r The Association for Family Therapy 2005.

Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington

Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
Journal of Family Therapy (2005) 27: 352–369
0163-4445 (print); 1467-6427 (online)

Placement of responsibility and moral reasoning in

couple therapy

Katja Kurria and Jarl Wahlströmb

Within the past two decades there has been a growing awareness of the
importance of moral and ethical judgements in family and couple
therapy. In this article we provide a detailed analysis of placements of
responsibility related to blame in one couple therapy session. We suggest
that it is important to study therapeutic interaction in situ, when searching
for an understanding of moral reasoning in couple therapy and an ethical
evaluation of the practice. A detailed analysis of discursive tools used by
clients and therapists makes it possible to look at moral reasoning in
action as it unfolds within the flow of therapeutic conversation. The
findings are discussed in relation to two discourses of moral justification:
autonomy and relationality. The principle guiding the therapists’ actions
in the studied conversation could be called ‘relational autonomy’.

Since the debate in the 1980s around issues of circularity and

neutrality (cf. Avis, 1998; Goldner, 1985; Ivey and Scheel, 1998;
Scheel and Ivey, 1998; Selvini-Palazzoli et al., 1980; Siegenthaler
and Boss, 1998) there has been a growing awareness of the impor-
tance of moral and ethical judgements in family and couple therapy.
When one formulates a problem in addressing a therapy case, moral
issues are involved right from the beginning. Problem formulations in
therapy are not neutral. They are not simple descriptions of non-
preferred states of affairs; they necessarily commit the speakers to one
or another moral understanding. Negotiations on the question ‘what
is the problem’ will eventually turn towards the question ‘who is
responsible for solving it’. Placing of responsibility is an act of
executing moral judgement.
Recent studies of moral reasoning in couple and family therapy
(Newfield et al., 2000; Wall et al., 1999) approach the issue methodo-
logically from a position external to actual therapeutic situations.
They either focus on moral conflicts at the level of theory (cf.

a
Clinical Psychologist, Department of Psychology, University of Jyväskylä, Tapiolan-
tie33 as 1, 00610 Helsinki, Finland. E-mail: kskurri@luukku.com.
b
Professor of Psychology, Department of Psychology, University of Jyväskylä, Finland.

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 Placement of responsibility in couple therapy 353
Donovan, 2003), or they analyse the moral reasoning of therapists,
using interviews or questionnaires. We argue that such decontextua-
lized methods are insufficient in approaching moral reasoning in
therapy. Studies of what moral principles inform the ethical delibera-
tions of therapists, valuable as they may be, do not allow us access to
the uses of moral judgements in situ as they are put to work in
therapeutic encounters.
In this article we intend to show how the flow of conversation in
couple therapy presents the conversationalists with situations in which
moral evaluations cannot be avoided. We adopt a social constructionist
point of view, according to which moral reasoning in couple therapy is
a local and conversational issue. By this we imply that moral reasoning
happens in talk where the participants offer justifications, excuse
themselves and place responsibility. We regard issues of good or bad,
right or wrong, virtuous or vicious as something negotiated and
constructed in the flow of therapeutic conversation. We will look at
the discursive tools by which the participants in one couple therapy
conversation, when talking about the issues at hand, admit responsi-
bility, share it, or place responsibility on others. We have a special
interest in the therapists’ attempts to address the moral dilemmas that
follow from conflicting placements of responsibility.
When watching and listening to the videotaped recording of the
session, and when reading the written transcript, we noticed a
proliferation of mutual blaming and expressions of conflicting inter-
ests between the spouses. We were interested to follow how the
therapists intervened in those sequences, and how these interventions
placed responsibility on the partners. In this article we concentrate
especially on the therapists’ interventions regarding the husband but
we want to point out that the discursive practices shown were also
used when addressing the wife. Our reading was principally informed
by the practices of discursive psychology (Edwards, 1997, 1999;
Edwards and Potter, 1992, 2001; Potter, 1996, 2003a, 2003b; Potter
and Edwards, 1999) but we also used tools and ideas derived from
Goffman (1981) and conversation analysis (Peräkylä, 1995; Sacks et al.,
1978) and narratology (Bal, 1985; Genette, 1980).
We study the therapists’ moral work in the context of mutual blame
between the spouses (cf. Buttny, 1990; Edwards, 1995). Stratton
(2003a, 2003b) argues for the need to pay more attention to causal
attributions and blame in therapy encounters. We appreciate this but
want to stress the importance of studying therapy as an interactional
achievement. Attributions should not be abstracted from their inter-

