Location of Self: More Than A Decade Later

This article explores the use of location of self (LOS) in the years since the initial publication in 2010 and represents a collaboration of five family therapists. The initial part of the paper underscores LOS as both a clinical dialogic tool and conceptual framework, reviews the relevant literature during the time interval, and reflects on the core tenets of LOS, as well as emergent ideas, practices, and questions. The second part of the article presents the clinical work of four co-authors, illustrating their unique and creative use of LOS. Specifically, it discusses dialogue about the interplay of social locations in therapy, a form of use of self, a social location-self of the therapist awareness, and a conceptual frame for recognizing supremacy as an in-here phenomenon. That is, one embedded in social locations, which all people occupy, thus directing our attention to supremacy systems inside of us. LOS also underscores supremacy as a clinical issue, heightens attunement to the ways it can appear among the privileged and the subjugated, and increases attention to expanded ways of addressing it in therapy. We suggest that LOS dialogue tends to be most generative and easeful among therapists and clients who share multiple or similar subjugated locations, but it can also occur in the multi-privileged therapy relationship, depending on the awareness and comfort with such material. The reviewed literature suggests that LOS is used more often with multi-subjugated clients than those who are multi-privileged. We pose the question as to whether the power of the latter is a driving factor in this, given the challenges of addressing supremacy. We present the multiple perspectives within a single paper based on the unitary process of internal reviews and discussions of all co-author sections.