Below are various ideas on how ABT can be used to support the therapist in their interactions with the client.
First, one could say that what needs to be initiated is a sociological socratic dialogue. Compared to a psychotherapeutic socratic dialogue in psychotherapy, the sociological Socratic dialogue will focus on supporting and building sociological awareness in the client. The focus is on developing critical thinking and sociological imagination. For example, viewing one’s thoughts as part of a system, as part of various discourses. The dialogue builds on the critical thinking that already exists in most people due to the reflective capacity that people develop as they go through life. The sociotherapist encourages the client to intensify that critical thinking.
The sociotherapist is also an “attention mentor,” as it has been called in cognitive sociology (Zerubavel, 2015). Zerubavel is one of the leading authors in cognitive sociology, having written extensively on concepts such as optical socialization, “moral focusing,” and how culture influences our curiosity (Zerubavel, 2015). Zerubavel argues that there is such a thing as “attention socialization”, that we can have “attention mentors,” such as experts who guide us in what to focus on in order to appreciate a work of art (Zerubavel, 2015, p. 65). The sociotherapist’s role could be described as that of an attention mentor, supporting the search for the good life.
ABT can be used to set goals for therapy following the socioanalysis. The foundation of ABT is that the sociotherapist should support the client in their attempts to achieve eudaimonic balance. The sociotherapist helps the client identify what may be blocked and what various discourses, socialities, materialities, and chains of thought the person is bound to, factors that cause the client to experience various imbalances.
The therapist can be guided by ABT during the conversation. It can be used to analyze the balances and imbalances present in the ongoing conversation. Examples of balance dimensions to consider in the relationship between the therapist and the client. First comes the name of the balance dimension, followed by the name of the state of balance within that dimension.
Rhythm: Slow speediness: Is the rhythm right? Is there enough time for the process? Is there a pace at which imbalances are shifting for the better?
Risk: Safe risk-taking: Is there a secure foundation for taking risks, such as being vulnerable and challenging reified chains of thought?
Citizenship: Heroic citizenship: Is the client addressed as a citizen and a moral agent? Embedded autonomy: Does the client feel a sense of community with the therapist and, at the same time, have the tools to build agency?
Flourishing: Eudaimonic hedonism: Is resonance built in the encounter, or can the pain in therapy become a source of pleasure through insight?
Play: Playful playfulness: Is there a sense of playfulness and humor in the encounter?
Struggle: Disconsensus: Is doubt and trust in balance? Does the therapist invite diverse interpretations and understandings, or are questions brushed aside as unwanted resistance? Is the client directed toward the civic struggle? Is there a power struggle between the therapist and the client that hinders a productive encounter?
Emotions: Emotional reflexivity: Is emotional energy built up in the encounter so that the client and therapist feel a sense of momentum?
Attention: Outward inward lookingness: Does the therapist direct the client’s gaze outward toward society, so that the gaze subsequently directed inward becomes more informed by these fundamentally socialized perspectives?
Body: Cultured naturalness: Does the conversation acknowledge that culture and nature are closely intertwined, where nature must be taken into account but must not lead to a “biologization”, such as viewing biological factors as an overly dominant explanatory factor for the client’s problems?
Action: Subjectivized objectification: Is there a balance between treating the client as a subject (as another human being) and as an object (using techniques)?
Identity: Genuine pretending: Is theatricality, that is, taking on a role too strongly, avoided, as Asplund (1987) observed leads to alienation and hinders emotional understanding? Is identity fundamentalism, such as overestimating the need for authenticity, avoided?
ABT can also be used to analyze the therapist themselves as well as the interaction with the client. If the therapist exhibits manifest imbalances in the encounter with the client, the interaction will be less successful. The therapist can engage in self, analysis to build a life in which more states of balance are manifested and routine to the extent that they become latent and will always manifest. It is also possible to conduct an analysis that focuses solely on the states of balance that need to be manifested in the session. One can examine the list of sociological diagnoses, such as imbalances, and apply it to oneself as a therapist and to the session as a social situation that may contain imbalances. Here are examples of some imbalances that may arise in the session and for which one needs to reduce the risk:
Citizenship: The therapy focuses primarily on the person becoming happier, disconnected from a moral way of life.
Attention: The therapy can lead to excessive introspection, which can magnify the person’s problems.
Struggle: The client either becomes stuck in accepting injustices in their life or, conversely, becomes too entrenched in various conflicts.
Relationality: The therapist dominates the session too much, which can lead the client to experience shame or fear, or to underestimate their own potential.