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354 Katja Kurri and Jarl Wahlstro¨m
actional context but studied as part of the ongoing flow of the
conversation.
In the present conversation the therapists’ dilemma was framed by
the uses of two different moral discourses present in the talk of the
spouses. These are the discourses of autonomy and relationality. They
have been widely discussed in the philosophical literature (cf. Benha-
bib, 1987; Gilligan, 1982; Walker, 1998). Moral justification stressing
autonomy highlights the rights of individuals to pursue their own
interests, personal meanings and choices. A justification based on a
relationality discourse stresses the value of emotional support and
care; in this discourse, individuals are held to have a duty to be
responsive to others. Could and should the therapists seek to avoid
taking sides in relation to these discourses?

The case
The session took place in a university psychotherapy clinic in Finland
and was conducted in Finnish. Videotaping and the use of the sessions
for research purposes happened with the informed consent of the
clients. The analysis was carried out using the original Finnish audio-
and videotape and the transcript of this. Here the extracts are
translated into English with the aim of preserving the fluency of talk
and the emerging meanings as they were displayed in the Finnish
original.
The session analysed is the fifth out of seven sessions. The clients
referred themselves for treatment due to the distress and tension the
addiction problems of the family’s eldest daughter had brought about
for the rest of the family. They did not seek help for this daughter, but
explicitly for the repercussions her troublesome behaviour had had
for their relationship. This particular session was selected for analysis
because it is rich with tensions, apportioning of blame and conflicts of
interest between the spouses. There are five participants in the
session: the two spouses, two male family therapists, and one female
student in training. The spouses, ‘Erkki’ the husband and ‘Tuija’ the
wife, are both academically trained professionals in their early fifties.
We show five extracts from the transcript of the conversation to
allow readers to make their own observations of the discursive
practices in use. We recognize that the choice of the extracts is already
our construction and a part of the analysis. In the transcription,
numbers in parentheses indicate a length of a pause in seconds and
brackets mark the beginning of overlapping speech.

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 Placement of responsibility in couple therapy 355
The session
The choice of the extracts has been made with the intent to show a
representative variety of how responsibility is placed, both in client
and therapist talk. The extracts are presented in chronological order.
The interventions are of course not isolated pieces of action; each one
offers a context for the following ones, and is in relation to the
spouses’ talk. Each extract is followed by a detailed analytic commen-
tary.
During the first part of this session the spouses relate a very painful
situation in which they have been the previous day. Their eldest
daughter has had a life-threatening accident caused by her excessive
use of alcohol. The father has visited her in hospital but was not, due
to mixed and difficult emotions, able to stay for more than a few
minutes. After this the discussion turns on a more general level to the
differences of the two spouses in handling emotionally challenging
situations (cf. Kurri and Wahlström, 2003). The husband relates how
what he perceives as undue emotionality in his wife affects him to the
point where he becomes agitated and angry, and may start shouting.
In our first extract one of the therapists asks about this.

Extract 1: Inviting the participants to examine their mental constructs

1 T1: What is your thought about that . . . which you could sort of put
2 into one sentence . . . when you see that now Tuija is again very
3 emotional or how [might one say?
4 H: [Yes yes, overcome by her emotions and
5 confuses with them the matter which we should now think about
6 and discuss . . . what my thought is in that situation.
7 T1: Mm, and can you put into words the kind of automatic thought
8 which then comes [into your head?
9 H: [Yeah mm.
10 (3)
11 H: Well there the problem probably is . . . it needs to be put into
12 words but that doesn’t quite succeed just now.
13 (14)

This extract is interesting from the viewpoint of placement of

responsibility. The therapist’s questions are not oriented towards the
behaviour of the spouses, but towards the constructive work of the
husband (cf. Edwards and Potter, 1992). This may be seen as inviting
the husband to accept more responsibility for his agitated responses to
the wife’s ‘emotionality’.

