The socioanalysis proposed here includes: 1. Discourse analysis, discourses, 2. Structure/habitus analysis, structures, habitus, 3. Interaction analysis, practices, subjectifications, interactions, 4. Intersectionality analysis, e.g., class, gender, ethnicity, function, 5. Actant analysis or technosociological analysis, objects as actants, 6. Socio, bio, analysis, the biological in relation to the social, 7. Socio, dynamic analysis, the subconscious (Turner, 2006), 8. Sociological analysis of emotions, 9. Sociological analysis of morality, 10. Care analysis (Tronto, 1993), 11. Balance analysis (Berglund, 2026).
A sociotherapist’s analysis, or a self, analysis, would draw on the elements that are most relevant or attempt to incorporate multiple elements to create a holistic picture. The purpose of this text is to highlight the potential of including several different forms of analysis. However, what a sociotherapist ultimately uses might consist of only one or two of these if it provides a better focus on the difficulty the client is facing.
Discourse analysis is based on the premise that different discourses are created by social structures, but at the same time, it contributes to shaping and reshaping them by reproducing and transforming them (Fairclough, 2010). Critical discourse analysis, as developed by Fairclough, has the advantage of recognizing that discourse is both influenced by and influences the social realm, but cannot, on its own, change it. Discourses should not be privileged here as the primary force to consider; rather, they are one layer among others in constructing a holistic picture.
Fairclough’s discourse analysis is aided by his “language critique,” which is intended to foster change in discursive practices (2010). Discourse analysis can include aspects such as defamilarization, relativization, deconstruction, and historicization to challenge the power that discourses may hold if they are taken for granted. These discourses can affect individuals to varying degrees and be objectified to different extents. Discourse analysis would serve as a foundation for various discourse exercises in which the client receives support in learning how to engage with different discourses critically, create new discourses, or engage with alternative discourses. In this way, discourse analysis is similar to Buddhism or Taoism in that it creates a distance from various ideas, allowing one to adopt a less rigid stance toward them. Discourses can also be internalized to the point of becoming taken for granted, which means that one could support the internalization of alternative, better discourses.
Discourse analysis and discourse exercises are ways to externalize discourse so that it can be viewed more clearly as part of the social realm, rather than as a reified part of the self. Discourse analysis can be linked to Collins’s theory of chains of thought (2004). The aim is for new discourses to create new chains of thought that support change. Discourse analysis can also be linked to analyzing a part of a person’s habitus that consists of various discourses. Discourse analyses examine how problems are framed: what, who, how, and why are problems produced and reproduced in the discourse?
The sociotherapist needs to be knowledgeable about various discourses in society in order to guide the client and highlight the different discourses that exist in various fields and the ways in which these discourses influence us. To facilitate this work, it would be helpful to create a list of different discourses for various contexts and spheres. Based on that list, one could focus on the various discourses the individual is exposed to. The most important discourses are likely those that influence how people view agency, happiness, love, the meaning of life, time, etc. These discourses can often be confusing and obscure the view of better or alternative discourses.
It would also be possible to utilize Fairclough’s three, dimensional models: with a primary focus on discourse practice and social practice, and to a lesser extent on discourse as text (Fairclough, 2010). Fairclough’s analytical tools, transitivity (the connection made between subject and object) and modality (objective and subjective modalities), are ways to reveal how the discourse the client encounters is constructed. In discourse analysis, one can ask and investigate what the hegemonic discourses are; for example, the psychiatric discourse has been identified as hegemonic, with the effect that the individual’s problems are depoliticized and demoralized (Cohen, 2016). It should be noted that discourse analysis is linked to techniques within narrative therapy.
Structure and habitus analysis are conducted by first identifying the multiple structures within which one is situated (Swidler, 2013). What kind of structure leads you to have a specific job, and what processes have you experienced in your encounters with these structures? Structures are more enduring practices and relationships between people, which possess a degree of reification and are perceived as existing outside the fluidity of the social. What kinds of organizations, institutions, and political and economic systems are you part of? Structural analysis is a field within sociology, where certain analyses have reified and totalized various structures to such an extent that the agency of actors has disappeared from the analysis, a tendency that other sociologists have criticized from an existentialist perspective (Paulsen, 2013, 20). Structural analysis should be part of a broader whole in which structures can create a certain degree of constraint and social inertia that makes it difficult, but not impossible, to act differently. A key aspect of socioanalysis is how difficult or easy it is to act differently. In particular, agency is also revealed through the existence of various structures that a person must navigate with a degree of creativity (Swidler, 2013).
