Last week in PMTH NEWS  I wrote an article about Lyotard's concept of differends and also in another article about NT  philosophy as it compares to paralogical philosophies -- so perhaps it is fitting that during the week  I would discover, what seems to me to be, a remarkable differend between NT philosophy and more dialogic or paralogical ones.   That is, I think I can see why mftc got into such a dispute, and why there are often such quarrels about postmodernism.  I believe I have found a differend lurking here, a conflict between two competing language games, that is causing considerable mischief.

First, in order to see it, get yourself into a mood of noticing differends.  A differend is a dispute that occurs when people are using terms in different ways but are unable to sort this out.  If I said, "I want something sweet" and you thought I was asking for a kiss, while I was really asking for a cookie, then we might have a differend.  When you balked at kissing me (supposing that you did) I might take offense.  And if we never figured out the source of this confusion, our prospects of solving the problem would be dim.

I think something like that is causing much of the mischief in postmodernity.  People are going round and round because they are defining terms in different ways.  Seeing this is  subtle at first, so stick with me.

Recall that Lyotard defines postmodernism as an incredulity (or skepticism) towards metanarratives.  A person is postmodern if she no longer believes, even in principle, that there is one theory, one story, that is always right and everything can be reduced to it.  Many people take this  definition of postmodernism as definitive.

But now, in NT theory one often hears about "dominant discourses."  This is a concept based on Foucault's talk about power.  A dominant discourse is just what it sounds like it is.  It is the way of thinking and talking that convinces nearly everyone in a culture.

The differend comes about (I think) by the conflation (and confusion) between the term "dominant discourse" and the term "metnarrative."  On the surface they sound just the same -- but they're not.  Just as I might get mad if you kissed me when I was asking for a cookie, so tempers flare when this confusion between dominant discourse and metanarrative leads people into disputes.

A metanarrative is not a dominant discourse, at least not necessarily.  Here's an example that will convince you that all metanarratives are not dominant: Today, astrology is not a dominant discourse.  Science is dominant. Still, there are a circle of people today who believe in astrology and they believe in a metanarrative.  So astrology is a metanarrative, a grand theory (another synonym for metanarrative) that people sometimes believe in, yet it is hardly the dominant discourse..

In the last week I looked over some notes of people arguing about postmodernism.  One person said "I think postmodern is this," and another person said, "No, that's not it.  Postmodernism is this other thing."  But when I looked carefully at these notes, I think I see this mischievous differend smiling back at me.  It is that one group is saying (with Foucault) that the thing they don't believe in are these dominant stories that everyone else believes in.  And the other group is saying (with Lyotard) that the thing they don't believe in is any grand theory that explains everything even if that grand theory is not the dominant one.  It's subtle, but look at it a bit more and you'll see it.  The dominant discourse is what most people believe.  The metanarrative is an all explaining theory.

Can you see what mischief that language-game confusion could cause?  I suggest you watch for it in the debates around postmodernism.  They two sides are likely to be fighting these two different culprits unwittingly.  One side will say (with Foucault) we need to learn to resist the dominant discourse.  And that side will feel puzzled and dismayed by the others saying, "Oh, watch out.  Be careful.  You're about to jump into another metanarrative."  "But, says the first side, it's not a dominant one."  "So what, says the second side, they're both metanarratives."  A dispute like this can go round and round forever.
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Thanks to Judy Weintraub , Tony Michael Roberts , Tom Hicks,   and Val Lewis for their comments in helping me sort through this.  I don't know if they agree with my analysis, but their discussion helped me think about it, and I liked what they had to say.

I think something Roberts said in his notes is a particularly appropriatet to end this article on.  Calling the "dominant discourse" the "cognitive default," and using the word "paralogy" to name how people talk with they are incredulous of metanarratives, Roberts named the two sides a little differently, but you can see this is just different clothing for the concepts I have been talking about.  Roberts said:
 

In other words, most people who are skeptical of metanarratives will engage in (or try to engage in)a kind of conversation we call paralogy.  Paralogy is a way of coping with our incredulity.  But in the present state of things, paralogy is hard for us to do, so hard, that it is not likely to become a dominant discourse in the forseeable future.  That's what Roberts suggested.

And I think so, too.
 

