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Is Diagnosis a Disaster?: A Constructionist Trialogue
Author: K. Gergen , H. Anderson , L. Hoffman
Chapter draft for F. Kaslow (Ed.) Relational Diagnosis, Wiley, 1996
Date: 01/01/1996
Annotation: For some time the three of us have been deeply engaged in exploring the implications of a social constructionist view of knowledge for therapeutic practice. From a constructionist standpoint, our languages for describing and explaining the world (and ourselves) are not derived from or demanded by whatever is the case. Rather, our languages of description and explanation are produced, sustained, and/or abandoned within processes of human interaction. Further, our languages are constituent features of cultural pattern. They are embedded within relationships in such a way that to change the language would be to alter the relationship. To abandon the concepts of romance, love, marriage and commitment, for example, would be to alter the forms of cultural life; to obliterate the languages of consciousness, choice, or deliberation would render meaningless our present patterns of praise and blame, along with our courts of law. By the same token, as we generate new languages in our professions, and disseminate them within the culture, so do we insinuate ourselves into daily relations - for good or ill. It is against this backdrop that the three of us wish to consider the issue of diagnosis in general, and relational diagnosis in particular. We opt for the trialogic conversation as a means of vivifying in practice (as well as in content) the constructionist emphasis on meaning through relationship.
Online Resources:
Kenneth Gergen
Article Online
Links to other papers by Gergen
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