Focus: The client may become fixated on a specific aspect of life and lose sight of the bigger picture, or, conversely, underestimate how one aspect of life can have a very significant impact on the rest.
Simplicity: The client may want to oversimplify or overcomplicate their life.
Risk: Risk aversion may dominate the session.
Rhythm: There may be impatience or, conversely, resignation regarding the possibility of change. The person may be stuck in a temporary state of passivity that makes it difficult to establish a rhythm that supports a good life (Berglund, 2026).
Wisdom: There may be an imbalance involving too much talking (Moloney, 2013), or an overreliance on actions in the form of exercises when the client actually needs a conversation and a meaningful encounter.
Emotion: There may be an overly emotionalized view of the good life, where happiness, peace, and love play too large a role, preventing the person from finding happiness as a byproduct of an ethical life, where positive emotions are a byproduct rather than the primary goal. One problem that can arise in a session is that it becomes too heavy, making it impossible to build the emotional energy the client needs to muster the strength to make changes in their life (Collins, 2004).
Meaning: The session can lose its magic, and the deeper purpose of life can disappear if the focus is solely on increasing functionality.
Possibility: There may be both a lack of realism, regarding the current situation, and a lack of idealism, regarding how things could be (Neman, 2013).
Time: The session may become too focused on the past, present, or future, causing one to miss how these different time frames can serve as resources for one another if organized well.
Play: Therapy can easily become very serious and dominated by heavy and somber emotions. Playfulness is something that some experienced therapists can incorporate into conversations and encourage in the patient. If a therapist succeeds in doing this, which usually happens implicitly, they help the patient see the various games and activities that culture and society offer: participating in public debates, taking on increasingly difficult challenges, competing with others to improve, and so on.
Adventure: The client may be stuck in a life characterized by excessive spontaneity and unpredictability. The therapist may counteract this too strongly by focusing solely on increasing routine and thereby overlooking adventure as a dimension (Simmel, 1971; Berglund, 2026).
Action: The client may have difficulty managing their own agency. ABT is based on the assumption that humans possess distributed, partial, limited, and varied agency and cognition (Berglund, 2026). This assumption provides a solid foundation for relating to one’s own life. Attributing too much agency to oneself makes it easy to feel ashamed for not having managed one’s life better. Attributing too little agency to oneself means losing the opportunity to change things. With a balanced view of agency, one can open oneself up to the possibility of building momentum toward a desired goal through cultural technologies, exercises, materialities, nature, discourses, and socialities. For example, one can analyze how to create more successful social interactions, both interpersonal and intrapsychic, to gain more emotional energy (Collins, 2004).
Identity: A common state of being is one in which the self has been reified (Paulsen, 2017). When the self and identity are locked in place, it is difficult to bring about changes in one’s life.
Body: It is common for clients to have various cultural disconnections from the body that prevent them from living a good life. Sleep, diet, gut flora, exercise, time in nature, time spent with other people. This cultural disconnection can persist in the therapy session unless the body is taken seriously as a biosocial entity.
ABT can also be used for network analysis, in which various imbalances can interact as a network. The states in which the person finds themselves emerge from various dimensions of balance.
Finally, ABT can support the goals set during the therapeutic session. This captures ABT’s contribution generally as a sociological theory, but also what it can offer in the therapeutic context. The pursuit and creation of the good life is complex, involving several different dimensions. Moreover, these dimensions are not easy to maximize in and of themselves; rather, it is a matter of striking a balance, since each dimension contains ambiguities, dilemmas, and paradoxes. This captures the complexity that an individual may face. As a therapist, one does not need to frame the situation by emphasizing that there are numerous dimensions in which a person is out of balance; instead, one can address them gradually, for example. A skilled sociotherapist can point to activities, social interactions, material conditions, and practices that can support multiple positive changes across several dimensions of balance simultaneously.
Citizenship: Heroic citizenship, is the pursuit of the good life by taking on responsibility and making sacrifices for the society of which one is a part, guided by a universalist/Aristotelian ethic that transcends local conventions. Heroism is embedded in the process of creating citizenship. An example of imbalance is simulated heroism, when an athlete or celebrity is treated as a hero without being connected to a sense of citizenship.
Attention: Outward inward lookingness: the focus is on the external world, where one is driven by a purpose beyond oneself, with a strong concern for others that becomes the foundation for caring for one’s own self. An example of an imbalance is narcissistic insight, which magnifies the self.
Struggle: Disconsensus is a balance between dissensus and consensus. The actor strives for freedom from domination in all forms, where struggle through cooperation and conflict is balanced. An example of an imbalance is brutalization, where resistance or conflict with others has grown to such an extent that the actor is prepared to use violence to brutalize other actors.
