ABSTRACT
Therapeutic objectives in postmodern therapies are rarely imposed by the therapist and, indeed, are often imprecisely understood by even the client prior to engagement in the therapeutic process. What is typically clear to both is that the client is in some form of distress; something about the client's means of engaging the social world is painful, and perhaps recurrently so. But aside from alleviating this distress, the implications of the initial complaint for their work together will often require further elaboration, during which the problem is likely to undergo change and rede®nition (Kelly, 1955/1991). Thus, in sharp contrast to therapeutic perspectives that emphasize the importance of establishing clearly de®ned target goals from the outset of therapy, postmodern perspectives typically seek to foster a sense of ``spaciousness'' in the therapeutic hour, a minimally structured encounter in which the initially vague ``felt sense'' of the problem can be carefully articulated in a way that yields greater clarity and direction (Gendlin, 1996).