Rorty is a Wittgensteinian, a philosopher whose ideas work well within the Lyotardian postmodern frame.  In fact, I believe that what I am calling "paralogy" is more or less what Rorty calls "edification."  I much prefer the term "paralogy" for this role, but still, it is important to be able to move in between the language games of different thinkers.

Listen to the way Rorty sets up the word "edification."
 

And about edification (i.e., paralogy) he says
 

Some years ago, Rorty used to consider himself postmodern but more recently he rejects that label, perhaps because of the confusion and politics surrounding the use of the term.  But, can you see why history seems to ignore Rorty's attempt to deny his postmodernism?
 

I have added two more tools to our toolbox.  The first is Mary Klages lecture notes on postmodern topics that I think is just tops as a good introduction.  She covers a broad spectrum including: Saussure, Levi-Strauss, Derrida, Freud, Lacan, Cixous, Irigaray, Althusser, Bakhtin, Foucault, Butler.  If you need an introduction to any of these theorists, take a look at Klages pages.  She is in the toolbox to your left under "postmodern sites."

Next, I hadded a link to Scott Moore's continental philosophy page.  It is a good list of links not only to original works but to online secondary commentaries about  those works.  Click here to go to the tool linking you to the Moore site.
 

I am happy to report that our Maturana thread is developoing nicely.   Maria Nichterlein, Tony Coates, Andy Lock and Tony Michael Roberts have clearly been doing much more than I have in their studies of Humberto Maturana.  I understand that Nicherlein and Roberts have actually worked under Maturna.

And I find their discussion of Maturana's concepts are very helpful.  Last week, I asked about the concept of coordination and I had all sorts of useful help.  One parable from Nichterlein I thought was useful.  She said that to explain "coordination" Maturana gave the story of how he walked his dog Lobo.  The two of them would go for a walk but while they were walking Lobo would sometimes wander off down the wrong path.  Then, Maturana would lift his hand and say, "No, Lobo.  Come this way."  And good little Lobo would shift his direction and go with Maturana.

Of course, this was an elementary example for a beginner like me.  More difficult examples might be the way one bit of organic tissue (say finger tips on a human hand) are disturbed by their contact with another bit of tissue, say a rose.  In some sense, Maturana would say, the neurons aren't actually touching the rose.  Rather, the neurons are activated and stimulated, sending "pertubations" through the nervous systems, asthe organism with the fingers coordinates to the rose.  Much more, I hope, will come.  (And I hope I have this above explanation straight.)

Want to see what is leading me to think Maturana is postmodern (in the Lyotardian sense)?  It is his openness to alternative views.   Read this Maturana quote and you'll see what I mean:
 

I take this as Maturana, who certainly asserts his beliefs, leaving room for his own blindspots.  After all, he is the one who said:
 
 

That sounds postmodern to me.  After all, postmoderns are incredulous about metanarratives.
 

Not long ago, PMTH subscriber Andrew Lock forwarded a request he had received for someone to explain the postmodern deconstruction of normality.  Val Lewis had a perfect  parable ready, one  that she has been using for a long time in her teaching.

You can reach it by clicking here.
 
 

We have talked a bit about Lyotard's notion of differends on PMTH. My interpretation of this important concept is that a differend is a dispute of a particular kind.  It happens when two people are using terms differently because they are embedded in different language games.  It happens because our language has different rules in different language regions, and so.
 

Differends can lead to endless disputes that seem to get no where.  (If you want to read my study of how differends relate to therapy, please refer to my article on this topic.)

Sometimes, however, differends do not lead to disputes so much as to one party being trampled by the power of another to dominate the language game.  It makes it impossible for the offended party to voice its complaint.  Lyotard talks about this in relationship to the Nazi persecution and the slaughter of the Jewish people, and an interesting article online does a good job, it seems to me,  of explaining how a differend makes such violence possible.

In these troubled times of ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, it is, perhaps, good to look more deeply into aspect of differnds and to ponder their role in limiting our human understanding.  If you like, an interesting article online will assist you in that.  click here.
 
 

If you are to follow the ups and downs of PMTH, you might want  to know that PMTH is the offspring of another list, the MFTC list.  PMTH broke away from the parent list after a dispute around the question of whether postmodern listmembers should talk in that public forum with religious or family values people about their reasons (religious and otherwise) for rejecting homosexuality.

Some MFTC people thought this conversation should not take place in the presence of self-declared gays.  But many people on MFTC felt it was too restrictive to exclude such conversations on list. And thus PMTH was formed.

