Clinical Applications: A Response to Layton

I am most grateful to Lynne Layton for her thoughtful and learned discussion of “Between Arrogance and a Dead End.” In that article I examined the pitfalls, respectively, of the right and the left in postmodern politics. Here, in my response to Layton's discussion, I try to sketch out and illustrate through clinical examples how, from the beginning, we might think differently about psychotherapy in order to avoid the excesses of both the right's monocultural arrogance and the left's moral relativism. Layton focuses mainly on the first error, which I appreciate. My overall point, however, is that the two errors can be effectively avoided only by attending to both at once, because ultimately they are expressions of the same philosophical problem and must be addressed in the same way: by a wholehearted embrace of a more fully thought out hermeneutic vision.

In her discussion Layton searches for ways of integrating into therapeutic practice realizations about how the larger institutions, arrangements, and ideologies of our social world shape psychological experience. That is a goal of mine as well. Being aware of the political influences active in the therapy hour—rather than trying to banish them—is a good thing to do because, well, there is no alternative. The interpretive turn has helped me realize that political activity is, always, present in the clinical hour. One way or another, therapists are always challenging or colluding with the status quo—we just don't realize it. Heidegger's concept of being-in-the-world means that humans are fundamentally shaped, constituted really, by the cultural-historical worlds into which they are thrown. Psychology's goal, throughout its modern-era history, has been to discover the universal laws that determine human behavior. Heidegger's philosophy directly challenges that goal. Although it has brought psychology a certain amount of wealth and influence, ultimately hermeneuticists believe the goal cannot be achieved. It is unreachab