Psychotherapy in Everyday Life

In this book, Dreier shines important new light on processes of personal change and learning in practice.

Ole Dreier (Author)

9780521880176, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 3 December 2007

350 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.4 cm, 0.68 kg

'… the book is provocative. The important thing is what it provokes, which is consideration of what therapy means to clients when they're back home. Dreier's work is recommended for anyone interested in addressing this important question.' Theory and Psychology

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.

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.

Subject Areas: Psychotherapy [MMJT], Social, group or collective psychology [JMH]