The Self-Justifying Nature of Therapeutic Discourse.

Abstract

Due to the problems involved in trying to determine the validity of the life history accounts in the psychonalytically based encounter, the concept of narrative has proven very useful for promoting the view that the client’s tellings represent different versions of the truth rather than a truth that exists prior to and independent of the storied constructions, as Freud’s archeological model would have it. However, although the irreducibly narrative character of client talk is not contested, the claim developed herein is that client talk is structured around the practice of account-giving, more specifically giving accounts of the self.