Psychotherapy in Everyday Life

In this book, Dreier shows how clients make therapy work in their everyday lives. Therapy cannot fulfill its purpose until the clients can make it work outside the therapy room in relation to the concerns, people, and places of their everyday lives. Research on therapy has largely ignored these efforts. Based on session transcripts and interviews with a family of four about their everyday lives, Dreier shows the extensive and varied work the clients do to make their therapy work across places. Processes of change and learning are seen in a new perspective and it is shown that expert practices depend on how persons conduct their everyday lives. To grasp this, Dreier developed a theory of persons that is based on how they conduct their lives in social practice. This theory is grounded in critical psychology and social practice theory and is also relevant for understanding other expert practices such as education.

• Builds on an extensive family of four case study, grounding the book's argument in concrete lives
• Includes a socio-cultural appoach making it unique in that it studies people as they live their lives and change across places
• Shows the process of personal change and learning in practice, helping practitioners to reflect and change their practice