Beyond the couch: Creating ‘truth-spots’ in psychoanalytic therapy

• In Event: 1555 - Section on Science, Knowledge, and Technology Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 4. In Pursuit of Health: Patient Care and Medical Knowledge

Abstract

This paper draws on insights from studies of medicine, science, and technology, to examine the role of place in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Data from ethnographic observations and interviews allow me to trace how psychoanalytic therapists turn the clinical room into a laboratory that insulates patients’ problems from their everyday contexts. However, I also show that these clinicians’ work rests on revealing some personal preferences in the therapy room and constructing what STS scholars have called the “field.” This challenges the presumption of neutrality common to sociological accounts of medical work. Instead, I show that psychoanalytic therapists create clinical “truth-spots” by balancing the paradoxical relationship between personal and detached. This research shows that places of medical work are not just symbols of authority and autonomy—as medical sociologists have long known—but also key elements in medical professionals’ efforts to understand their patients’ problems.

Author

• Mariana Craciun, Tulane University