You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The contextual vision of relational therapies needs to expand beyond the therapeutic dyad to include the cultural context and the indigenous beliefs and practices that can impact on the relationship. An example of this claim is the “virtual kinship” discourse common in some sectors of Turkish society, which involves the use of a kinship idiom in interactions with nonkin, especially across class and gender lines, so that an implicit code governing social reciprocities in actual kinship relations can be invoked. This article provides clinical examples of its use by patients who differ in class and gender from the therapist. Also discussed are the impact of the discourse on the therapist and the way in which the discourse serves to create an intersubjective space for the cocreation of therapeutic meaning.