Women’s Studies Inl. Forum, Vol. IS, No. 4. pp. 487-498. 1992 0277.5395/92 s5.00 + .

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Printed in the USA. Copyright 0 1992 Pergamon Press Ltd.

IDENTIFICATION AND POWER IN FEMINIST THERAPY

A Reflexive History of a Discourse Analysis

ERICA BURMAN
Department of Psychology and Speech Pathology, Manchester Polytechnic,
Manchester Ml3 OJA, U.K.

Synopsis-In this paper, the author outlines some issues that emerged from her efforts to analyse
the first and fourth sessions of a client’s psychotherapy. From an initial focus on varieties of psy-
chotherapeutic discourse and therapy-client interactions, the author moves on to explore how com-
mon and different identifications coexist with power relations which are simultaneously being elab-
orated. Given feminist therapy’s commitment to acknowledging the real and common positions
and subordination of women, questions of identification and transference are necessarily linked.
However, these are also embedded within further issues of professional interests and commitments
in which the discourse analyst is crucially involved. The author goes on to suggest that (1) issues of
identifying and classifying discourses cannot be divorced from the ways these discourses function
in the relationship within which they are elaborated; and (2) transference issues are involved in both
(a) woman-woman therapy and (b) feminist analyses of feminist practice.

In approaching this topic I should make clear
that I am neither a therapist nor in personal
therapy. Although not so directly involved in
those ways, I hope to show how my involve-
ment as a feminist motivates, and constrains,
my (discourse) analysis, and to explore what
the consequences of this are for both femi-
nists and discourse analysts. The text on
which my narrative is based is transcribed au-
diotape of two sessions, the first and the
fourth, of a client’s psychodynamic psycho-
therapy. I am grateful to both the therapist
and the client for taping the sessions (I will be
saying more about this later). The client was
a woman in her mid-30s with a school-age
daughter and pre-school son, living with her
male partner. The therapist and I arrived at
the idea of analysing the first and fourth ses-
sions originally because we thought this
would provide material on how the therapeu-
tic relationship and agenda were initially set
up, and then (in the fourth session) how these
were functioning. What is also important is
The author is very grateful to the client and therapist
whose interaction forms the basis of this analysis. The
author has tried to ensure that neither they nor other
people mentioned are identifiable in the account. Mi-
chelle Ashton transcribed the first of the psychotherapy
sessions, which, under the author’s supervision, she ana-
lysed in a different way (Ashton, 1990). Thanks also to
Deb Marks for her comments and support.
487
that both therapist and client are feminist,
and I will be suggesting that representations
of women, and of feminism, enter into the
therapeutic processes. Also relevant is that
the client, at the time of the sessions, was in
the second year of her counselling training.
In terms of concerns about power and poli-
tics, then, the commonality of commitments
and positionings within this material presents
an interesting starting point from which to
explore questions of equality and control in
feminist psychotherapy.
My original objective in analysing this ma-
terial was to investigate whether there seemed
to be a specific, discernable feminist psycho-
therapeutic discourse, or rather whether fem-
inist psychotherapeutic practice was com-
posed of some amalgamation of feminist and
therapeutic discourses. This issue has links
with theoretical debates about whether an au-
thentic female voice can speak within male
discourses: Can feminist psychotherapists
operate within the therapeutic discourses
which, by origin and tradition, function in
patriarchal ways? Is there a women’s ther-
apy? These questions closely tie in with politi-
cal debates about the contested status of ther-
apy within feminism: Does therapy empower
women to change our circumstances, or does
it individualise oppression and pathologise
our experiences? This kind of opposition has
characterised feminist debates on the status
488 ERICABURMAN
of therapy (see Millett, 1972; Scott & Payne,
1984). Does therapy offer space for women
to develop new forms of subjectivity or does
it confirm them within their current restric-
tive positions and castigate them for their re-
sistance? Consequences of these questions
are played out at a practical level, too. In
terms of both model and practice, Hare-
Mustin and Maracek (1986) highlight the in-
compatability between feminist and thera-
peutic projects, especially in relation to the
goal of autonomy. Are feminist psychothera-
pists psychotherapists who happen to be fem-
inist, or are they feminists who use therapeu-
tic tools to challenge women’s subordinate
positions? The designation ‘feminist psycho-
therapist’ can mean many things, and is re-
fused by some who work in this area (see
Ernst & Maguire, 1987). My point is that
the question of the specificity of feminist psy-
chotherapeutic discourse connects with an-
other range of issues, a set of issues con-
cerned with what happens when feminists
become professionals, practitioners (as are
many of us here). [Pilgrim’s (1991) comments
on the limits within the current climate are
relevant here.] In short, our access to the
power we seek to implement our ideas inevi-
tably carries with it dilemmas of co-option
and recuperation.
These are not particularly novel ideas, so I
will not dwell on them. I hope I have justified
my initial guiding questions. Sure enough,
within the material there were varieties of
therapeutic discourses at play: of growth
(‘I’m on a journey’; ‘the way I see myself de-
veloping’; ‘being in touch with myself; ‘find-
ing myself); of depth (feelings ‘blocked’).
