Jarl Wahlström, PhD, is Professor Emeritus in Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy and former director of the Psychotherapy Training and Research Centre at the Department of Psychology. He served for many years as head of the national integrative postgraduate specialization programme in psychotherapy for psychologists, organized by the Finnish University Network in Psychology, Psykonet. He has an advanced training in family and systems therapy, and more than thirty years’ experience as a clinical psychologist, family therapist, trainer and consultant, and university teacher. His main research interest is in psychotherapy discourse, a topic on which he has published in several international journals and books. He is the supervisor of several doctoral dissertations.
My main research interest is in discursive and narrative processes in psychotherapeutic encounters and their relation to the (re)constitution of agency positions and sense of agency as outcome of psychotherapy. With my colleagues I study the relationship between process (content) of psychotherapy and the outcome of treatment. We aim to show how, in the conversational exchange between client and therapist, the client’s perspective on and his/her position in relation to his/her problematic experience changes and affords a lost sense of agency in life to be re-established.