ABSTRACT
Working as a therapist to older people helps the practitioner to see the need for cultural-historical context in the very concepts that are developed to guide practice and scientific inquiry. Part of this is the multiple layers of meaning that are encountered. For example, in order to convey the nature of human relatedness, CAT involves the concept of a ‘reciprocal role’. An example of a more damaging reciprocal role is ‘criticising to crushed’, conveying the unrelenting feel of such related experience. The word ‘criticising’ however has a modern tone to it, in contrast to the word ‘chiding’ that a client in her early 70s used. This word was unfamiliar to some younger therapists, yet conveys a sense of moral admonishment linked to the contexts of the day. Thus, Knight (1996) talks about cultural differences, but over time, rather than geographical distance. He discusses this need to be sensitive to word usage, especially with those he refers to as ‘earlier born cohorts’. He comments on the lack of methodological sophistication in studies of memory, where most studies are crosssectional and so confound the issue of ‘age’ differences with such cohort effects; studies that use cohort-appropriate words for instance have shown better learning. Working with much older clients makes it easier to see how words speak profoundly to collective discourse. Indeed clients themselves comment upon social, economic and political change which is not easily accommodated in conventional therapy theory.
