The invisible moral order : agency, accountability and responsibility in therapy talk

Abstract

Katja Kurri tutki väitöskirjassaan terapiatapahtumaa eli asiakkaan ja terapeutin vuorovaikutustilannetta. Kurri tuo tutkimuksessaan esiin uuden näkökulman asiakkaan elämänvastuun uudelleen rakentumiseen ja pohtii myös terapiatilanteeseen liittyvää moraalista ulottuvuutta.Kurrin mukaan terapiaa pitäisi tarkastella nykyistä enemmän tilanteisena toimintana. Terapiatapahtumaa on hyödyllistä tutkia sellaisenaan, eikä ainoastaan jälkikäteen tehtyjen kyselytutkimusten tai erilaisten mittarien avulla. Kun terapiaa tutkitaan keskusteluna, voidaan nähdä, kuinka tähän asti piilossa olleet terapian moraaliset dilemmat rakentuvat ja kuinka niitä voidaan ratkaista.

This study examines psychotherapy conversations. The methodology employed in this study, discursive psychology, is used to examine the ways in which the participants in therapy conversations manage their moral positions. The study consists of three articles in which single conversations are analysed and one article in which three conversations from a therapeutic process are examined. Analysis of the therapeutic action in situ demonstrates that therapeutic interaction has a logic of its own that reflects the inherent and inevitable moral nature of the conversation.The results of the analysis draw attention to the discursive practices employed in managing moral order in a conversation. The implicit placements of responsibility through agentic discourse, justifications, excuses, blaming, counter-blaming, the use of categorizations, sighs and sights, all play their part in the constant renegotiation of the ‘invisible’ moral order. What makes the moral order invisible, is the fact that it is embedded in the conventions of oral interaction.On the basis of a detailed analysis of the moral practices of the therapy conversation it was possible to discuss the ethical foundations on which the therapy practices were based. I claim that awareness of the different practices of managing moral order benefits the development, and ethical evaluation of, therapeutic practices.This dissertation consists of four original articles and an introduction in which I examine the idea of therapy as a conversation, the concepts of moral order, agency, accountability and responsibility, and the methodology used. The end of the introduction is made up of summaries of the original articles, in which I present the main questions and results of the analysis. In the discussion I approach the overall themes of the dissertation.