There were terms from Gestalt psychother-
apy (‘opposites’; ‘all the “shoulds”‘; transac-
tional analysis (with feelings described as
‘contaminated’), and even a bit of rational-
emotive therapy (with notions of models,
roles, and self-fulfilling prophecies . . . ); as
well as the occasional Kleinian or object rela-
tions inflection (with a focus on anxiety,
splitting, and ‘holding’, ‘containing,’ and ‘be-
ing overwhelmed’).
I could also see how the mixture of thera-
peutic discourses worked to provide the client
with (or, to put it differently, the client used
the different therapeutic discourses to elabo-
rate) a range of subject positions. This was
especially notice:.ble in relation to concep-
tions of self. The growth t~odels of, for ex-
ample, Rogerian person-centred therapy em-
ploy a conception of self as integrated and
open to ‘awareness’, so that a true, authentic
self can be found and known (‘I don’t yet
have a strong enough sense of me’-Sl;
‘that’s almost as if my sense of my self is quite
fragile’- S4). In contrast psychodynamic
models emphasise fragmentation and dis-
tance from awareness (‘it’s as if your own sort
of self traps you’--4). By moving between
these models, the client marks the distance
between the integrated, whole ‘I’ of the cur-
rent speaker and the disparate subjective po-
sitions and feelings of her history. She also
uses the spatial as well as temporal differenti-
ation provided within psychodynamic repre-
sentations of subjectivity as fragmentary (‘I
found myself, ‘I sort of had this sense of) to
distance herself from and comment on past
experiences and events. By this means she can
elaborate a narrative which asserts both con-
tinuity and difference between her current
and previous subjective positions. This varia-
tion of positionings is particularly important
for feminist therapy in terms of questions of
responsibility (for experience), and agency
(for change): an over-integrated self threat-
ens to fall into victim-blaming, while an ex-
clusive discourse of fragmentation ushers in
passivity and impairs agency.
I have analysed this material in relation to
these issues in more detail elsewhere (Bur-
man, in press). What happened, however, as
I studied the text was that I began to see how
I could not tackle these urgent and important
questions without addressing how the thera-
pist-client relationship interacted with the
woman-woman relationship (which here was
also feminist-feminist). This involved look-
ing at the dynamics set up by professional
commonalities and differences both as elabo-
rated within the psychotherapeutic encoun-
ter, and within the processes of my interpre-
tation of it. So the rest of what I have to say
is organised around the following five head-
ings: the Therapist-Client Relationship;
Problems of Exploring Power of Definition;
Transference; Equality, Commonality and
Professional positions; and Reflexivity.
THE THERAPIST-CLIENT
RELATIONSHIP
The issue I was interested in here was who set
the terms for discussion and how these were
 Feminist Therapy
arrived at: by negotiation, acquiescence, or
contest? Issues of power and control are cen-
tral to discussions of feminist therapy, given
its commitment to modelling more egalitar-
ian relationships. Interestingly, issues of
power could also take a theoretical form, in
that a difference between the two sessions an-
alysed was that the client came increasingly
to adopt psychodynamic terminology, de-
parting from the humanist ‘growth’ discourse
of her counselling course. This is perhaps not
surprising, given that the therapist identified
herself as a psychodynamic psychotherapist.
But this uptake was neither total nor undis-
puted. I discuss these discursive develop-
ments and tensions in more detail in Burman
(in press), and also, in different ways, later
on in this paper. There are three areas I will
focus on here: the power of the therapist, the
representation of the real and the symbolic in
feminist psychotherapy, and the power of the
client.
The po wer of the therapist: Doing therapy
While Jacobs (1984, p. 35) describes the
basic skills of psychoanalytic therapy as “re-
flection, paraphrasing, minimal response
and open-ended silence” (he also adds “the
acceptance of silence,” which I am not con-
sidering here), I have categorised the thera-
pist’s responses into acceptance, suggestion,
interpretation, recasting (which includes ob-
servation plus comment), direct question, ex-
planation, and reflecting back. For ease of
analysis I have based this only on the thera-
pist’s opening phrases of each turn.
l Acceptance
That is important.
That’s good.
Yes, that’s exactly right.
That’s a very good way of putting it.
That’s right.
I think that’s important.
l Suggestion
And she’s using secrets, isn’t she, as a
power.
l Interpretation
It’s one of your things, isn’t it?
There’s this other thing about exposing
yourself . . . that seems hard for you.
So it’s symbolic, then, about them.
And this is y’know you [yeah] being
responsible.
I could see it [yeah] I was surprised [I
know] it was . . .
489
There’s this tiny sliver of your life.
Direct Question
What about you . . . how did you feel
. . . what were your feelings?
Why d’you think it was that it was one of
the areas?
What does it cost you to take all the
responsibility?
Are you all right with anger?
And if you don’t the world will end?
Is that another thing . . . ?
How do you feel about?
Well shall we leave you . . . ?
Explanation
It can easily start to feel like that ‘cos coun-
selling is tiring, you see.
Recasting
So what you’re really saying is . . .
So you are saying that . . .
You mean you . . .
It does sound as though . . .
So are you saying . . .
It’s almost like . . .
No, but this is what you were saying earlier
about looking at what you can do [mm]
with reality.
Reflecting Back
So it must have been quite hard for you.
It’s noticeable tonight that you’ve . . .
I’m picking that up again.
