Emotions and Knowledge in Expert Work: A Comparison of Two Psychotherapies

Knowledge practices, expert and nonexpert alike, have received increased scholarly attention, but their affective underpinnings remain little understood. This article builds on the extant literature and on original ethnographic and interview data to elaborate a model of affective-relational knowledge that distinguishes between emotions’ supportive, didactic, and inductive roles in expert work. The author compares psychoanalytic and cognitive behavioral psychotherapeutic practices and shows that all therapists rely on emotions’ supportive role. However, while psychoanalytic therapists depend on their emotions’ inductive function to understand patients’ internal states, their cognitive behavioral colleagues only rely on this strategy when their own tools fail to show results, emphasizing instead the didactic uses of their affective dispositions. Additionally, clinicians in these orientations adopt different strategies to legitimize their affective-relational work. Although psychotherapists are especially likely to rely on their emotions as epistemic tools, existing studies hint at this model’s applicability in other expert domains.