Abstract

MARTINS, Pedro Pablo Sampaio  and  ARANTES, Marina. Closing ceremonies in individual therapy: expanding the meanings of change. Nova perspect. sist. [online]. 2018, vol.27, n.62, pp. 6-23. ISSN 0104-7841.  http://dx.doi.org/10.21452/2594-43632018v27n62a01.

Social constructionism poses the challenge of how to take meanings which were constructed between therapist and client, to contexts beyond the therapy room. This article is sensible to this problem, and it aims to describe “closing ceremonies,” which are a format of session that are used to finalize individual therapy. The aim of these ceremonies is to create a more complex story about the process of change in therapy, and to share this process with people who are not originally part of it (witnesses from the client’s personal life, and an invited therapist). Four stages guide this therapeutic conversation, and they aim to: create a story about the process; expand meanings with the witness; change the place of the therapist; and, construct a social meaning for the therapeutic process. Excerpts of a closing ceremony are used to illustrate the way in which this format has informed practical conversations in a real interactional context, where questions, interventions, and ways of interacting have created specific effects in the conversation with a client and her witness. We reflect on the social character of individual change, and we discuss the importance of relationships in the construction and maintenance of change.

Keywords : Social Constructionism; Therapeutics; Psychotherapy; Closing Ceremonies.

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