Harlene Anderson

Harlene Anderson (born 1942) is an American Psychologist and a cofounder for the Postmodern Collaborative Approach to therapy. In the 1980s, Anderson and her colleague Harold A. Goolishian pioneered a new technique that is used to relate to patients within therapy through language and collaboration, and without the use of diagnostic labels. This approach to therapy places the patient in control of the therapy session and asks the therapist to focus on the present therapy session and ignore any preconceived notions they may have. This approach was first developed for the use of family and mental health therapy, but has since expanded into a variety of professional practices such as organizational psychology, higher education, and research.