A history of motivational interviewing and what its rise reveals about how cultural forms emerge and spread.

Motivational interviewing (MI) is a professional practice, a behavioral therapy, and a self-professed conversation style that encourages clients to talk themselves into change. Originally developed to treat alcoholics, MI quickly spread into a variety of professional fields including corrections, medicine, and sanitation. In Working the Difference, E. Summerson Carr focuses on the training and dissemination of MI to explore how cultural forms—and particularly forms of expertise—emerge and spread. The result is a compelling analysis of the American preoccupations at MI’s core, from democratic autonomy and freedom of speech to Protestant ethics and American pragmatism.

E. Summerson Carr is associate professor of social work and anthropology at the University of Chicago. She is the author of Scripting Addiction: The Politics of Therapeutic Talk and American Sobriety and co-editor of Scale: Discourse and Dimensions of Social Life.

List of Illustrations
Prologue
Introduction: Motivating Americans, Defusing Difference
Chapter 1 American Democracy (Or, How to Direct Autonomous Subjects)
Chapter 2 American Rhetoric: Therapeutic Performance and the Poetics of Behavior Change
Chapter 3 American Spirit: Presence, Profit, and Professional Reenchantment
Chapter 4 American Science: Faith and the Spirited Economy of Evidence-Based Practice
Chapter 5 American Pragmatism: Learning to Work the Difference (Or, the Life and Death of MI)
Conclusion: Dealing with Difference and the Movement of Method
Acknowledgments
Appendix: Some Notes on the Study of (In)experts
Notes
Works Cited
Index