Habitus analysis focuses on how structures are embodied in, for example, dispositions, horizons, and capital. Habitus analysis becomes an analysis of a person’s life biography, as habitus consists of embodied life experiences. This is a way of clarifying that thoughts and horizons of expectation depend on the life one has lived. Habitus analysis also focuses on analyzing the various forms of capital to which an individual has access: social, cultural, educational, economic, symbolic, and emotional. Some points to consider in a habitus analysis are that change occurs and is possible (Friedman, 2016; Webb, 2019). New “horizons” can open up for the individual, enabling them to develop alternative courses of action over time.
Bourdieu’s view of fields is based on the analogy of a game, in which those who succeed within a field are those who know the rules best and also know when to bend those rules, for example, within the field of art. Habitus analysis could therefore be supported by a list of the various rules currently in place within the different fields in which the client is situated. This would then be a way for a person to catch up on understanding the rules of the game so that they can make more informed choices. It has been suggested that the various rules of the game can be made visible through a list of different social and sociological heuristics for more effective learning, as discussed in the section “Social and Sociological Heuristics” below. It is also a way to assess what resources (capital) one has, how one can most easily increase various forms of capital, and where such capital is located in relation to the person’s position within different fields.
Emotion Analysis. Emotion analysis involves sociologically analyzing the various emotions that the client experiences or encounters in their life. Examples of emotions that have been sociologized include: despair (Paulsen, 2017), shame (Scheff, 1999), pride (Collins, 2004), anxiety (Paulsen, 2020), fear and paranoia (Furedi, 2004, 2019), boredom (Barbalet, 1999), envy (Clanton, 1996), distress (Mirovsky & Ross, 1986), resentment (resentment and ressentiment) (Brown, 2015; Hochschild, 2020), emotions resulting from a change in status (Kemper, 1990), emotional numbness (Smith, 2001), and compassion fatigue (Mestrovic, 1996).
One might consider focusing on specific emotions rather than making diagnoses, especially if these emotions dominate a person’s life. Here, one can draw on Aristotle’s view of emotions, which holds that they are out of balance if there is too much or too little of an emotion, at the wrong time, and directed toward the wrong object. In clinical sociology, Scheff’s theory has been used to focus on shame and anger, and Hochschild’s has been applied to grief. Other theories from the sociology of emotion that can be utilized include cultural theory (Peterson, 2006 in Turner, 2006), symbolic interactionism (Fields, Copp, Klienman, 2006 in Turner, 2006), affect control, affective role theory (Scheff, 1990, 1999), psychoanalytic theory (Turner, 2006), or exchange theories (Lawler & Thye, 2006 in Turner, 2006). The sociology of emotions could serve as the thread tying together the other components of socioanalysis if the individual begins therapy because certain emotions are experienced as problematic.
Socio-ethical analysis. Socioanalysis could also be based on a sociologization of moral vices and virtues. Socioanalysis could then be viewed as a re, moralizing therapeutic practice, in contrast to psychotherapy, which rarely employs moral language. This disconnection from morality has been one of the criticisms leveled against psychotherapy, where emotions are treated as disconnected from the moral realm (Illouz, 2008; Furedi, 2012, 2019). Here, one could draw on Aristotle’s virtue ethics, since the focus is precisely on virtues and vices (Aristotle, 1998). The virtues and vices chosen for focus in socioanalysis could be made culture, specific, so that the sociotherapist supports the vices and virtues present in that culture and its potential religious foundation. On the other hand, Aristotle’s ideas about balance provide a solid foundation for a more universalistic approach. There is also a discussion about what constitutes a vice and a virtue, as well as when and to what extent. Examples of various virtues that have been sociologized include courage (Collins, 2004; Furedi, 2019) and care (Block, 2025; Fraser, 2022).
Interaction analysis is quite close to habitus analysis, but one difference is that it focuses specifically on the various interactions and practices in which the individual is engaged. What agency does the individual possess, and in what collective with agency does the individual find themselves? This part of socioanalysis focuses on experiences, biography, practice, action, understanding, and meaning, making. The connection between structure and the individual’s own understanding can be difficult to discern. We may have a context, but we still need to see exactly what it is like for the person themselves to experience society and the various discourses. What does the person themselves think about the discourses they encounter?
Another aspect of interaction analysis would be to analyze interactions based on ritual theory (Collins, 2004), role theory and affective role theory (Turner, 2006), or exchange theories.
What kinds of practices do people engage in? Are there practices of resistance? This ties in with structural analysis and discourse analysis in that one seeks to identify cracks, spaces, and gaps in structures and discourses where practices of resistance can be built?
