'Limits to therapy and counselling': deconstructing a professional ideology

The rapidity with which therapy, as discourse and as clinical-professional practice, has become established in contemporary culture is subjected to a searching deconstructive critique. Specifically, it is argued that therapy' s pretensions to being a legitimate professional, clinical practice are not only highly questionable, but actually constitute a self-serving and ethic ally questionable ideology. The 'scientific' status of therapy as a moderni st enterprise is argued to be fundamentally undermined by new-paradigm epis temologies. It is further argued that, in its professionalised, commodified form, therapy can become routinely and intrinsically abusive to the extent that it self-fulfillingly constructs a framework which then serves to guar antee its own legitimacy within a discursive 'regime of truth'. Parker's im portant work on discourse and power is drawn upon to illustrate these radic al arguments, and to make the case for an approach to therapy which is ongo ingly and processually deconstructive of its 'professional' ideologies and clinical practices, if the binds of dangers outlined are to be avoided. Suc h deconstruction would also include an ongoing and explicit interrogation o f 'therapy' as an historically specific, evolving and, it is submitted, tra nsitory cultural practice. Deep and honest ethical reflection is needed on the nature of therapy, and on the possibility of developing more healthily appropriate socio-cultural forms for helping people with their 'difficultie s of living'.