Pluralistic therapy

A postmodern perspective is skeptical towards grand narratives and values local knowledge. Pluralistic therapy represents a strategy for implementing that stance within the context of counseling and psychotherapy. Individuals and families who seek therapy are viewed as possessing lived experience, knowledge, and wisdom around the worries and concerns that trouble them, and an array of resources based on intersecting cultural memberships, identities, and relationships, that can support them in addressing their difficulties. At the heart of pluralistic practice is the therapist's intention to cooperate with the client or family through care and mutual solidarity and to co-produce helpful strategies. Therapists must be able to operate from a stance of critical reflexivity, have a capacity to create and maintain spaces for shared decision-making, draw on skills for maintaining alignment with client goals, and deconstruct and contextualize existing therapeutic models to identify elements that are consistent with client needs and preferences. Pluralistic practice comprises a form of practical ethical resistance to contemporary and historical injustice that makes use of philosophical insights and critical reading of research evidence from a wide range of methodologies. This chapter introduces distinctive features of pluralistic therapy practice, exploring its ongoing engagement with a postmodern conceptual standpoint.