Meaning Systems and Mental Health Culture

Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Counseling and Psychotherapy

By (author) James T. Hansen

Publication date:

01 February 2016

Length of book:

200 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

ISBN-13: 9781498516303

The creation of meaning is a central feature of human life. The full spectrum of experience, from joyful, devoted living to unbearable psychological suffering, is orchestrated by the meanings that people endorse and create. Meaning Systems and Mental Health Culture: Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Counseling and Psychotherapy examines the intersection of meaning systems, mental health culture, and counseling and psychotherapy. By viewing mental health care through the lenses of culture and history, James T. Hansen argues that a defining element of mental health culture, throughout various eras, is the relative value placed on meaning systems. Contemporary mental health care, with its idealization of symptom-based diagnostics, biological reductionism, and the medical model, severely devalues meaning systems. This devaluation has led modern counselors and psychotherapists to largely abandon the factors that should be central to their work. Meaning Systems and Mental Health Culture weaves together empirical, historical, cultural, and philosophical perspectives to raise awareness of the need for counseling and psychotherapy to revalue meaning systems, even while operating within a culture that disregards them.
Dr. Hansen provides a masterful analysis of the significance of client meaning systems in the helping professions. His provocative examination of the role of meaning systems in mental health culture employs a wide array of highly engaging pedagogical methods, ranging from humor and personal reflections to thought experiments and case illustrations, and culminates in a gratifying discussion of the implications for the education and training of talk therapists. Meaning Systems and Mental Health Culture is an important book for counselors, psychologists, and social workers that is at once compelling, edifying, and unifying.