To this day, MFTC remains a list in which people avoid talking to people who are anti-homosexual about the reasons for their rejection of homosexuality.  We are open to such topics, however,  on PMTH.

Neverthless, there are some topics on PMTH that are not talked about, or that we are squeemish of talking about (and try to talk about them without being too explicit.)  People on PMTH sometimes worry about violating the privacy of others (especially clients, but relatives and friends not on the list too) and exclude or modify conversations for that reason.  It has not yet happened, but sooner or later someone who joins PMTH is likely to say something that most people here would feel is flaming.  Then our desire to have open free speech may be sorely tested, and, if it was sufficiently extreme, that person would probably be removed from the list.

And so the question of how much free speech one should have on an internet list continues to engage the PMTH community.  We don't have the answer, but in general the people here tend to feel it should be possible for people to talk across value positions like pro- homosexual and anti-homosexual, or pro-anything and anti-anything, as long as some privacy concerns are met and people are not wild in their willingness to demean other subscribers -- at least that's my feeling, and my sense of
the general perspective on PMTH.
 

There are now 100 subscribers to PMTH.  The vast majority of us are professional therapists, less than a third are graduate students and there is a sprinkling of us who are academics or scholars..

Almost all of us are from the US, but English speaking countries outside the US are common, including Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand. We also have about a dozen people here from non-English speaking countries.

And what about our gender ratio?
Using the first name for my clue, and throwing out names that were neither clearly male or female to my American ear, I calculate that 58% of us are male and 42% female.
 

A question in my mind is whether Narrative Therapy's method of "protest" (which perhaps is being illustrated on MFTC) is the best or only method for resisting the power of dominant ways of thinking, the power of homophobic portrayals, for example.

Alternative ideas are presented in paper that Nick Drury has called to our attention and which I have now paraphrased.  This is a paper by Kathleen Stacey that talks about methods of resistance other than protest. Click here to read my paraphrase of Stacey's paper.

I hope some of you will read this article, or at least my paraphrase of it, and help me think about the role of protest.  I am aware of at least one other article on this topic and I would also appreciate help in finding articles on this topic.

Basically, the topic is: How can degrading or pathologizing stereotypes and other images be overcome aside from "protest."
 

Critical psychologist Ian Parker has made more information available about his new journal and also an upcoming conference on Criticla psychology.  Click here to find out about each:

1. The new journal
2.  The upcoming conference
 
 
 
 

If you are intersted in reading Lyotard, the author if concepts like "paralogy" and "differend", but not so confident of your interest as to buy his book, then I have two great links for you.

The first link is is not just informative, it's an experience that will knock the socks off of anyone longing to understand postmodern philosophy.  Come back to this link if you don't have half an hour to spare.  Then, when you do come back, hold onto your socks and click here..

And, if you want to read primary source material, that is things Lyotard actually wrote, but you don't want to spend any money,  I suggest you read his most famous book online.  This book The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, and  this new link will give you the first 5 chapters of that book!

Now, If you're unaccustomed to philosophical texts, then be prepared.  Like most philosophers, Lyotard creates a new vocabulary of terms.  You can learn some of those terms while holding onto your socks in the first link.  Some of them you may have to figure out for yourself, or ask others, perhaps people on PMTH. Also, many of Lyotard's terms are included in the PMTH dictionary.

After this article and the link to the dictionary is removed from this front page of PMTH, access it under the SEARCH toolbox in lefthand margin.

The Lyotard tour, by the way, will continue to be available after the article has dropped off the PMTH NEWS front page.  You will be able to access it through the Lyotard tool in the "relevant philosophers" tool box.
 
 
 
 

At least one person took my advice and visited the Lyotard site Irecommended. About this site, George Spears said:
 

I agree!  Read last week's article about this site or check it out first hand by clicking  here.
 
 

1. Tool to Search PMTH NEWS

Have I got a tool for you!  It's just too good to tuck away in a toolbox.  See the strange little box at the left hand upper corner of the NEWS?  That will allow you to search for anything in the NEWS, anything, and find it, even back in the lost back pages of the NEWS.  It's a very powerful tool.

Go ahead.  Try it.  Put your name in the form, and see how many times you have appeared in the NEWS.  It will give you a list of the pages that include your name just like any search engine does when you look for something.  Go to a choice page, and then do whatever you have to do in your software to find your name.  In my software, Netscape, I type control-F and put in the word I'm looking for.  And there you'll be.