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356 Katja Kurri and Jarl Wahlstro¨m
In lines 1–3 the husband is asked to put into one sentence
what goes through his head in situations in which he perceives his
wife as acting very emotionally. The phrasing ‘or how might one say’
at the end of the therapist’s question implies that words other than
‘emotional’ could be used to describe the wife’s behaviour. The
husband, however, does not comply with the request but rather
focuses on the undesired consequences of the wife’s ‘emotionality’
(lines 4–6).
The therapist persists with his questions but changes the wording
from a ‘thought’ to ‘automatic thought’ (lines 7–8). This seems to
imply less responsibility for whatever thought comes to mind, and
works towards making the disclosure of the thinking easier. The
therapist’s question makes it evident that there are thoughts in the
husband’s ‘head’, and that what is looked for here is the relation of
these thoughts to his agitated shouting behaviour. The husband seems
to accept the task of identifying such a thought (line 9) but after a
pause announces his inability to comply, despite appreciating the
value of the task lines (11–12).
In this constructive framework the husband’s behaviour is defined,
not as an immediate reaction to his wife’s state of mind, but as
mediated by his constructions of this. The therapist’s question posi-
tions the husband as an agent. This places responsibility on him. In
face of the husband’s difficulty in complying, which may be read as an
attempt to avoid accepting any responsibility, the therapist softens his
approach. By asking for an ‘automatic’ thought, he attributes less
personal ownership of the construction. Extract 2 continues the
conversation after a few turns.

Extract 2: Inviting other-oriented accounts

1 T1: So thinking back . . . thinking in a relaxed situation . . . what do you

2 think it is that makes . . .
3 H: Mm.
4 T1: Tuija kind of react as she reacts?
5 (3)
6 H: Yes, well it’s how I am then . . . only that.
7 T1: You think that it is related particularly to you?
8 H: Yes that I then . . . well now what she has said here too reinforces the
9 idea . . . and in any case I feel that I’m not able to behave in any way
10 in that situation that wouldn’t set off in Tuija something like this.
11 T2: What do you think about this then that Tuija invests so much emotion
12 in that situation?

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 Placement of responsibility in couple therapy 357
13 H: Yes for me it’s quite unnecessary . . . we would get along better with
14 less . . . I think something like that.
15 T2: Why does she invest . . . do you have an idea about that?
16 H: Well it’s her habit and characteristic.

In these few turns we can see many subtle shifts in the husband’s
placement of responsibility. We can also follow the therapists’ quite
persistent continuation of the work that had begun already in Extract 1.
This sequence begins when both therapists continue with a series of
questions concerning the husband’s thinking concerning his wife.
These other-oriented questions (Brown, 1997; Tomm, 1987, 1988)
invite the husband to reflect in ‘a relaxed situation’ and openly give his
view on the reasons for the wife’s emotional conduct (lines 1–2 and 4).
In response the husband offers his own behaviour as a source of
explanation (line 6). The therapist’s comment ‘You think that it is
related particularly to you?’ (line 7) seems to mark at least partial
disapproval of this account. The husband responds by saying that it
would be impossible for him to act in a way that would not ‘set off in
Tuija something like this’.
These turns are interesting from the point of view of how respon-
sibility is placed. When offering his own way of behaving as the source
of the wife’s ‘emotionality’, the husband seemingly admits responsi-
bility. However, by constructing himself as incapable of behaving in
any way that would not set this off – in his judgement non-preferred –
reaction in her, the call for change is directed towards the wife. Then
again, the use of a mechanical metaphor (‘set [this] off ’) works also to
mitigate the wife’s potentiality for change. Neither one of the actors
seems to possess power to influence the course of events.
Therapist T2 continues with the other-oriented questions (lines 11–
12). He picks up on a claim made by the husband earlier with respect
to the wife being overcome by her emotions. The husband’s response
is somewhat blaming when he states that ‘with less we would get along
better’. The therapist ignores this and returns to the invitation for an
other-oriented account (line 15). The husband’s response, ‘Well it’s
her habit and characteristic’, is interesting. The use of the word
‘characteristic’ gives the understanding that the behaviour would be
difficult to change while, on the other hand, the expression ‘habit’
refers to behaviours over which a person can have more control.
During the extract the husband places the blame on himself; he gives
a view of the situation as intractable; and he hints at the need for
change on the part of the wife.

