The collaborative writing-with-clients method

Most of the dialogues on this site are co-written with the client whose voice appears in them. They are not transcripts. They are not reconstructed from session notes. They are texts I write together with the client in question — beginning from real exchanges we have had in session, developed through our continued conversation, and reviewed by the client before publication. The client has the final word; I do not publish material the client has not approved.

The form has a particular quality worth naming: the client speaks in the first person, in their own voice, alongside mine. This is unusual in clinical writing. The standard form is the case study, in which the clinician describes the patient — who appears only through the clinician's interpretation. That form has its uses, but it is structurally one-voiced. The collaborative dialogue lets both voices be heard.

Pseudonyms and identifying details

The names that appear in the dialogues are pseudonyms. The client chooses the pseudonym in collaboration with me. Identifying details — particulars of work, family, geography — are either kept generic or, when specificity matters to the writing, changed with the client's consent. When possible, clients will be referred to as they, though there are some situations in which a client's sex or gender is fundamental to the particular dialogue.

The client reviews the published version before it goes live and can request changes to any detail at any time, including after publication.

For every collaborative dialogue published on this site, consent is explicit, written, and revisable. I keep a record. The consent contemplates publication in this venue and eventual book publication. The client can withdraw consent at any time; in that event, the piece is removed from the site.

Philosophical grounding

The collaborative method is not just an ethical commitment. It is a methodological argument. The phenomenological tradition in which I work takes the client's experience as the starting point of clinical work: not as raw material to be interpreted through a clinician's framework, but as the place where meaning is actually being made. If that is the methodological position, then writing about clients — speaking about them, in case-study form — undercuts it. Speaking with them, in collaborative dialogue, brings the form of the writing into alignment with the form of the work.

This is also why the dialogues are written with the client as a participant rather than as a subject. The client is not the object of my interpretation; the client is a co-thinker in the conversation, and the published version is a co-product. What is made of any offering — including the offerings of these dialogues — belongs to the recipient.

Questions and concerns

If you are a client, past or current, with concerns about how your material is being used, please write to me at [email protected].

If you are a reader, clinician, or other party with questions about the method, please write to [email protected].