Of course, you don't have to limit yourself to looking for your own name.  Try looking for Kenneth Gergen, or look for "paralogy."  Look up whatever you want.  With this tool, you'll be able to navigate your way through this growing body of electronic text and find just the reference or article you're looking for.

It will get better, too, as time progresses.  When I started this process I didn't know what I was doing so I titled my files dumb names.  That will all change though.  I'm slowly going through the files and naming them more explanatory things, instead of "constru6" and so forth.  When that's fixed, i will make your list of hits easier to read, but even now you'll find your results useful.

And, every week, so I understand, our little search engine will reindex the whole PMTH NEWS site, but only every week.  that means that what appears this week may not appear in the engine until next week.  And that's the way it will be every week for here on out.

2. Tool to search the web

Another new tool will allow you to search the entire web integrating search results from 37 of the top search engines, all in one single search. That tool is right beneath the one I just described.  Click on the button in the toolbox and it will take you to a page that will allow you to have an integrated listing from 37 top engines.

3. Mariam-Webster Dictionary
    Just your standard dictionary, but a searchable one online.  You can access it through the Search toolbox.

5. Roget's Thesaurus
     This is just a standard thesaurus, but searchable.  Notice there is also a rhyming dictionary included.  See the Professional Toolbox.
 

6. Merck's Manual
     This old standby diagnostic manual is now available online.  Type in "schizophrenia" and see what you get.  See the Professional Toolbox.
 

7. Find Law
      An excellent resource to answer your legal questions.  See the Professional Toolbox.
 
 
 
 
 

I will describe half a dozen major themes tht took place on PMTH last week, although I am always aware how impossible it is to do justice to all the themes we discuss here.

1. Talk about our parent list,  MFTC -Off and on the postings on PMTH have been down a little while a handfull of PMTH frequent posters spent their limited time posting on MFTC.  On PMTH, we have also spent some time trying to make sense of the dispute that continues in MFTC.  And, even when we do not talk explicitly about MFTC, some of our other topics seem indirectly concerned with this issue.

2. Deleuze Article - Early in the week, Nick Drury drew our attention to a useful paper by Gilles Deleuze that elaborates on Foucault's concept of governmentality  by introducing the notion of "control societies."

I think this article gets into the heart of issues surrounding the notion of breaking out of oppression, so I (Lois Shawver) have prepared a paraphrase of this article.  You can read my paraphrase by clicking here  and, if you're so inclined, you can click on a link that will take you to the much longer original article.

3. LW readings and outline - Last week the readers have been busy outlining the first 64 aphorisms of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations.  This represents, as a whole, the first major section of this text.  Also, I have published my reading of aphorisms 65-69 which is available by clicking here.

4. Appreciation work (ai) - If we are stuck in conflict in our parent list (MFTC) one answer might be Appreciative Inquiry (ai), a relatively new project for promoting preferred change.  Tom Strong expressed an interest in this and you may remember he has contributed notes to PMTH on Appreciative Inquiry.

But is appreciative inquiry relevant to the concerns of PMTH?  Does it have something to say about therapy or about personal relationships?  This is an undeveloped area of  ai.  Still, Jane Whitehead had some ideas and contributed a handout on Imaginative Inquiry. And Jim Lord made it sound promising to my ear when he said that it involved letting
 

In fact, our discussion prompted one member to ask how to join the appreciative inquiry list.  Here is how to do so if people want to do that.  I already subscribe:
 

I wonder what an expert in appreciative inquiry would have to contribute to the dispute that continues on MFTC.  Also, click here to read about the upcoming conference on ai.  Remember, you can get 14 continuing education credits for attending this conference.

5. Doing and Viewing - Claire Robson and Michael Banks have been discussing Banks distinction between "viewing" and "doing."  "Doing" involves doing things (like exchanging posts).  "Viewing" involves reflecting on things.  Banks has also contributed a post on "conversational change" that may invite discussion among us.

6. Psychiatry and Drugs - Val posted an amazing letter from a psychiatrist who was resigning from the American Psychiatric Association because psychiatrists, so it was claimed, are in the pocket of pharmaceutical companies.  This caused some discussion of whether psychologists would also be in their pockets if psychologists  were were granted the prerogative of prescribing drugs.
 