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358 Katja Kurri and Jarl Wahlstro¨m
After this there is a rather heated discussion between the spouses,
where the wife accuses the husband of not being prepared to risk
showing his emotions, and the husband in his turn charges the wife
for blocking his chances to do so (for details cf. Kurri and Wahlström,
2003, extract 4.7). Therapist T1 offers a summary:

Extract 3: Looking at a transactional pattern

1 T1: Is the experience then something like . . . I started now to think

2 when you spoke like that . . . is it also that you feel that Tuija with
3 way her of showing her feelings sort of takes space from you . . .
4 [to show your feelings?
5 H: [Mm yes, perhaps yeah.
6 T1: Whereas Tuija thinks that she must show those feelings because you
7 don’t show them.
8 H: Yes yes.
9 W: Yes something like that . . . I feel that maybe this is why I somehow
10 wish that when you see that I now throw myself into this so much
11 that you then also somehow even a little . . .
12 H: Mm.
13 T1: But it works just the opposite.

The therapist’s summary works to validate the husband’s experience

of ‘being blocked’ and is also recognized by him as such (line 5).
However, the summary reframes the wife’s conduct as having a
basically helpful intent (lines 6–7). This reformulation is reinforced
by the husband (line 8). The therapist’s summary receives also at least
partial acceptance by the wife (line 9). Her deliberations are formu-
lated, however, in a way that from the husband’s position could also be
understood as apportioning blame (lines 9–11). After this the thera-
pist takes the turn (line 13) even though the wife addresses her speech
directly to the husband (cf. Goffman, 1976; Sacks et al., 1978). This
move is apparently used to obstruct a recurrence of the pattern of
blame and counter-blame present earlier in the conversation.
The therapist’s statement (line 13) emphasizes the reformulation of
the transactional pattern as expressing good intentions on both sides.
The therapist appears here to deconstruct blame, the message being
that the intentions behind a person’s conduct may be good or
understandable even though the outcome may be something not
wished for and experienced as uncomfortable. If the intentions are
good but the outcome is undesired, then it appears as if something
resembling bad luck or fate is in operation. In that case none of the

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 Placement of responsibility in couple therapy 359
participants could be held responsible for the course of events. The
responsibility is given to the transactional pattern, so to speak.
At this point of the session there is more talk about the events of the
previous day, and the way the husband tried to cope with the situation
where he confronted their daughter in the hospital after her accident.
He reflects upon some afterthoughts concerning the incident:

Extract 4: The dilemma of being willing but not able

1 H: Yes, I was in fact kind of annoyed . . . maybe I ought not to have gone
2 because I wish I were not towards Tanja (the daughter) . . . that I
3 would not treat her in a cold and unfeeling way and it annoys
4 me because such was the meeting . . . I couldn’t do it . . . she was
5 muddled and on a respirator and of course that too gave a setting
6 to it . . . but then on the other hand I was annoyed that I perhaps
7 shouldn’t have gone there at all.
8 T1: What would have been . . . if you would imagine that you could have
9 done exactly what you would have wanted to do . . . how would you
10 then have been there?
11 (4)
12 H: Well something like . . . hold her hand and shed a couple of tears
13 over how my oldest daughter is there in a miserable state. . . and to
14 talk comfortingly and to encourage her that we will surely still think
15 of something about how you will move on from this . . .
16 something like that . . . but it was prevented.