A number of features emerge from this
fairly simple classification. First, the classifi-
cation is not always easy to apply in an exclu-
sive way because all the therapist’s interven-
tions are in some senses interpretive, and may
function as such irrespective of what she
says. However, there does, for example,
seem a qualitative difference between the re-
casting and suggestion. Because direct sug-
gestion, as a very overt form of interpreta-
tion, is risky in therapy, it is worth noting
that this only occurs once. Second, many re-
castings and direct questions also function as
interpretations. In fact interpretations (I), re-
castings (R), and questions (Q), are often
used in combination.
And that’s something (.) what about you
(.) isn’t [urn] I mean that’s (.) I’m hearing
that very strongly. (I-Q-R)
Maybe it’s because you’ve been talking a
lot about . . . I wondered what it meant
for you. (I-Q)
490 ERICABURMAN
But you like I mean what was money like
between your mother and father. (I-Q)
I mean there’s something what what do
you think is going on? (I-R)
While the therapist employs what are conven-
tional therapeutic skills then, there seems to
be some equivocation over her use of overt
interpretation. In the examples immediately
above she recasts her interpretations as ques-
tions. Moreover, there is another class of in-
terventions that is much more concerned with
questions of fact than of feelings.
The real and the symbolic: Therapist’s
questions of fact
But are you thinking of moving on from
counselling?
You mean you couldn’t find anyone?
Do you find yourself being put on when
you take responsibility?
Were you born in x?
Sister live there?
What’s that like being a mother?
Is it doing this counselling training that’s
brought about this . . . ?
Does that irritate you or or . . . ?
How do you feel about doing it . . . while
you’re actually doing it?
How do the financial pressures arise?
And are you able to cut back the things
you do it on?
You can remember that can you?
Although all the above questions are directed
towards therapeutic goals, they nevertheless
do address the current external circumstances
and preoccupations of the client rather than
entirely subordinating them to, or seeing
them as simply a reflection of, internal con-
flicts. These questions are of a very different
order to those related to interpretation (al-
though, of course, they go on to elicit the ma-
terial that will be the focus of interpretation).
These questions, I suggest, are indications of
how feminist therapy tries to acknowledge
and engage with the current circumstances
and demands facing clients, as well as seeing
this in relation to past experience. This does
not mean that the past is seen as insignificant.
[Note: In the exchanges to follow, the follow-
ing notations are used: T-therapist, C - cli-
ent, xxx - untranscribable, (xxx) - indis-
tinct/doubtful transcription (.)-pause,
(2) -2-second pause (number indicates dura-
tion), [ ] -response by other conversant dur-
ing utterance.]
T: Maybe its because you’ve been talking
a lot about his attitude to money [yes,
yeah] I wondered what it meant for you
. . . mm (4) but you like I mean what was
money like between your mother and
father?
Past events explain current experiences:
T: Mm so its symbolic then /about them/
c: Absolutely yeah
T: Giving out while they y’know you get
stressful and resentful and . . .
but the focus is on what can be done to
change the circumstances, rather than stop-
ping at what they mean:
T: Mm that’s I mean (.) we’re dealing with
whether or not it’s real or whether it’s just
about feelings [mm] because if it’s real
[yeah] (.) then what can you do to change
[yes] is there anything you can do (.)
you’ve said you’ve already stepped out of
a few things.
The therapist’s control over meaning can
be seen in the gradual move from growth to
depth models within the sessions. This is per-
haps an indication of the more general ten-
dency for the client to adopt the terms intro-
duced by the therapist, as in:
T: . . . so you (.) you (.) you had this sort
of (.) should y’know (.) split between un-
derstanding him and yet [that’s right] feel-
ing very angry.
C: Yeah (.) yeah I felt absolutely split (Sl)
T: Have you set up a pattern (.) in your
relationships?
C: Yes (.) I mean I think (.) I’ve set up a
pattern of urn (.) being available . . . (Sl)
The power of the client
While the therapist sets the agenda, her
control over what is talked about and how it
is talked about is far from absolute. I will
 Feminist Therapy
briefly illustrate five ways in which the client
asserts her control. First, she is active in de-
termining which issues she wants to address
within the therapy.
c: . . . and one of the reasons (.) one of
the things I would like to look at is . . .
61)
c:. . . there are (.) y’know a number of (.)
particular (.) themes around for me that
I’d like to take [mm] up.
Second, she explicitly comments on the
therapist’s recasting of her words, not accept-
ing it until she has worked through the extent
to which the new terms capture what she had
intended to convey:
C: Well and I mean it’s interesting you are
using that word responsibility urn (.) that
is just something I am sort of struggling
with at the moment . . . urn it is some-
thing I’d like to look at because it seems to
be a theme and urn (.) and it’s a (.) I mean
I sort of think I’ve used the word y’know
something about caring for others or look-
ing after others or sorting it out for other
people and (.) and I suppose that is y’know
(.) it encompasses responsibility [mm] it
encompasses all that.(Sl)
Third, there is a moment where the thera-
pist attributes her own interpretation to the
client. She presents an interpretation as in:
‘No but this is what you were saying earlier
about . . . ’ (S4), when in fact it was the ther-
apist who had said this. This could be inter-
preted in a number of ways: as (a) the thera-
pist has forgotten that this was her own
interpretation; (b) it is a more insidious way
of exerting interpretive control by position-
ing the interpretation as having originated
from the client; (c) it avoids the conflict po-
tentially incurred by the use of direct inter-
pretation; (d) it constitutes an effort to be
more egalitarian, to assume interpretive ca-
pacity of the client. Apart from my first rea-
son (which could anyway be treated as over-
determined in other ways!), what all these
interpretations share is that they indicate that
the overt use of interpretive control is unac-
ceptable within this therapeutic encounter,
491
that is, indicating that the client exerts some
power.
