PSYCHOTHERAPY WITHOUT FOUNDATIONS - HERMENEUTICS, DISCOURSE AND THE END OF CERTAINTY

Over the last decade the therapeutic industry has begun to question th e foundations for its own knowledge claims. Unable to retreat into log ico-empiricism and naive realism because of its own internal critique of these philosophical positions, it has sought solace in hermeneutics and postfoundationalist epistemology. Through an examination of debat es within psychotherapy process research, it is possible to chart the development of this linguistic turn. The end of the search for therape utic certainties has certain repercussions which have, hitherto, been neglected by theorists and clinicians, whose desire to escape some of the constraints of scientism sits uneasily alongside an unshakeable co mmitment to therapeutic practices which are essentially normative.