In Extract 4 we see how the therapist confronts the husband’s

displays of his agency. There is in the husband’s account of the
meeting (lines 1–7) an interesting double aspect to self-blame and
taking responsibility. He states that he is annoyed with himself for
going to visit the daughter since he was unable to treat her differently
from the way he did. He does not, however, take responsibility for this
limitation, only for the decision to go and see the daughter when he
should have been aware of his inability to express the feelings he
would have wished.
The therapist responds to the husband’s account with a hypothe-
tical question (cf. Peräkylä, 1995). The question does not challenge the
husband’s and the wife’s view of the former’s inability to show his
emotions. Rather, by invoking an imaginary situation, the husband is
offered an opportunity and an obligation to give an account in which
he can and must script (cf. Edwards, 1994) his preferred choice of
action. His account of this seems to be to a large extent in accord with his
wife’s wishes. His use of the expression ‘to shed a couple of tears’ is,

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360 Katja Kurri and Jarl Wahlstro¨m
however, consistent with his previous view that expressing too much
emotion is unwarranted. He also continues to evade responsibility
by attributing the failure to comply with his own will to an alien cause:
‘it was prevented.’ In the context of the session the use of the
hypothetical question gives the husband full agency over his choices.
The question requires him to accept responsibility for his intentions,
although he is partly excused for not having the ability to completely
fulfil them.
Later in the session the three therapists dealt with the issues of
responsibility also in a reflective conversation (Andersen, 1990). Most
of this reflective conversation is given in Extract 5.

Extract 5: Highlighting the dilemma and mutual good intentions

1 T2: If somebody . . . some person would say that he is both angry [and
2 T1: [Mm.
3 T2: then at the same moment also at some [point then experiences this
4 T1: [Mm.
5 T2: kind of caring . . .
6 T2: [feelings . . . they would seem in that situation to be . . .
7 T1: [Mm mm.
8 T2: [quite right and adequate feelings.
9 T1: [Mm mm, yeah yeah yeah yeah . . .
10 T2: And now in some [way,
11 T1: [I’m now angry but I’m also very sad and I’m also
12 upset . . . I feel that I’m not able to function . . . I know that I however
13 have to be able to function . . . so kind of all these feelings are there . . .
14 T2: Mm.
15 T1: but . . . some of them are bad . . . some according to Erkki and some
16 according to Tuija.
17 T3: Yes, in my opinion both said however that the original purpose was
18 the same . . . both want to share . . .
19 M: [Mm.
20 T1: [Yes yeah.
21 T3: the matter and think over [the matter . . . as far as I remember
22 rightly so . . .
23 T1: [Yeah mm mm yeah . . .
24 T3: [both said it quite in the same way but . . .
25 T1: [yeah yeah yeah.
26 T1: And then both of them are disappointed over this . . . how did it end
27 up like this . . . why do I see ((laughing from here on)) . . . why does
28 the other have so wrong feelings [that we . . .
29 H: [((laughing))
30 W: [((laughing))
31 T1: can’t share this.

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 Placement of responsibility in couple therapy 361
32 H: yeah yeah.
33 (7)
34 T1: When the first thought both of them had was that if we only now
35 were in such a situation that we could share . . .
36 T3: [When the desire is the same and the purpose . . .
37 T1: [Yeah yeah yeah.
38 (3)
39 H: Yes.