I told you last week that I would at least report something on Mick Cooper's book, The Plural Self

Well, I've looked it over and read about a third of it, and I can say it's a a very interesting book.  And if you're going to write on some aspect of plural selves (such as Bakhtin or even on Multiple Personality Disorder) you would do well to have this book by your side.

It's got every perspective you can imagine in it.  There are fourteen chapters, many by well known people.  John Shotter has a chapter, , although I have not read this one yet (maybe next week).  And I recognize a number of other interesting names, for example, Mary Watkins whose own book, Invisible Guests, I read years ago and think is a  great introduction to this topic of plural selves.  I have always appreciated Hubert Hermans writing on the topic, too.

Colin Ross' chapter, while a bit modernist for my taste, is particularly interesting because Ross  is a Past Pesident of the International Society for the Study of Dissociation and has published very widely on this topic.  (Multiple Personality Disorder is grouped in the DSM III for the first time as a 'Dissociative Disorder.)  Ross takes the position that, while MPD is a psychiatric pathology, "polypsychism" is the "normal state of the human mind.(p.193)"  MPD and polypsychism are distinguished, he explains by:
 
 

But the meatiest chapter that I have read so far, I think is Cooper's chapter If you can't be Jekyll be Hyde.  Cooper relates his work to phenomenological issues.  Here, let me give you an excerpt from his chapter that I like.  He is theorizing how it is that the we develop "selves" and how they come to be plural:
 

Today, Peter Rober gives us another splendid article.  One of the things most interesting about his new article, I think, is the way it compares to another intriguing article contributed a few weeks ago by Jerry Gale. I think the most profound experience, however, comes from reading them both together.

Rober's new article is a study of three concepts of the self, the modernist self (a stable autonomous essence), the postmodern self (an ongoing autobiographical narrative), and what we might call an "experiential" self which consists, it seems, in ongoing self-statements said in the privacy of consciousness.  Rober argues that this experiential self is what family therapists generally mean by "self" and that it is useful in understandingt the client and in making interventions.  I believe Rober's sense of the experiential self was inspired at least in part by the writing of Goolishian and Anderson.

Now, contrast Rober's sense of an experiential self with the self that Gale is looking at in his article, which is a dialogic self when the self is understood in dialogue not with an inner voice, but with the client.  Gale's article is a few weeks old here, but it definitely deserves another glance.   In his article, he wants to call our attention to the way in which a focus on the inner voice distracts from our observation of our actual dialogue and lessens our accountability for what we actually say in the dialogue.  He argues this is so, it seems, because our inner voice, perhaps through rationalization, is so powerful that it can configure things so as to suit our interests and lessen our accountability for action.  At least that is how I understand Gale.

And the biggest paradox of all, I think, is that they may both be right.  These may be two sides of a coin.  The self-reflective inner dialogue that Rober extolls may be the other side of the coin for the defensive inner self that Gale asks  us to notice.  After all, sometimes I might think more profoundly when I reflect on things, but other times I might just convince myself of some grand rationalization.   But if both are true, then what do we do?

Maybe a discussion between them will help us here, but notiice there is something else to ponder:  It may well be that Rober is thinking of these matters as a constructivist might whereas Gale seems to be thinking of them as a constructionist (cf.constructionism vs constructionism).  Are they presenting different hypotheses about the world?  Or do they represent each other's  differAnce.  Perhaps their theories are a transvaluation of each other.

But whatever the relationship between their different theories, it is a matter of no small concern.  Should therapists reflect privately on the therapy transactions?  Or does this distract from the field of action between therapist and client?  This question has some history, not only in family therapy, but in psychoanalysis.  In recent years many psychoanalysts who are identified with the postmodern movement have taken a position much like Rober's, saying the analyst needs to attend to the inner experience in a kind of inner dialogue in order to understand the analysand(e.g. Natterson, 1991) whereas more constructionist psychoanalysts have argued that this inner dialogue is inherently biased or subjective (Renik, 1993).

So, again, should we focus on what we think privately in order to sort these things out?  Or should we focus on what we say and how we construct the client in our dialogue?

And, whatever we do, is this experiential focus on the inner experience of the therapist "postmodern"?
 

Yesterday, perhaps, you read the latest in a series of PMTH articles about the book by Fred Newman and Lois Holzman.  (Click here if you want to red that article now.)

Today, Tom Strong, Judy Weintraub and myself (Lois Shawver) discussed some of our questions about we have about the book, and Lois Holzman responded enough to tell us that she hoped to post a response to our questions by Monday.