Fourth, although the client takes up the
therapist’s terms to describe her experience, it
could be argued that she draws on these inter-
pretations selectively to authorise her own ac-
count. Consider:
C: One thought that came to me was some-
thing you, picked up about you know one
of the tasks earmarked to kind of (.) dif-
ferentiate out y’know (,) where I am and
who I am separate from from say like my
mum or other people. (S4)
C: I mean we’ve talked about this before
about sort of control and responsibility.
(S4)
C: I know you talked about this last time
you, were kind of saying you know kind of
you need to (.) something about emotion-
ally growing up or learning to manage
your your feelings to to (.) to be much
more focused and aware so that y’know
like (.) you’re more in touch with what’s
going on and so that you can (.) y’know be
in touch with and express it yeah? S4)
C: I mean in that last session you were ac-
tually saying y’know kind of (.) one of the
things I remember you saying was . . .
(S4)
The rapid reformulation in the last of these
examples from what ‘you were actually say-
ing’ to ‘one of the things I remember you say-
ing’ suggests two things. First, that the client
is concerned that she may be challenged
about whether or not the therapist had actu-
ally said this. But more than this, that irre-
spective of what the therapist said she is using
her recollection to warrant a particular (i.e.,
her own) interpretation.
Fifth, the client initiates interpretation, by
introducing a new element to the therapy:
C: I feel as if there’s there’s something
about conflict in that as well.
PROBLEMS OF EXPLORING POWER
OF DEFINITION
While I have suggested that both therapist
and client hold some measure of control over
492 ERICABURMAN
meaning within the sessions, there are addi-
tional problems in exploring the question
of power in these psychotherapy sessions.
These problems arise because of the mul-
tiple relationships between feminism and
psychotherapy.
Shared view of women’s positions
In the first case, as feminists both thera-
pist and client share a view of women’s roles
within patriarchy. Permeating the texts there
is a shared perception of women’s subordi-
nate position and its psychic effects. Preoc-
cupations with internal psychic states were
connected to a common understanding of
women’s social positions. The client herself
interpreted her expressed difficulties of ‘de-
valuing herself,’ of ‘denying resentment and
anger,’ of ‘not being able to say no’ in collec-
tive terms. She repeatedly linked her own ex-
perience with that of other women with ‘its
absolutely classic about women’, as in:
C: I mean its that sort of classic [yeah] not
saying but you know really she’s got [mm]
ideas herself but she won’t ever say it cos
[mm] I I mean I think there’s something
quite common in that generation of
women about being like that as well. (Sl)
c: . . . and I think this is just classic for
women but its y’know and it’s a model I’ve
had y’know it’s which is you don’t do that
or there isn’t the space or time to do that
[mm] y’know cos women’s work . . . (S4,
Pa 13)
C: Y’know the thing for women generally
about (.) finding yourself. (Sl)
The client makes connections between her
own experiences and that of her mother,
elaborating both on what is common and
what is different. Moreover, both her own
and her mother’s positions are seen within the
context of women’s positions generally. This
shared view of women’s psychology extends
into a more explicitly theoretical discussion
about counselling models which depict ‘de-
velopmental tasks’ in which the opposite gen-
dered parent is required to acknowledge the
son or daughter’s difference (see Burman, in
press, for more discussion on the model of
women’s therapy used).
Continuity between feminism and
therapy
On further reflection, the question of the
specificity of a feminist psychotherapeutic
discourse becomes unaskable because femi-
nism and therapy are not independent. They
are connected theoretically, culturally, and
really. At the level of theory there are conti-
nuities between feminist and therapeutic dis-
courses through the common preoccupation
with self-worth, self-esteem, and the internal
(as well as, at least for feminism, the exter-
nal) obstacles to change. Here issues of sepa-
ration, autonomy, integrity of subjectivity
are co-terminous with and central to both
feminist and psychotherapeutic projects.
These connections are, however, also overde-
termined by the cultural coexistence between
and interdependence of feminism and ther-
apy within the ‘psy complex’, whereby ‘being
true to myself (Sl), ‘feeling permission to
just be me’ (S4), and concern with ‘express-
ing’ or ‘denying’ ‘feelings’ are part of the
modern preoccupation with constructing,
and, some would say, regulating, the individ-
ual as self-reflective and therefore self-
responsible (Foucault, 1979; Rose, 1990).
Moreover, as we are all no doubt painfully
aware, there are also real connections in
terms of the overwhelming over-representa-
tion of women involved with the mental
health system (Penfold 8z Walker, 1984). So
at this point it seems as if we might as well
pack up and go home because the issues are
so complex and general that analysis seems
futile. But I think it’s worthwhile trying to
tease out some of these relationships and ex-
plore their consequences. My earlier point
about the variety of subjective positions
made available by subscribing to different
therapeutic models becomes relevant again.
There may be tensions and divergences
within what may look like a (culturally over-
determined) undifferentiation between femi-
nism and therapy which may be of more than
theoretical interest.
