Verktygsdansen : Om psykologens yrkesutövning i en enslig diskurs

Sammanfattning: This essay examines a professional situation where the writer as a consultant is faced with a request for a ”tool” from one of the participants. This request elicits an emotional reaction that leads to the investigation of the tool-word as a metaphor. The Aristotelian concept of fronesis, the practical wisdom, forms the basis for the investigation. The tool-metaphor is seen as an effect of a neoliberal and hyper-individual culture that places the clinical psychologist in a combat between discourses. In an effort to find a more suitable metaphor, an associative comparison is made between the psychologist’s professional activity and dancing as an artform and phenomenon. Thinkers within the phenomenological and hermeneutical traditions as well as dancing philosophers enters into the investigation to highlight how dependent the psychologist is on an improvised interaction in the professional performance, and the importance of an ethically based view on human beings in this interaction.