So, we will have patience.  I look forward to her reply.  Mostly what I am curious about is whether Newman and Holzman claim to have found the best and last answer for therapy or if they just proudly present what seems to them the best answer but make space in their minds for other options.  It may seem a subtle difference, but I think it is very great.
 

Notice that a number of people's names appear as links, not only in PMTH NEWS. but also in associated articles.  And, several of you have given me some information about yourself in order that you may be included.  I encourage more of you to do so.  If you have given me your name and I have somehow neglected to include it, please indulge me and remind me.  I need help with this.  And I have decided to include every PMTH subscriber who would like to be included.  You're part of our community.  Look at Peter Rober's information in the link to give yourself an idea as to what to tell me.  And, if you have the flair, feel free to add a little something personal.  Tell us your website if you have one.  Later I will probably link individuals up to something more biographical if you like.

Then, as you browse through the associated articles you will also discover that a lot of the theorists that people discuss are also included.  Everytime their name appears it will not be linked, but this will increase as time goes by.  Hopefully, this will help all of us become increasingly confident in our discussions of who said what.  I am convinced that many of our disagreements are simply due to the fact that we cannot know everything important to know about everyone who has had something something important to say.
 

I hope you look at an article contributed today by our own Diana Cook.  It alerts us to watch for the ambiguities in our client's speech.  Cook  explains these ambiguities with her review of an edited  book by Dallin Oaks on practical linguistic issues.  Cook summarizes key passages from four chapters and describes their relevance to therapy.

These concerns remind me of a text I read long ago by William Empson. Empson's point was that we can learn to make sense of many ambiguities, but the effect of reading his text is to convince most readers that there are so many possible ambiguities in English that it is remarkable, indeed, that any of us ever understand each other.

But, perhaps, it is this very amibiguity that makes therapy possible.  If the client did not have something to say that is difficult for us to understand we would not have much reason or opportunity to ask and listen and hence show our concern and interest in what is being said.  In a word, as Harlene Anderson  (1997) has told us, therapy takes place within a hermeneutic circle.

Anderson, H. Conversation, Language, and
   Possibilities: A Postmodern Approach to
    Psychotherapy, Basic Books, 1997.
Empson, W. Seven Types of Ambiguity Penguin,
   1961.
Oaks, D. (Ed.), Linguistics at Work Fort Worth,
   Texas, Harcourt Brace, 1998
 

For a few days now I have been reading authors who argue we should make a lot of the distinction between social constructionism  and constructivism.

On Thursday,  I showed you Kenneth Gergen saying there were substantial reasons for maintaining this distinction.  Then there was a Friday article in which I gave you a lengthy review of Gergen's  (1989) plea that we maintain this distinction.  Otherwise, so he explained to us, we would be mired in the paradoxes of solipsism.  (Note he did not say constructivism was wrong or bad, but that we must maintain the distinction or the critics will be on our tails by saying social constructionism is logically inconsistent.)

But poor Kenneth Gergen, as the critics note, the distinction is poorly maintained (by people other than Gergen).  Now, Barbara Held, critic of postmodernism, says , "both terms now appear to be used interchangeably (p.102) and she quotes a long list of authors who say social constructionism and constructivism are roughly the same.

So where does she go with this?  Right where Gergen predicted.  She concludes that because social constructionism and constructivism now mean much the same thing, social constructionism is a form of solipsism.  Listen to her say this.  She says
 

Poor Gergen.  That's not the end of it, of course.  Gergen will challenge Held.  But, at the same time, many who take inspiration from Gergen will continue to ignore the distinction he thinks so important -- and Gergen will continue, in his frustration to try to show us all just how important that it is.
We owe it to someone who has inspired so many of us to try to understand him.  What is so important to Gergen about this distinction?

It may have something to do with giving respect for the tremendous theoretical work Gergen has given us.  Look in the last paragraph in Held's book and you will see, in the end,  Held tries to run away with Gergen's thunder.  That is, she says, in so many words, that she believes in social constructionism.  Apparently, however, she does not call it that.You listen to her, and see if you  agree:

What do you think?

Held, Barbara S. (1995).  Back to Reality: A Critique of Postmodern Theory in Psychotherapy.  New York: W. W. Norton.
also see PMTH Jerry Gale's response to Barbara Held