To return to the transcript, the feminism-
therapy continuities arise from more than the
shared view of women’s positions. Tensions
arise between the feminism and the humanist
therapeutic project. The client depicts her in-
terest in counselling and therapy as arising
from more informal (nonprofessional) sup-
port from women:
 Feminist
C: I was getting supervision and urn and
(.) I was sort of I mean I I y’know sort of
done other things as well sort of support
from women and so on and had counsel-
ling sessions with them. (Sl)
On the other hand, a commitment to improv-
ing women’s position is represented in terms
of (humanistic) therapeutic goals:
C: y’know the thing for women generally
about (.) finding yourself and and becom-
ing aware of who you are that can be very
difficult if [yes] you’ve been [yes] looking
after other people but that is just it for me
mm and that’s in a sense what I said about
not being authentic that I I don’t feel that
I know myself [right]. (Sl)
Yet counselling and therapeutic roles are
recognised by the client to be close to tradi-
tional ‘women’s work,’ and as such poten-
tially damaging or exploitative to women.
She returns several times to how counselling
feeds into her ‘themes’ of ‘being close but be-
ing in control’ (Sl), of ‘taking too much re-
sponsibility for change’ (Sl), of ‘being a ther-
apist’ to her partner (Sl) and applying
different standards for herself and for others
in going to therapy (Sl). Counselling can
work to maintain women’s traditional domi-
nation of the interpersonal realm in ‘control-
ling the intimacy’ (Sl), reproducing the fa-
miliar pattern arising from ‘mothering my
mother’ (Sl). While the basis for women-
centred approaches to counselling and ther-
apy are clearly portrayed as lying outside spe-
cific models, a feminist analysis of why
women feel devalued and relegated to caring
roles can slip into a general humanistic model
about ‘knowing myself and ‘being authentic’
(with clear political consequences of that
slip).
Real and symbolic revisited: Contradictions
A further difficulty in exploring issues of
power of definition arises from real contra-
dictions within the feminist project of ac-
knowledging the social construction of dis-
tress, and, in particular, attention to the
current circumstances of the client. This gives
rise to a significant problem for client and
therapist in the fourth session, when the ther-
apist tries to focus on helping the client to
Therapy 493
manage her feelings in order to cope better
with her ‘stressful’ work, course, relation-
ship, and childcare commitments. Unlike a
more traditional psychoanalytic therapist,
who might refuse to deal directly with helping
with more immediate issues of time-manage-
ment, the therapist moves into a counselling
role. She asks the client not only to differenti-
ate between the internal and external (‘sym-
bolic’ vs. ‘real’) contributors to ‘stress’, but
also to reassess the magnitude of the task that
is the most immediate focus of concern (writ-
ing up a case history for the counselling
course). It becomes clear that there are limits
to how much therapy can change those pres-
sures. The only way the client can see herself
as finding the time to do the work is by phon-
ing in sick and this would mean failing to
honour contracts she has made to counsel cli-
ents. At this point the therapist has to ac-
knowledge that she can only operate at the
level of the symbolic, because reality cannot
be changed.
T: No but this is what you were saying ear-
lier about looking at what you can do with
reality (.) [mm] and if you can’t change
that if you can’t (.) then how do you deal
with your feelings? and maybe you’re say-
ing you’re feeling resentful and angry and
tired and exposed and y’know [mm] all of
those things [mm] it’s only the feelings you
can get (.) get near because yes you’re in
counselling [mm] you’ve got these con-
tracts [mm] and you’ve got to go on [mm]
looking elsewhere y’know (.) it’s all the
time looking back and and (.) because you
you know remember telling me about how
you see you’re so like your mother he’s
(wouldn’t confront) your father but then
sulk [yes] and resent. (S4)
When it comes to the crunch, it seems real-
ity is (has to be) recognised as fixed because
‘it’s only the feelings you can get near.’ The
only alternative to changing the reality is
‘looking elsewhere’, ‘looking back’. What are
we to make of this? Is therapy prevailing over
feminism here? When the therapist can do no
more to help the client consider changing the
circumstances, (‘when you’ve got to go on’),
she tries to change the client’s relationship to
those circumstances by interpreting the feel-
ings as belonging to an early pattern set up by
494 ERICABURMAN
her mother’s ways of relating, rather than as
rightful responses to current impossible
pressures.
IDENTIFICATION AND
TRANSFERENCE
The mutual and common identification be-
tween feminist and client in these sessions as
women and as feminists makes transference
difficult to determine. Both therapist and
client identify with each other, and share
a conscious identity as women. This is taken
further when women’s roles of caring become
part of the discourse about therapy, and is
specifically invoked as participating in trans-
ference processes. The client’s search for
women as models extends beyond mother-
daughter relations to generalise to rela-
tionships with all women and especially
therapists:
C: Something you picked y’know one of
the tasks earmarked to kind of urn (.) dif-
ferentiate out y’know out (.) where I am
urn and who I am separate from say like
my mum or other people [mm] also it feels
like I’m trying to find myself within the
presence of other therapists and other su-
pervisors and and like trying to see differ-
ent people and different women as differ-
ent models and think oh I want to be like
that you know (laughs) certainly I mean
like with with the relationship with you it
becomes like there’s lots of of that going
on. (S4)
What develops within these sessions is a
form of transference where there is a confla-
tion between therapeutic process, therapeutic
model and (feminist) politics. While the cli-
ent’s transference to the therapist of past pat-
terns and relationships is generally regarded
as the inevitable medium through which ther-
apy takes place, feminist therapists empha-
sise the need to own and use their own trans-
ference to their clients (e.g., Taylor, 1990).
