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This informative book describes an approach to the treatment of couples and families that relies heavily on both link theory and on Foucault's concept of the “device” (dispositif). The authors provide numerous clinical examples throughout, all of which help to expand the reader's comprehension of the meaning and import of their theoretical perspectives. This book will be particularly valuable to those clinicians who are unfamiliar with link theory, or who want to learn more about its contemporary elaborations.
It begins with a description of the notion of a device, which the authors have borrowed, with some modifications, from the writings of Foucault, Agamben, Deleuze, and others. For Foucault, a device is a network of relationships that can be established between the elements of a heterogeneous set of institutional, moral, administrative, scientific, or linguistic practices and mechanisms. The links between these elements both create and sustain meaning, and together they function to determine or control the discourse and behaviours of the subjects who fall under the bailiwick of the device. For Foucault, a device is a structure that enhances and maintains power within the social field.
Whereas Foucault focused on identifying devices that arise spontaneously in the social body, the authors of this book offer a modification of the concept to better fit the psychoanalytic project. They propose regarding the “psychoanalytic device” as a tool that can be developed and tailored to address the exigencies of specific clinical situations: “We argue that in each clinical case, opting for a specific approach involves the construction of a device that weaves together a network of variables spanning a wide range, from the vicissitudes of the transference to sociocultural marks” (italics in the original). By viewing psychoanalytic devices as structures that are constructed (or co-constructed, between analyst and patients) as a response to, and a reflection of, the multi-factoria