Here therapist T2 starts an interesting therapeutic move. He intro-

duces a hypothetical character (‘if somebody . . . some person said that
. . .’). This character is scripted (Edwards, 1994) by the therapist as
having simultaneously both feelings of anger and caring, which
correspond to the different and juxtaposed emotions expressed by
the spouses. The therapist then goes on to evaluate this hypothetical
character’s feelings as ‘right and adequate’. Therapist T1 joins forces
with his colleague in the construction of this hypothetical character.
He adopts an internal focalization (Bal, 1985; Genette, 1980) by
speaking from the point of view of this character. This change in
footing can be noted on the audiotape in the way his voice deepens in
pitch (Goffman, 1981). This internal perspective persuades the
listener to see the world through the character’s eyes or to live the
emotions as the character does.
When therapist T1 goes back to talking in his own voice he basically
states the dilemma of moral judgement by saying, ‘some of them [i.e.
the feelings] are bad . . . some according to Erkki and some according
to Tuija’ (lines 15–16). At this point the female student (T3) who has
been silent for most of the conversation reactivates the notion of good
intentions. From her position of having been a keen listener to the
conversation she offers the observation that both spouses have
expressed their willingness to consider ‘to share the matter and to
think over the matter’. It seems that her turn addresses the delicacy
involved in offering reframings of the clients’ problem formulations,
and especially the potential criticism embedded in the therapist’s
previous account. Therapist T1, as if picking up the cue, then frames
his interpretation of the problem more carefully. He achieves this
again through the use of internal focalization: ‘why do I see . . . why
does the other have so wrong feelings’ (lines 27–28), and through
laughter. Internal focalization is again used to persuade the partners
to look at their situation from a different perspective, and the use of
humour softens a message that might otherwise have been threaten-
ing to the couple (Buttny, 2001).

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362 Katja Kurri and Jarl Wahlstro¨m
Conclusions
Moral reasoning at work in the therapy session
The therapeutic challenge faced by the therapists in the analysed
conversation was a rather familiar one. The wife complains about
her husband’s somehow restricted expression of emotions, while
the husband sees the wife as too emotional, and unduly pressing
him for change. What are the ethical issues involved in deal-
ing therapeutically with this kind of problem formulation? In order
to approach this question we focused our analysis on how res-
ponsibility was placed in the talk, as this unfolded in the flow of
conversation.
From our reading we can formulate the following moral dilemma
as emerging from the therapy talk: Does the wife, on some ethical
grounds, have the right to expect the husband to take her feelings into
account when dealing with the situation or does she have a respon-
sibility to understand her husband’s ways of dealing with emotional
situations? Does the husband, on some ethical grounds, have the right
to expect the wife to take into account his particular way of dealing
with painful emotions, although they are not in accord with her
expectations, or does he have a responsibility to care about the wife’s
wishes?
How do therapists deal with moral dilemmas of this kind? In the
instant unfolding of the therapeutic process there is not much room
for deliberate moral reasoning to form a basis for the moral judge-
ments that will be made. We wanted to take a close look at one session
to be able to observe how these therapists approached the ethical
challenge in vivo.
We identified two different types of intervention. The first focused
on promoting the individual agency and responsibility of the spouses
and the second type on highlighting the mutual responsibility of
transactions. The therapists were quite consistent in their responses to
the couples’ blaming. When the spouses apportioned blame, the
therapists focused their questions on the active constructive work of
the spouse laying the blame. The therapists shifted the focus from the
accused partner, and implicitly placed responsibility on the spouse
apportioning blame. Thus they approached accounts of conflicts not
by scrutinizing the events per se but by attributing responsibility for
producing descriptions.
It emerges from our analysis that one main practice in dealing with
conflicting claims of responsibility was to challenge the clients to give

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 Placement of responsibility in couple therapy 363
accounts of their deeds or thoughts within the conversation.1 An
example of this was the use of hypothetical questions. With a
hypothetical question the therapists invoked an imaginary situation
and, when asking the husband to give an account of his behaviour in
this, assigned him full responsibility for his choices in the therapeutic
situation. This challenged his excuses concerning his behaviour in an
actual life situation; excuses based on the claim of his inability to
behave differently in emotionally laden situations. The claim of
inability carries an important function of saving face and protecting
the moral status of the partners in the relationship (cf. Kurri and
Wahlström, 2001, 2003), and it is noteworthy that the hypothetical
question did not violate this function. It, however, offered the
possibility – in the session – to display an intention that could not be
displayed in the actual life situation.
In other instances the therapists addressed issues of responsibility
concerning events outside the therapy conversation. They reformulated
some of the spouses’ conducts as having good intentions, in spite of
their bad consequences. These kinds of intervention mainly took the
form of comments. Some of these comments stood out as untypical
turns in the session, which mainly adhered to a question-answer
interview format. Most of the comments were offered within the
reflecting team conversations. Typically, neither spouse was identified
as responsible for the negative consequences, but both were given
credit for the good intentions. Unfortunate outcomes were attributed
to the transactional pattern itself, which almost worked as if repre-
senting blind forces of fate.
Some of the therapists’ interventions quite apparently expressed
explicit moral judgements. The therapists clearly preferred shared
responsibility. This alternative version was achieved by highlighting
mutuality, i.e. explicating how the spouses function as contexts for
each other. The therapists evaluated the different feelings the spouses
described as adequate. Accordingly, the feelings themselves were not
considered to be the problem, in contrast to the claims made by the
spouses. The therapists also assigned responsibility to both spouses for
shaping their own contribution to the couples’ emotional work.

