Some Call it Love: Exploring Norwegian Systemic Couple Therapists' Discourses of Love, Intimacy and Sexuality

This thesis is a qualitative study based on interviews and video material, of five therapists
conducting couple therapy. Norwegian systemic couple therapists' discourses about love and
intimate relationships have been explored with the aim of shedding light on couple therapy as
a professional field in which discourses about love, sexuality and intimate relationship are
drawn on, exchanged and negotiated. The method of analysis is discourse analysis, and
poststructuralist theory has informed the design and underpinned my epistemological stance.
A main issue has been to explore how systemic couple therapists occupy a position of power
as clients' expectations of them as professionals are linked to notions of objective knowledge.
This is simultaneously a challenge because most couple therapy issues are discursive. I have
looked specifically at how a discursive dynamic has unfolded in couple therapy and how
dominant discourses of love, as for instance 'the romantic,' stabilize and reproduce
heteronormativity. This analysis is intended to provide new insight into the field of systemic
couple therapy practice in relation to the importance of self-reflexivity. The limitations of the
study are discussed, reflexivity issues are explored and ideas for further research are
proposed. The implications of the study for therapeutic work with couples and training of
couple therapists has been elaborated.

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