Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on the nature and significance of the therapeutic relationship in psychological counseling in Sri Lanka with the broader aim of examining the social and political dimensions of this relatively recent and now increasingly common practice.

Paper long abstract:

Whereas in the past psychological counseling in Sri Lanka often evoked NGO-based services for war- and disaster-affected communities, today these services are available through public hospitals, private practitioners, local state agencies and not-for-profit organizations in rural and urban areas, reaching people of diverse class, ethnic, and religious backgrounds. In this context, scholars have raised concerns not only about the appropriateness of Eurocentric models in Sri Lanka but also about efficacy and quality, where counselors are not always formally trained and institutional oversight is not yet fully in place. However, while quality or efficacy are measured in terms of purportedly international standards and diagnostic tools, an ethnographic lens highlights what might matter to practitioners and clients apart from, or even against, those parameters. It reveals how psychological discourse emerges in particular contexts as a unique formation in relation to existing moral frameworks and socio-political realities. Focusing on counseling practice in one district of Sri Lanka's Central Province, I examine how practitioners and clients talk about the therapeutic relationship, asking what metaphors and values shape it and how it fits into broader frames of meaning such as "family" or "community." I further consider the forms of sociality counseling may engender beyond the therapeutic session and their transformative potential as collective care or action. This is part of a broader effort to understand the social and political implications of counseling in Sri Lanka against the grain of anthropological critiques that emphasize its depoliticizing and individualizing effects.