Some Call it Love: Exploring Norwegian Systemic Couple Therapists' Discourses of Love, Intimacy and Sexuality
Year: 2008
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This thesis is a qualitative study based on interviews and video material, of five therapists conducting couple therapy. Norwegian systemic couple therapists’ discourses about love and intimate relationships have been explored with the aim of shedding light on couple therapy as a professional field in which discourses about love, sexuality and intimate relationship are drawn on, exchanged and negotiated. \nThe method of analysis is discourse analysis, and poststructuralist theory has informed the design and underpinned my epistemological stance. A main issue has been to explore how systemic couple therapists occupy a position of power as clients’ expectations of them as professionals are linked to notions of objective knowledge. This is simultaneously a challenge because most couple therapy issues are discursive. I have looked specifically at how a discursive dynamic has unfolded in couple therapy and how dominant discourses of love, as for instance ‘the romantic’, stabilize and reproduce heteronormativity. This analysis is intended to provide new insight into the field of systemic couple therapy practice in relation to the importance of self-reflexivity. \nThe limitations of the study are discussed, reflexivity issues are explored and ideas for further research are proposed. The implications of the study for therapeutic work with couples and training of couple therapists has been elaborated.
Author: Anne Kyong Sook Øfsti
Language: English
Subfield: Clinical Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W759544308