Reflections on Kenneth Gergen’s Contributions to Family Therapy

Kenneth Gergen has made significant contributions to family therapy. This article highlights selected contributions and specifically discusses his idea of therapy as relational recovery, including the importance he places on a client’s developing relational skills that they can put into action in their everyday lives outside the therapy room. In response to this idea of therapy as relational recovery, the article presents the concept of therapy as a dialogically-structured activity in which transformation whether in meaning, understanding, thought or action is inevitable, inherent and unpredictable. Client feedback on after therapy session transformation partially illustrates this concept.