Epistemic injustice and psychotherapy

Psychotherapy is a form of psychological service that involves a collaborative process based on the relationship between a psychotherapist and a client/patient. The epistemic interdependence between psychotherapists and clients raises important questions concerning epistemic authority and power, as well as epistemic injustice, i.e., a kind of injustice that arises when one’s capacity as an epistemic agent is wrongfully denied. In this paper, we characterize, categorize, and discuss how epistemic injustice can be perpetrated in psychotherapy. To this end, we provide scenarios that illustrate ways in which three forms of epistemic injustice (testimonial, hermeneutical, and participatory) can arise in psychotherapeutic encounters, and explain how these forms of epistemic injustice threaten one’s ability to achieve self-understanding through psychotherapy. We finish by making some qualifications and briefly enumerating some ways to mitigate the risk of epistemic injustice in psychotherapy.