1
This practice pays attention to what Edwards and Potter (1992) call second-level
accountability. They point out that most attention is usually given to first-level accountability,
i.e. how people attribute responsibility for events. How people take or renounce responsibility
for producing attributions is more seldom addressed.

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364 Katja Kurri and Jarl Wahlstro¨m
Personal responsibility in the context of interrelatedness could be seen
to be a preferred ethical principle in the therapists’ talk.

Relational autonomy
The moral dilemma present in the spouses’ talk can, on a more
generic level, be seen as a conflict between two different discourses of
moral justification, i.e. the discourses of autonomy and relationality (cf.
Benhabib, 1987; Gilligan, 1982; Walker, 1998). These discourses
differ in what they consider as morally significant. Moral justification
stressing autonomy highlights individuals’ rights to pursue their own
interests, construct their own personal meanings and make their own
choices. The relationality discourse stresses the value of emotional
support and care; individuals in this discourse are held responsible for
responsiveness to others.
We can approach the question of moral justification by contem-
plating what the potential consequences could have been if the
therapists had adopted either an autonomy discourse or a relational
discourse. The autonomy discourse would have, for example, put an
obligation on the wife not to challenge the husband but to adjust
to the situation as it is. Paradoxically this would also have jeopardized
the wife’s autonomy and offered her an oppressive social role of
self-sacrifice (cf. Card, 1990; Friedman, 1993; Grimshaw, 1986;
Keller, 1997). If the therapists had chosen the discourse of relation-
ality it could have come to mean ignoring the husband’s view of his
inability to change, denying his autonomy, and the validity of his
experiences. The therapists’ responses, however, seemed not to
reinforce either an autonomy discourse or a relationality discourse
alone.
The therapists’ solution to the moral dilemma presented to them
may be said to have followed a principle of relational autonomy. Valuing
autonomy in therapy talk was achieved by strengthening the client’s
discursive displays of agency, while not denying the narrations of a
diminished experience of agency. Valuing relationality was realized by
highlighting the clients’ responsibility for how they related to each
other. Thus we can say that the therapists’ talk produced a situation
where the partners’ autonomy was necessarily understood as rela-
tional (cf. Keller, 1997). Talk arising out of a discourse of relational
autonomy indicates that identity and autonomy are generated from a
matrix of relations.

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 Placement of responsibility in couple therapy 365
Gender issues in renegotiating the moral order
Gender socialization is a major theme related to the currently
analysed conversation. Women are commonly seen as emotional
and caring and men as rational and autonomous.2 This construction
is often understood as natural, non-political and unproblematic
(Gilligan, 1982). In everyday discourse emotion and ratio are held
as natural dispositions and thus non-negotiable, i.e. outside the realm
of agency of both genders. These (dis)positions are not valued as
equal. Rationality and autonomy are often more valued than caring
emotionality. In the conversation we could observe that the husband
was more inclined to rely on justifications based on the autonomy
discourse, whereas the wife preferred the discourse of relationality.
How does our notion of relational autonomy relate to issues of gender
socialization?
In the session the therapists did not explicitly discuss the dilemma
under negotiation, ‘valuing expression of emotions versus valuing
autonomy’, as a gendered one. Although the therapists did not
challenge the spouses’ rather gender-stereotyped positions as such,
they did challenge their positioning of themselves as not having
agency over their emotions. Vatcher and Bogo (2001) have suggested
that promoting open expression of (positive) emotions could be
considered as a guiding ethical principle of couple therapy. There
are, however, ethical and pragmatic concerns involved in promoting
‘positive emotions’. Expression of emotions is not only a question of
communicating inner and private feelings but also a social act and
related to the distribution of value and honour.
It appears that in the analysed case the therapists’ preference for
accounts where the clients take responsibility for their attributions,
where good intentions can be displayed in spite of non-preferred
outcomes, and where shared expression of emotions is valued,
created a possibility for the spouses to attain new and less gender-
strict positions within the relationship. Addressing issues of responsi-
bility and accountability, i.e. assuming agency of one’s thoughts,
emotions and actions in mutual relation to others, may be seen as a
possibility to engage men more fully in relationship change (cf.

