Power and the social construction of service users and clinical psychologists

Power issues in the relationship between service users and clinical psychologists have received little attention from a postmodern perspective. The recovery approach and the scientist-practitioner model as recommended in best practice guidelines creates an argument for investigating power dynamics in academic and practical dissemination.

This study aimed to investigate the social construction of service users and clinical psychologists in articles.

Twelve articles and opinion pieces written by clinical psychologists and service users were sampled from publications of the Clinical Psychology Forum. A Foucauldian Discourse Analytic method was used to identify dominant discourses and counter-discourses. The discourses were linked to the power dynamics in play between relevant institutions.

The analysis identified an economic discourse, a technical-rational discourse and an expert discourse as constructing service users and clinical psychologists.

Clinical psychologists were found to have more discourse availability than service users, and in a position to make choices, whereas service users were found to have availability to a limited number of discourses with fewer options of subjectivity. A need for clinical psychologists to make conscious choices in practice was implied.