Relationality: Embedded autonomy: a balance between having autonomy and being embedded in a community, a balance between closeness and distance, citizenship and private life. An example of an imbalance is unembedded heteronomy, which involves marginalization and exclusion from a political community by which one is simultaneously governed.
Focus: Specialized Systematics: where there is a systematic approach combined with specialization in how one acts, thinks, and pursues the good. An example of an imbalance is overspecialization, which prevents one from contributing to the coordination of various civic actions.
Complexity: Simplexity: a balance between simplicity and complexity, as a way of coping with life in a complex system marked by genuine uncertainty, which, for example, may require relying on various heuristics as a guide. An example of an imbalance is overcomplexity, where unnecessary complexity hinders the pursuit and realization of the good life.
Risk: Safe risk-taking: an ontological sense of security in one’s surroundings and oneself that supports productive and adventurous risks for citizenship. Examples of imbalances include clichéd or hedonistic risk-taking, where the risk is taken solely for one’s own pleasure, disconnected from the well, being of others.
Meaning: Rational enchantment: a balance between the search for truth and, at the same time, the search to enchant one’s existence. An example of imbalance is irrational enchantment, such as commodity fetishism (Marx in Ritzer, 1999).
Possibility: Realistic idealism/critical optimism: a balance between idealism and realism, or criticism and optimism. According to the philosopher, realism and idealism must be in balance for true maturity (Nieman 2013), the ability to think idealistically while grounding that thought in the present, in everyday life, and in the struggle with the present; to be optimistic and hopeful while remaining grounded in critical awareness (Holmes, 2016). An example of an imbalance is “cruel optimism” (; Berlant, 2011), where the actor harbors an unfounded hope for change that hinders real change.
Flourishing: Eudaimonic hedonism: various kinds of happiness that primarily arise as a byproduct of an ethical life, but sometimes also simple pleasures that are not connected to an optimally moral life. Examples of imbalances include suffering pleasure from an addiction or exhausting rest resulting from, for example, procrastination, or seeking happiness exclusively through hedonistic means.
Play: Playful playfulness: where games and play are used in the pursuit of the good life. An example of an imbalance is depressive competition syndrome (Davies, 2017), which is an excess of competition in a society that leads to depression.
Time: Historical awareness: balance in dealing with the past, present, and future. Examples of imbalances include nostalgia or present, focus (Bauman, 2008, 2017, Furedi, 2019)
Adventure: Spontaneous Routines: Routines that enable adventure. An example of an imbalance is over, routinization or “everydayification,” where life is experienced as dominated by the same routine without any variation.
Action: Subjectivized self, objectification, sobjectification: striking a balance between using or objectifying oneself as an instrument without becoming merely an instrument for oneself and others, while also strengthening one’s subjectivity. “Subjectivized” is taken from Touraine’s theory in the sense of “the will to become an actor” (1995) and subjectivity in the sense of an experience that is personal and embodied. Subjectification can be likened to the critical cyborg as described by Haraway (1985), who uses herself as an instrument without turning herself into a “cheerful robot” (Mills, 1956). An example of an imbalance is robotization/objectification, where the actor has ceased to be a subject for others and/or for themselves.
Body: Cultured naturalness: cultural technologies and dispositions that support human genetics and brain plasticity, and are adapted to the functional diversity of bodies. An example of an imbalance is biologization, when the biological is constructed as an overly dominant explanatory factor for behavior.
Wisdom: Reflexive action: a balance between action and reflection in various forms, such as education, consciousness, raising (Freire, 2000), pactivity (Bornemark, 2020), and cynicism (Sloterdijk, 1984). An example of an imbalance is unreflective action in the form of pseudo, action (Zizek), where action occurs without reflection.
Emotions: Reflexive emotionality: emotions and reflexivity support one another in the pursuit of a good life. An example of an imbalance is intellectualization (Turner, 2006), where hyper, reflexivity suppresses the emotional dimension.
Rhythm: Slow speed: the tempo and rhythm of life are vitalizing and suited to heroic citizenship. An example of an imbalance is temporal passivity, where the individual has no influence over the rhythm of their own life.
Identity: Genuine pretending: balancing various identity technologies where there is a certain degree of authenticity but also performativity to support the good life. This imbalance includes how we relate to gender, ethnicity, nation, and class, etc. An example of an imbalance is the crisis of authenticity (Moehller & D’Ambriaso, 2021), the inability to attain the ideal of authenticity due to insoluble paradoxes inherent in that pursuit.