Paradox as Epistemological Jump

Abstract

Recent articles on paradoxical interventions tend to view them as something given by a therapist to a patient, thus unintentionally adopting a unidirectional view of causality and an outmoded epistemology. It is postulated that change takes place in the context of a patient-therapist relationship and that when that relationship becomes paradoxical it becomes more difficult for the patient to view himself as a reified "thing." Paradox effects change, then, by altering the meaning of experience and modifying epistemological assumptions.