Collaborative therapy

Theory of change

The person changes when they take part in a collaborative conversation that transforms the available ways of describing the problem, identity, relationships and possibilities for action.

Core ideas

1. Reality and problems are constructed in language and relationship

   Collaborative Therapy starts from the constructionist premise that psychological problems do not exist as objective entities inside people, but are configured in and through language, conversations and relational contexts. What a person experiences as a problem depends on how it is spoken about, with whom and from which discursive positions. Therapeutic change involves transforming these conversations rather than intervening on supposed internal mechanisms. (Anderson, 1997).

2. The client is the expert on their own experience

   In this model, the knowledge relevant to change lies principally in the client and in their local knowing about their life, relationships and context. The therapist relinquishes the position of expert who diagnoses or interprets, and adopts a collaborative role that legitimises the client's experience as the principal source of meaning. This redistribution of therapeutic power increases agency, participation and commitment to the process. (Anderson & Goolishian, 1992).

3. The not-knowing stance is an active clinical practice, not passivity

   The not-knowing stance implies neither ignorance nor lack of direction, but a clinical discipline that requires suspending assumptions, applied theories and premature conclusions in order to remain open to what emerges in the conversation. This active practice of curiosity allows the therapist to follow the client's language and meanings to be constructed jointly, preventing therapy from becoming an exercise in covert normalisation or correction. (Anderson, 1997).

4. Therapeutic change emerges from the conversation itself

   From the standpoint of Collaborative Therapy, change comes about neither through the application of specific techniques nor through insights imposed from outside, but through the progressive transformation of conversations. When ways of speaking change, so do ways of understanding oneself, relating and acting. The therapeutic conversation is itself the principal agent of change. (Anderson, 1997).

5. The therapeutic alliance is the epistemological space of change

   The therapeutic relationship is not a mere facilitator of technical work, but the place where knowledge and change are produced. Horizontality, respect and collaboration create a context in which new narratives can emerge without threat to identity. The alliance does not support the process: it is the process. (Anderson & Goolishian, 1992).

6. Language is never neutral: it produces possible realities

   Every way of naming experience opens or closes possibilities of action and identity. Collaborative Therapy assumes that language does not describe reality but shapes it, and therefore pays careful attention to the words, metaphors and categories used in the conversation. Changing the language means changing the practical realities available to the client. (Anderson, 1997).

7. Therapy is a practice situated in cultural and relational contexts

   Meanings are always constructed in specific social, cultural and institutional contexts. Collaborative Therapy rejects universalist explanations and attends to how norms, social discourses and power relations shape the narratives of the problem. Change must be feasible within, and respectful of, these contexts if it is to be sustainable. (Anderson, 1997).

8. Uncertainty and openness are conditions of change

   The therapeutic process necessarily involves passing through moments of not-knowing, ambiguity and uncertainty. Rather than eliminating them, Collaborative Therapy regards them as necessary conditions for new understandings to arise. Sustaining this openness, without rushing to close meanings, is key to the appearance of genuinely new possibilities. (Anderson, 1997).

Influences

• Systemic
• Social / relational constructivism
• Narrative Therapy
• Second-order cybernetics
• Phenomenology / Hermeneutics
• Social constructionism (Gergen)

Key references

• Goolishian, H. A., & Anderson, H. (1987). Language systems and therapy: An evolving idea.
• Anderson, H., & Goolishian, H. A. (1988). Human systems as linguistic systems: Preliminary and evolving ideas about the implications for clinical theory.
• Anderson, H., & Goolishian, H. (1992). The client is the expert: A not-knowing approach to therapy.
• Anderson, H. (1997). Conversation, Language, and Possibilities: A Postmodern Approach to Therapy.
• Anderson, H. (2007). The heart and spirit of collaborative therapy: The philosophical stance.
• Anderson, H. (2012). Collaborative relationships and dialogic conversations: Ideas for a relationally responsive practice.
• Gergen, K. J. (1999). An Invitation to Social Construction.