TPC-Digests-V1-Issues-123

power and knowledge make faulty assumptions regarding the teachings of narrative and collaborative therapies, which lead to the unintended thoroughly modern practice of these therapies. Relying particularly upon French theorist and philosopher Michel Foucault and the practitioners who have interpreted his work for use in counseling practice, this article seeks to give counselors a more detailed analysis of the issues of power and knowledge that are contained within the therapeutic relationship for those practicing within narrative or collaborative frameworks. Both within the client’s narrative and in the client/counselor alliance, the relationship between knowledge and power is one that is inextricably linked. Power and knowledge in a postmodern understanding both limit and constrain the ways in which clients can narrate their own stories, as well as provide a way of producing and constituting clients’ stories around available and “acceptable” themes contained in dominant societal discourse. This article aids counselors in beginning to appropriate postmodern critique in narrative and collaborative therapies in ways that will help clients unpack and deconstruct these elements of knowledge and power within their own narratives. In addition, the therapeutic alliance is imbued with relations of power and knowledge. Many counselors hoping to practice from a “postmodern” perspective seek to divest themselves of “power” so as to create a more collaborative alliance. This article argues, however, that relations of power and knowledge are always present and that the therapeutic process is inherently a political process in which counselors must recognize present relations of power in the alliance and work to responsibly critique practices of counseling and to engage therapeutic “expertise” in thoughtful and responsible ways. TPC Digest The relationship between knowledge and power is one that is inextricably linked.