2
The two therapists in our case were both male and the student was female. It is
interesting to imagine how the conversation might have proceeded if the gender grouping had
been different. We, however, cannot make any a priori assumptions concerning the impact of
the gender of the therapists, and we do not have the possibility here of making comparative
observations, but we do recognize its importance.

r 2005 The Association for Family Therapy and Systemic Practice

366 Katja Kurri and Jarl Wahlstro¨m
Dienhart, 2001). In this case the adoption of non-direct and delicate
ways of challenging the gender-stereotyped moral order of the
relationship appeared to be respectful in relation to the clients’
narration of their painful situation. However, we do see the value
and importance of informing clients of the processes of gender
socialization.
Is the idea of relational autonomy as a leading principle valid in
every couple therapy case? Would it apply in a situation of abuse and
‘power imbalance’? Certainly we would consider that it is not morally
viable to prescribe shared responsibility in a case where a man is
hitting his female partner (cf. Goldner, 1998). Practices of neutrality
and circularity in systems therapy have been raised as a controversial
issue especially by feminist writers (cf. Avis, 1998; Goldner, 1985,
1998; Siegenthaler and Boss, 1998). Remaining neutral or doing
circular assumptions in a case of abuse has been held to be a systemic
flaw. These practices certainly distribute responsibility equally also in
situations where the spouses are not in equal positions. When
promoting relational autonomy the therapist does not remain neutral
but distributes responsibility in a new way. In cases of abuse, to follow
the idea of relational autonomy could mean that the therapists help
the abused to regain her autonomy by emphasizing her responsibility
for herself (Kurri and Wahlström, 2001). The abuser, on the other
hand, has to take responsibility for his actions and move towards the
idea of relational ethics.

Studying moral reasoning of couple therapy

It is difficult to imagine how these therapists, or the spouses whose
talk we have been analysing, would have responded to an interview
concerning their moral stance in couple therapy. We assume that the
richness of the details, the situational subtleties of the practices that
place responsibility would have been missed. Moreover, we assume
that the therapists would not have been able to tell how they do what
they do. The participants’ concern when giving answers to an
interviewer’s questions are quite different from what they are in a
therapy conversation (Edwards, 1999; Leudar and Antaki, 1996;
Potter and Wetherell, 1987). From an interview we would learn how
the therapists interpret the interviewers’ questions, and how they
position themselves in relation to the issues. The therapists might
have used expressions such as facilitating respect, mutual caring,
respect, open dialogue, humility, trust, honesty (cf. e.g. Gergen, 2001;

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 Placement of responsibility in couple therapy 367
Seikkula et al., 2003; Swim et al., 2001) to express the guiding
principles of their work. Still, we would not have obtained an accurate
idea of their actions in actual couple therapy encounters.
Ethical guidelines have been criticized for neglecting the ethical
conflicts or competing interests arising from different system levels of
individual versus family (Newfield et al., 2000) and it has been
suggested that a process ethics needs to be established (Gergen,
2001; Swim et al., 2001). We welcome these ideas and wish to point
out that ethical considerations cannot be based only on evaluations
concerning existing practices where indirect or decontextualized
methods are used. Decontextualized methods may lead to a partial
and detached understanding of the moral reasoning as employed in
therapy encounters. We need detailed descriptions of how moral
dilemmas are constituted in actual therapeutic encounters, and how
participants in these encounters attempt to solve them.

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