More than this, we have a situation where the
client shares an identification with the thera-
pist as feminist, and as a professional.
Good feminists and bad feminists
It is not surprising that transference issues
come explicitly to the fore when supervision
is discussed because the therapist had already
distinguished in the first session between
what therapy and supervision can offer (“Su-
pervision is one thing [mm] but I think per-
sonal therapy is space”-Sl), with therapy
positioned as more beneficent. Issues of su-
pervision are the main focus of the fourth
session, where the client reports experiencing
supervision on her counselling placement as
‘exposing’ and leaving her feeling ‘incompe-
tent’ and ‘terrible.’ A discourse of good femi-
nists and bad feminists seems to come into
play, which, I suggest, specifies and parallels
the more general therapeutic discourse of
good/bad mothers (which has its own form
in women’s therapy, e.g., Orbach & Eichen-
baum, 1982). The client describes one of her
practice supervisors as
very sure in herself and very you
know strong feminist really (.) and and I
experience her you know as having y’know
very definite ideas about the way in which
you should work. (S4)
The implication here is that strong feminists
are ‘sure’ and have ‘definite ideas’. There is a
sense of prescription and evaluation here that
is unwelcome to the client. These judgmental
features contribute to feelings of exposure
which the client goes on to link to her need
for approval. This supervisor is then unfa-
vourably compared with the therapist and
another supervisor from the course:
I don’t feel as safe with her (2) as as (.) with
you or Lesley. (S4)
There is some resonance in the contrasts
drawn between the counselling practice su-
pervisor (who I will call Sally), on the one
hand, and Lesley, the supervisor (from the
counselling course) and therapist on the other
because this supervisor [Sally] has been al-
ready described by the client as seeing
herself very much as a (.) as a psychothera-
pist and urn you know it’s like a different
way she works and a different way . . .
(S4)
So the judgmental qualities of the supervi-
sor are not only associated with her political
commitments (as a ‘strong feminist’), but also
 Feminist Therapy
are linked to therapeutic approaches. While
the therapist, who is a psychodynamic psy-
chotherapist, is, together with the counsel-
ling supervisor, experienced as ‘safe,’ it is the
supervisor whose theoretical approach most
resembles that of the therapist who elicits the
most discomfort. In fact, the client relates
her difficulties to the specific features of the
therapeutic approach that Sally takes:
. . . so and all she’s been you know what
she’s been saying y’know what she’s been
interested in is transference and urn and
I’ve been reading some psychodynamic
stuff and er and getting a bit bogged down
in it to be honest feeling a bit lost (.) and
urn (.) wanting to back to Rogerian stuff
as a kind of anchor . . . (S4)
The contrast between the problems and
difficulties of counselling and psychothera-
peutic models becomes quite explicit. It is
possible to ‘miss’ ‘what was going on with
. . . [counselling clients’] needs’ with a Rog-
erian ‘empathy’.
. . . with my supervisor yesterday I let her
listen to the tapes urn of me doing some
counselling and what she picked up was
that I’d missed (.) quite (.) I mean she said
you know that I’d kind of responded with
empathy but it was (.) at the level here it
wasn’t (.) you know I’d missed at quite a
deep level (.) what was going on with this
person’s needs and as soon as she said I
could see it y’know but at the time . . .
(S4)
On the other hand, attending to transfer-
ence and depth issues can function as a bar-
rier in which one can be ‘lost’ or get ‘bogged
down’. There is an implication that an exclu-
sive focus on depth (‘all she’s been . . . she’s
been interested in is transference’) can be as
unhelpful as a selective attention to more
‘surface’ issues.
and and and what I felt there you see was
I’ve lost (.) I wasn’t listening properly you
know cos I was so busy (.) thinking about
(.) y’know what’s happening between me
and her you know (laugh) d’you know
[mm] . . . I mean I came out of that ses-
sion with Sally feeling (.) terrible and I
495
think I want her to be somebody like
y’know (else). (S4)
This opposition of Rogerian and psycho-
dynamic models in the extract above is made
explicit with the contrast between ‘respond-
ing with empathy’ vs. ‘deep level.’ What was
needed in client’s counselling session was
‘depth’ as well as ‘empathy,’ which the client
sees herself as having ‘missed’. ‘Depth’, then,
is something the client values and sees herself
as lacking in her approach, but ‘Rogerian
stuff is her ‘anchor’. There are a number of
ways of interpreting the range and directions
of associations here. Psychodynamic ap-
proaches here carry meanings of ‘strong fem-
inism,’ so Rogerian skills may function as a
defence. The association between theoretical
model (counselling vs. psychotherapy) and
politics (‘safe’ vs. ‘strong’ feminists?) seems
to operate as the displaced arena in which to
play out the transference to Sally (who may
in turn function as a displaced version of the
therapist). Alternatively, professional rivalr-
ies and conflict over therapeutic models can
be seen as caught up with representations of
feminism, so that Sally (instead of the thera-
pist?) comes to stand for the ambivalence to
psychotherapy, whether to the client’s own
personal psychotherapy or to the use of psy-
chotherapeutic features within counselling.
