ABSTRACT
The traditional beliefs about self as stable, objectified, individual, real, and separate from other selves interfere with the process of exploring new possibilities in therapy. This chapter presents a case example that illustrates how therapists’ assumptions about the client’s self were disempowering and damaging to him. Individual malaise and discomfort, seen through the lens of stage theory, seemed to reassure people that what they were feeling was part of a normal developmental stage rather than a reaction to social problems. Stage theories are relevant to the way the mental health professions conceptualize themselves. When feelings are understood as constructs rather than entities, their meaning shifts from something within the individual to something that is socially constructed in relation and in context. The social construction of the lack of a feeling is also instructive. All of our professional beliefs have been socially constructed, even the so-called scientific ones about intelligence and its measurement.
