ABSTRACT
An area of interest that has been increasingly growing in anthropology is that concerned with cultural understandings, manifestations and uses of irony. That this interest has extended itself to encompass the therapeutic encounter appears fitting given that in the bounded therapeutic space, many appearances are interpreted as other than what they seem. Paul Antze, in a book edited by himself and Michael Lambek , is the first to investigate irony in the psychotherapeutic encounter by identifying two distinct but complementary ‘ironic’ interpretative strategies employed by practitioners. The irony of logic is closely allied to the irony of agency. The psychoanalytic understanding of agency has also always flirted with contradiction. The irony of agency in analytic therapy resides in a double reversal. No sooner has the patient’s belief in agency been demolished, than belief in its possibility is re-established. Thus the first step to greater agency, and thus responsibility, is to first accept the relative lack of both critical qualities.
