice across places; 7. Changing problems across places; 8. The conduct of everyday life and the life trajectory; 9. The childrens' changing conducts of everyday life and life trajectories; 10. The parents' changing conducts of everyday life and life trajectories; 11. The changing conduct of everyday family life and family trajectory; 12. Research in social practice.
