ABSTRACT
This chapter characterizes the assessment conversation in the diagnostic process between therapist and client as a highly significant and typically overlooked site of identity construction—one that deserves much further attention. While acknowledging the place for diagnostic inquiry, the chapter sounds a cautionary note, reminding readers of the long-term ramifications in the lives of the persons to whom diagnoses are assigned. Using discursive analysis, the authors demonstrate how counselors can impose socially unjust practices such as privileging individual factors over contextual concerns or a symptom-based medical model over a strength-based, collaborative counseling model. As a counterbalance to traditions of insidious and often inadvertent pathologizing, the authors advocate for a stance of what they call dialogical reflexivity, which involves joining clients to vigilantly monitor what is being constructed or overlooked as the assessment process unfolds.
