ABSTRACT
This response to Layton’s commentary of my 2005 article (Chapter 7) draws from the hermeneutic argument about the centrality of the social world in psychological study and how that concept can be applied in clinical work. I sketch out implications of the argument featured in the 2005 article — that therapists need to be able to avoid the excesses in psychology of both the right’s monocultural arrogance and the left’s moral relativism. That can be accomplished in part through a realization that a robust hermeneutics must include postmodernism’s emphasis on power and the hermeneutic emphasis on the moral understandings that frame a society. In turn, the combination of the two intellectual traditions makes it possible to appreciate and practice Gadamer’s concept of “dialogue.” From the perspective of the Interpretive Turn, it is not possible to choose postmodernism and ignore hermeneutics or vice versa — they are part of the same vision and must be used simultaneously. I illustrate that assertion with four clinical vignettes from my practice.