Clearly, the coincidence of common gender,
political commitment, and therapeutic model
between therapist and Sally facilitates this.
EQUALITY, COMMONALITY, AND
PROFESSIONAL POSITIONS
But this commonality is overdetermined in
other ways which may illuminate how this
tension or conflict was resolved within the
session. When the client first mentioned that
she had placement supervision with Sally (in
the first session), the therapist had indicated
that she not only knew both the organisation
and Sally, but that she worked with the or-
ganisation in a supervisory role herself.
There is thus a real structural identification
between the therapist and Sally that goes be-
yond one of gender and politics. The thera-
pist is likely to have investment in maintain-
ing good relationships with Sally, while her
senior role in relation to the organisation may
invite an appeal from the client to make the
496 ERICABURMAN
therapist collude in criticising Sally. The ther-
apist is correspondingly in a tricky position,
needing to validate the client’s experience
whilst avoiding judgement on the actual
quality of the supervision. Her way out is to
address how the client is talking, rather than
what she is saying, and to link this to her orig-
inal complaint of ‘stress’. Hence, the limita-
tions of therapeutic models, their applica-
tions, or even symbolic associations, become
irrelevant to an explanation in terms of how
stress impairs the client’s receptiveness. The
client can account for her own ‘incompe-
tence’ in counselling without it reflecting on
her general counselling skills, and the thera-
pist has deflected the need to make an explicit
alliance:
T: It’s noticeable tonight that you’ve lost
your your thread y’know of the conversa-
tion y’know three or four times [yes] and
that’s not like you . . . and that’s you were
talking about stress y’know [yes] d’you
feel I’ve forgotten what I was going to say
and and it feels like that.
C: Yes and urn I would I that also accounts
for how I’ve missed things in in counsel-
ling sessions as well really I’ve I’ve been
feeling like this and I haven’t actually
heard some of the things that the (.) that
the people I’ve been working with are say-
ing y’know. (S4)
What I am suggesting is that the transfer-
ence issues in this material are caught up with
both professional investments and insecuri-
ties and with representations of feminism.
The supervisor the client feels criticised and
devalued by is, by virtue of her politics as well
as her theoretical orientation, most identified
with the therapist. The client knows that the
therapist has a professional (and supervisory)
relationship with the organisation that this
supervisor works within. The appeal to the
therapist to comment on the supervisor’s
practice threatens professional, as well as
feminist, alliances. All of this can be seen as
played out in the negotiation about which
therapeutic model should predominate. The
counselling discourse of personal growth
functions both as the framework with which
the client feels most comfortable, and with
which she started, and also as the position
from which to resist the supervisor. More-
over, adopting this discourse positions her as
a professional rather than the more subordi-
nate recipient of therapy (see also Burman, in
press, for more on this). It is perhaps worth
noting that the solution that the therapist of-
fers in terms of the client’s general stress is
only accepted by the client after three
attempts.
INTERPRETATIONS AND
CONNECTIONS
In this paper, I have analysed extracts from
two psychotherapy sessions to explore some
theoretical concerns about the status of ther-
apy, of feminist practice, and the complex
identifications this involved for both thera-
pist and client. It should be borne in mind
that the particular set of associations played
out here may be specific to this therapist-cli-
ent relationship in some respects. While femi-
nists may well seek out feminist or woman-
centred therapists, the situation here, where
the client was in counselling training, meant
that she was more informed of the theoretical
model and processes of establishing the ‘ther-
apeutic contract’ than is usual in therapy. An-
other atypical feature is that the therapist had
done supervisory work within the organisa-
tion in which both the client’s practice super-
visor worked and her practice placement was
based.
However, rather than treating this set of
convergences as a bizarre exception, in my
view, it is these features which make this ma-
terial so interesting. Here we have structural
factors other than the therapist-client rela-
tionship (common identification as femi-
nists; mutual acquaintance of individuals)
undermining, and I have been suggesting in-
forming, the specific negotiation of the
power relations within therapy. While the
forms of expression of these issues may be
particular to these sessions, the issues of rep-
resentations of theoretical models, and the
meanings of the therapeutic process itself are
of course inevitable parts of all psychother-
apy. That they were played out within the
control and definition of meaning does not
mean that each of these issues does not arise
within all or most therapy, albeit perhaps in-
dependently. And in feminist psychotherapy,
the significance of the woman-woman rela-
tion is clearly both significant and a thera-
 Feminist Therapy
peutic resource in the form of transference,
countertransference, and interpretation.
I started out on this research with a set of
wider questions about the evaluation of the
project of feminist therapy, with its claims to
depart from traditional psychotherapy and
as a route for the empowerment of women,
and it may seem that I became sidetracked by
issues that arise from the specific configura-
tion of individuals and contexts. I should
make it clear that I do not consider the com-
plex of interests and identifications of my
above interpretations as undermining the
therapeutic nature or value of the encounter.
Rather these should be seen as an inevitable
part of the process of therapy- indeed I have
analysed them in part in psychoanalytic
terms. Further, they do not make the therapy
less ‘feminist’ in the sense of supporting the
client to gain insight and thereby open the
possibility of changing her existing condi-
tions of oppression. Nor is therapy portrayed
within the sessions as sufficient to make these
changes-as in the attention to the real con-
straints and commitments faced by the client.
