Ambivalent experts: Knowledge and authority in psychotherapy

• In Event: Sociology of Mental Healthcare

Abstract

The accomplishment of control is an ongoing preoccupation for medical professionals and their governing bodies. This is not surprising. In medicine, as in other domains of knowledge, uncertainty (Fox 1957, Light 1979, 1980) and ignorance (Whooley 2019, Whooley and Barker 2021) have been fundamental challenges, constituting claims and practices of expertise. In addition, patient social movements and the rise of the “lay expert” have also forced physicians to relinquish the “paternalistic” stance that characterized medical work for much of its history (Heritage and Maynard 2006). “Maintaining a dominant relationship” with patients, a key technique of control that Light (1979) identified in his seminal article on how medical trainees navigate uncertainty, has taken on new meanings in contemporary practice (Underman 2020). A growing recognition of the discontinuities between professionals and the domain of expertise to which they are but one of many contributors (Eyal 2013, 2019), along with increased contestations around expertise and experthood, raise an important question: how do professionals view their own expertise and authority? Put differently, how do professionals make sense of their identities in contexts of negotiated knowledge and partial control?

Author

• Mariana Craciun, Tulane University