An Invitation to Social Construction 2ed (Gergen, 1999, 2009)

An Invitation to Social Construction 2ed (Gergen, 1999, 2009)

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars WARNING: This book can change how you think and see., December 18, 2001
By Dr. Z. "Joyfully Retired" (San Rafael, CA USA)

I've spent the last 30 years practicing and teaching psychotherapy. In that time I've read everyone from Jay Haley and Steve de Shazer to Otto Kernberg and Heinz Kohut and lots of people in between in search of helpful ideas. I came across Kenneth Gergen's writings several years ago and now I can't stop reading the guy.

This book is the best introduction to social constructionism and Gergen himself I have read to date. I only wish it had been his first so I could have had this clear, broad ranging work as a starting point for reading his earlier, somewhat more challenging writings. Careful though, one book and you can get addicted.

ix As I write I try to imagine you as the reader sitting and talking with me as an interested friend... you can do as you wish with these words - work, play, invent, fantasize, devour, spit. [JLJ - not spit, the book cost too much for that, and that would make it hard to read...]

p.48 For Foucault, "power is ... an open, more or less coordinated ... cluster of relations"

p.66 Pure unstoried action, pure unstoried existence in the present, is impossible. William Lowell Randall, The Stories We Are

p.82 Each of these alternatives opens the way to new forms of enquiry, and possible ways of going on in the world.

p.98 As I am proposing meaning lies not within the private mind, but in the process of relating. If this seems reasonable, a new and exciting possibility emerges: everything we have considered "in the mind" of the individual is born in relationships.

Enter supporting content here