In this sense, the therapy does not resort to
psychologisation of personal problems. I
have also suggested that the variety of thera-
peutic discourses employed by the therapist
(as well as the client), notwithstanding her de-
scription as a psychodynamic psychothera-
pist, allows for conceptions of subjectivity as
both fragmentary or as integrated, according
to the extent to which these allow the client to
avoid a victim-blaming responsibility for all
her past actions (by departing from notions
of an integrated self) or to theorise agency
(by moving towards affirming a unified sub-
jectivity). I develop the analysis of power and
subjectivity in relation to the project of femi-
nist therapy further elsewhere (Burman, in
press). There is an additional dimension to
the kind of work I have undertaken here that
should be taken up before I finish.
REFLEXIVITY
Up to now I have commented on the multiple
forms, and directions, of identifications mo-
bilised within this material. Now it is time to
include my own. Reflexivity occupies a key
place in both discussions of feminist method-
ology and of discourse analysis. For feminist
methodology, reflexivity means attending to
491
the conditions of the production of knowl-
edge, including one’s own participation in it
(Stanley, 1990). For discourse analysis, re-
flexivity tends to mean something more like
making public the interpretive processes
which motivated the analysis (Potter, 1988).
Accountability functions in slightly differing
ways in each. For feminist research, account-
ability is specified as not only to the commu-
nity of like-minded researchers, but is also
committed to in some way contributing to the
amelioration of women’s positions, and ter-
mination of relations of oppression.
In terms of this research, my interpreta-
tions are, of course, as subject to the same va-
riety of transference processes as the partici-
pants. Moreover, this process has not been
one-way. While at various points in the ses-
sions the client refers to the fact that the ses-
sions are being taped, she comments favoura-
bly about this because she tapes sessions with
her own clients as part of her training. She,
then, is identifying with me. In the fourth ses-
sion (of her analysis, the second of my tran-
scripts), she talks at length about the difficul-
ties of transcribing and analysing tapes of
sessions: the labour involved, the concentra-
tion, the difficulties of organising time to get
it done, and her worries about completing the
case study which is an assessment for her
counselling course. Perhaps I should also be
interpreting this as a reaction formation to
her unconscious resistance to being taped and
being subjected to research herself. But this
(perhaps because of my vested interest in
gaining the material), I think, would be to
fall into the typical analytical error of over-
emphasising transference at the expense of
disregarding the very real problems and pres-
sures she was experiencing. Instead, I iden-
tify with her difficulties because I know what
it’s like trying to transcribe and analyse mate-
rial, and having to get work done under pres-
sure. Further, the process of transcribing her
words, hearing her story, leads me to identify
strongly with her, especially now when I
speak her words, adopt her narrative voice,
in order to tell them to you.
Yet I too am subject to the tensions I have
elaborated in relation to the therapist. Just as
she was reluctant to collude in the criticism of
the client’s counselling practice supervisor, so
do I feel constraints and responsibilities in
how I represent the therapist, as well as the
498 ERICABURMAN
client and the project of therapy. I have a per-
sonal interest in therapy, and I have respect
for what feminists are trying to achieve with
therapy. On the other hand, I see the need to
maintain a political critique of therapy in or-
der to stave off the dynamic towards absorp-
tion into the main/malestream inherent
within any professional involvement. But
more pertinently, I am also tied by my per-
sonal, professional, and political involve-
ments. The therapist in these sessions is, of
course, known to me, and I have a vested in-
terest in maintaining my relationship with
her. Hence for me, too, professional and per-
sonal commitments nestle alongside the po-
litical commitments.
To conclude. In this paper I have dis-
cussed why I had to revise my initial guiding
questions about the status of and power rela-
tionships within feminist therapy. I will fin-
ish by elaborating the consequences of the
approach I have been taking in the form of
five points.
First, questions of power within psycho-
therapeutic encounters are complex, with
both therapist and client positioned in a num-
ber of different ways-in this material, as
professionals as well as women. Analyses of
equality in feminist therapy should corre-
spondingly consider the variety of discursive
positions available to participants.
Second, while I have focused primarily on
processes of identification in this paper, I
want to comment on the difficulties of talk-
ing about difference. In this material both
therapist and client subscribed to a general
model of women’s psychology and develop-
ment. I suspect that both this and the clear
background of the therapist were responsible
for the failure to explore questions of class
identity. This was surprising when much of
what was discussed concerned the experience
and meanings of the client’s both past and
present financial difficulties.
Third, I have suggested that the different
positions set up in the therapeutic encounter
are reflected in the form and interpretation of
transference relations and in the representa-
tion of the realm of ‘reality’ versus ‘feelings’.
Fourth, representations of agency and re-
sistance are central both to a feminist politics
and also to an adequate discourse analysis be-
cause a static classification of discursive
frameworks can neglect the scope for negoti-
ation and movement within subject posi-
tions, and hence the recognition of the emer-
gence of changed subject positions.
Fifth, the issue of interpretive stance
emerges as central to my account, not only in
the sense usually involved in discourse analy-
sis, but also in making clear the constraints
and motivations imposed by my own struc-
tural position, as well as my identifications
and commitments.
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