4 - Clients' Ordinary Lives Plus Sessions

Summary

The practice of therapy complements other arrangements people use to get through the day and as parts of their life trajectories (Foucault 1997; Hook 2003; Strauss and Corbin 1988). Attending therapy means entering its structural arrangement which has been infused with the ordinary understanding of therapy that emerged from practicing in it so completely that it is taken for granted and its impacts ignored. Like many other social practices, therapy is carried out in one place with a particular set of participants, even though it primarily deals with issues from other times and places. Its tasks originate elsewhere, and its effects are to make a difference elsewhere. It is arranged as a sequence of secluded sessions that are to allow particular experiences and activities. This then ought to be the most suitable arrangement for promoting its purpose across contexts. When clients begin therapy, they get involved in this arrangement which frames their experiences and participation in sessions. They enter an extra, personally unknown practice with personally unknown experts and for a period of time add participation in it to their ordinary lives. I shall begin my analysis of the practice of therapy from the clients' perspective in the same way. Drawing on materials from the early parts of therapy and following up with later events I shall look at how their participation in sessions begins to unfold and how they begin to link it with their ordinary lives.