Abstract
This chapter explores the concept of sociologically informed psychotherapy, or sociotherapy, in the context of Aotearoa New Zealand. Drawing on the clinical sociology literature, it looks at how psychotherapeutic and sociological frameworks intersect, opening up possibilities for cross-disciplinary collaboration, critique and interconnections between theory and practice at the micro level. In seeking to understand how sociology and psychotherapy can inflect and potentially enrich each other, this chapter traces key theoretical biases, overlaps and divergences, looking at how less metrocentric qualitative and reflexive approaches to both research and practice can better position micro sociology within the macro analyses of social structures. The paper then looks toward a critical sociological deepening of psychotherapeutic practice, emphasizing the inescapability of social context and the everyday intertwining of the individual and the social, agency and structure. Sociotherapy as a practice is outlined, highlighting recent theorizing and key case studies internationally, before looking at how this approach works to connect sociological theory to social and personal change at the micro level. This is then linked to the unique context of Aotearoa New Zealand, emphasizing the holistic approaches to therapy grounded in Kaupapa Māori, and the important ways in which seeing (socio)therapy through this lens of Indigenous knowledge shifts the focus of therapy to these interconnections and complex positionings. This chapter seeks to promote a collaborative discussion, as primarily a speculative piece: an exploration of what sociotherapy could mean in this context, as written by a critical sociologist and tentative psychotherapist.
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Notes
- 1.
Parsons noted in 1958: “Had Freud lived long enough to enter more deeply into the technical analysis of the object-systems to which the individual becomes related, he would inevitably have had to become in part, a sociologist, for the structure of these object-systems is—not merely influenced by—the structure of society itself.” (1958, p. 338).
- 2.
While there are hundreds of different psychotherapeutic models available, Huft (2022) suggests that these can be broadly grouped into psychoanalytic/psychodynamic, existential, person-centered, experiential, behavioral, cognitive/cognitive-behavioral, feminist, narrative, and solution-focused approaches.
- 3.
It is important to note that there is a diversity of opinions regarding the DSM among mental health professionals, with some seeing the diagnostic categories more as “convenient fictions” (see Pickersgill, 2014).
- 4.
Rogers (1959) suggests that Freud himself was less focused on universal applicability, and viewed his theories as dynamic, working to revise them over his lifetime. He continues: “But at the hands of insecure disciples (so it seems to me), the gossamer threads became iron chains of dogma…” (Rogers, 1959, p. 191).
- 5.
Henrich et al. (2010) highlight that broad claims are routinely published in the world’s top journals (which are themselves based in the West), using samples drawn entirely from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies, with results then used to generalize a wider human experience.
- 6.
Jansen et al. (2015) refer to Ventevogel’s critique, suggesting that the idea of this treatment gap potentially contributes to a Western, biomedical approach to the alleviation of psychological and social suffering, in contexts where much distress can be attributed to social adversity such as poverty, war, and violence.
- 7.
Cohen highlights that while issues of race and culture are acknowledged in contemporary mental health training, and cultural awareness and sensitivity are encouraged, “…without a simultaneous engagement with critical theories on colonialism, race, ethnicity and culture, there remains the tendency to lose sight of the discourses and practices of power which continue to operate at the very heart of the Western mental health system… the imposition of Western psychiatric ideas and practices on the Global South [are part of] an ongoing system of ideological oppression of Indigenous populations, rather than an aspect of medical enterprise confined to the past.” (2020, p. 40–41)
- 8.
In discussing “post-colonial” realities, it is important to note that colonization does not have a fixed end point, and the impacts and structures created and re-created by colonial processes continue today (Mutu, 2019). As Moana Jackson states: “Colonisation is a process of dispossession and control rather than a historical artefact, and now it takes on new forms” (2021).
- 9.
For qualitative researchers, it is notable how there is significant overlap between GET and the Grounded Theory of Glaser and Strauss.
- 10.
There are many more examples and applications in non-Anglophone settings, particularly French-speaking contexts including France and Quebec (Fritz, 2021b).
- 11.
Counselling in New Zealand has followed a different path, well described in detail by Miller (2014).
- 12.
The name refers to “Waka”, sea-ferrying craft or canoes which brought the migrating Polynesian inhabitants to the shores of Aotearoa. “Oranga” comes from “ora”, a state of health and well-being. “Oranga” refers to survival, well-being, livelihood and welfare—everything needed for a healthy sense of “ora” (Mikahere-Hall et al., 2019).
- 13.
Tervalon and Murray-García (1998, p. 123) define cultural humility as “…a lifelong commitment to self-evaluation and self-critique, to redressing the power imbalances in the patient-physician dynamic, and to developing mutually beneficial and nonpaternalistic clinical and advocacy partnerships with communities on behalf of individuals and defined populations.”
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Rocha, Z.L. (2023). Locating Sociology Within Psychotherapy: Possibilities for Sociotherapy in Aotearoa New Zealand. In: Rocha, Z.L., Davidson, K.L. (eds) Applied and Clinical Sociology in Aotearoa New Zealand. Clinical Sociology: Research and Practice. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36581-2_4
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