Validity, Vision and Vocalisation: Social Responsibility Arguments and Power‐Sensitised Counselling

Abstract

This paper considers the potential for advancing power‐sensitised practice in counselling. Power‐sensitised practice engages with differences in social power, seeing these as significant to therapeutic work. Key to the development of power‐sensitised practice is the availability in therapy discourse of arguments based on social responsibility. It has been noted in previous papers that counselling discourse holds resources for arguments based on “social responsibility” as well as the more dominant strand of “individualism”. Power‐sensitised practice using social responsibility arguments can therefore be seen to be compatible with existing counselling discourses and can occur where counsellors acknowledge the validity of social responsibility arguments in counselling; a vision of how these arguments may be used; and a willingness to vocalise such arguments, generating a personal engagement with social responsibility in practice. Although this article is written with reference to counselling, the argument is equally applicable to psychotherapy.