The Berlin wall on the therapist's couch

This paper falls under the rubric of the sociology of knowledge, which brid ges the gap between phenomenological philosophy and the human sciences (Ber ger et al., 1969). It presents an empirical investigation of the communicat ive construction of psychotherapeutic reality. I examine therapeutic talk a nd psychotherapists' reconstructions of the transition from state socialism in Germany in 1989. In both instances I show how psychotherapists' commonl y shared interpretative conventions and rules of reasoning produce typical accounts. The first part of the paper shows how certain interpretative conv entions and rules of reasoning organize therapeutic talk and interaction in general. The second part focuses on how the interpretative conventions typ ical of therapy also inform psychotherapists' interpretations of the transi tion from state socialism.