Uploaded: June 2014, Issue 25
 

Pietro Barbetta

Professor of Psychodynamic Theories at Bergamo University - Trainer at CMTF -Member of the Centro Isadora Duncan-Coordinator of the Permanent Seminar Bateson-Deleuze-Foucault, www.bidieffe.net

Abstract

The first encounter between social constructionism and systemic theories probably happened in 1980, with the publication of Communication, Action and Meaning. Michel Foucault was considered then, by many scholars and practitioners, as an obscure French philosopher, totally unrelated to communication and clinical practice. Although he had studied madness, clinical discourse, sexuality and prisons, his ideas seemed too abstract to be applied to both social practice and the analysis of everyday life.

This paper describes how the CMM theory provides imagination for everyday communication practices. These methodologies seem to mirror the micro-physics of power, and the hermeneutics of the Self as described by Foucault. I will also apply these considerations to a clinical case study.