Name of Concept
Social Constructionism in Couple and Family Therapy
Introduction
Social constructionism is best described as a philosophical stance that, if adopted, orients us to the world in a relational – as opposed to individualist – manner. As a philosophical stance, social construction assumes that meaning emerges in what people do together. Social construction claims that, “what we take to be the truth about the world importantly depends on the social relationships of which we are a part” (Gergen 2015, p. 3). Thus, unlike our individualist tradition where meaning, rationality, motivation, and all that we take to be qualities of persons are assumed to be located within the person, social construction views these qualities as emergent byproducts of human interaction. The focus for the constructionist, therefore, is on interaction (i.e., what people do together) and on what their...
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McNamee, S. (2017). Social Constructionism in Couple and Family Therapy. In: Lebow, J., Chambers, A., Breunlin, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Couple and Family Therapy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15877-8_820-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15877-8_820-1
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