ABSTRACT
How better to pay tribute to Susan Ervin-Tripp than to examine a context heretofore considered recalcitrant to contextual analysis (but see Gaik, 1992; Labov & Fanshell, 1977; Lakoff, 1990, for some exceptions to this claim) and suggest that even here interactive, socially-constructive processes are at play? Thus, in this chapter, we briefly examine some features of the context of the psychoanalytically-based therapeutic encounter where the myth of the "neutral context" — in which the therapist is said to function as a "blank screen" or "mirror" — is finally having its day and suggest that far from being neutral, the context is in fact organized around a set of value-laden, ideological assumptions about the nature of mental health in general, and the role of the twin processes of self-investigation and conceptual understanding in particular, as ameliorative processes. In other words, the therapist's belief in the role of "insight" (or "secondary process") as curative functions to establish a very select context which is designed to lead the client to a conceptual understanding of her own unconscious subjective experience.