Intersectional analysis. YAVIS (Young, Attractive, Verbal, Intellectual, Successful) is the group of people who generally achieve the best outcomes from psychotherapy, partly because they have access to a variety of resources but also because they generally receive better treatment from the therapist (Moloney, 2013). This is an example of how we are situated at the intersections of various attributes associated with the individual (Crenshaw, 1989). The most important attributes that intersectional analysis focuses on are gender, class (educational, economic, social), ethnicity, skin color, religion, sexuality, ability (physical and mental), appearance (lookism), and personality (Collins, 2004). Intersectional analysis is based on contextualizing different experiences depending on where one is situated in relation to these various attributes. This should not be taken to mean that different situations must have a specific effect, but stress resulting from being a minority in a country, minority stress, is a phenomenon that arises from the intersection of ethnicities. Double consciousness (Du Bois, 1903) is the internal conflict one may experience as a minority and as someone negatively racialized. Intersectional analysis is closely related to habitus and structural analysis, but it is only one part of the broader analysis. Intersectional analysis could demonstrate how intersections affect the client but also help develop alternative courses of action.
Technosocial analysis. Actants are objects that do something or “mediate” a subject, or an assemblage (Callon, 2021). What actants and artifacts surround the person that might influence them? A dominant artifact that also serves as a medium for contact with other actors is the cell phone. What effect does it have? This analysis could also be called an artifact analysis, as the focus is on how objects have been socially charged and mediate the social in some way. A basic and common actant analysis of the cell phone is that it currently has a negative impact on our lives. Randall Collins’ theory views social interactions on the internet as lacking qualities compared to real, life encounters, which means we do not potentially receive the same emotional energy (Collins, 2004). Those who possess cultural capital and EE from other areas can turn it into an ally. Researchers who use Twitter to find inspiration for ideas, for example, or people who can gain new, high, quality experiences that continue to build upon one another and are linked to ethical citizenship.
Actant analysis would also examine which actants you are surrounded by and which are absent from your environment. What symbols surround you? Are there things around you that remind you of the social life you wish to participate in, or do the actants around you point in a different direction? Here, the actant analysis will conclude that much could be improved at the societal level and therefore cannot be easily changed at the individual level. One group of actants is kitchen furnishings. These are actants that draw you into a partially isolated and familiarized, monogamous life, separated from other families. Compare this with collective solutions around food, shared dining spaces that create opportunities for spontaneous interactions with many other people.
What places do you frequent? What actants do you integrate with there? What one has in one’s home can be seen as a mirror of the self, or in some cases, what the self is to that person (Cooper Marcus, 1995). Callon’s concept of “agencements,” or agency structures, is useful for understanding how an actant analysis can help reveal how agency is created for the individual (Callon, 2021)
Socio-bio-analysis. The body and the practices in which the body is engaged can be regarded as biosocialities, for example, exercise, food, movement, warmth, fresh air, nature, genes, genetic modifications, and physical illnesses. Bio, socialities are important for socioanalysis because the body, and the experiences, thoughts, and socialities, are embodied in various ways. If one sleeps poorly, lacks physical activity, or eats poorly, this will trigger certain thought processes in the brain, and these bio-socialities are also linked to one’s position within social networks (Christiakis & Fowler, 2009).
Socio, dynamic analysis. The field of psychosocial studies builds upon the Marxist, Freudian synthesis of society and the unconscious; one can draw on sociologists other than just Marxists (Woodward 2015). Turner (2006) argues that the unconscious and defense mechanisms should have a place in sociology. A drawback of the concept of defense mechanisms is that it focuses on the individual being in a defensive state; studies suggest that positive outcomes result when the focus is on solutions rather than on resistance and defense.
Care Analysis. Drawing on feminist sociology, sociological analysis can focus on the care that the client receives and provides. Joan Tronto (1993) supports this with four components for analyzing the quality of care: attention to the need for care, taking responsibility for that need, competence in providing care, and responsiveness to how the recipient reacts. In addition to serving as a valuable guide for the sociotherapist during the session, this approach helps to highlight the care the client receives, and its quality, as well as the care the client provides in their own life. There may be a deficit (Tronto, 1993, 2013) of care in interactions with others and society, or an excess of care in the form of overbearing helpfulness (Alvesson, 2019) that can create vulnerability (Taleb, 2012). Furthermore, care as a practice is tied to various social contexts, ideas, and norms that can be analyzed. Is caring for others self, effacing? Or is care too transaction, oriented, preventing one from forming deeper relationships with other people? Is the care one experiences from others something that is done only because they have to? Or do people show care for others as a way to be “nice” (Mestrovic, 1996), as a “people pleaser”? Care can be analyzed and made visible as part of various structures, such as patriarchal ones (Jonasdottir, 1991). Care can be analyzed as a form of work. This care work can be analyzed in terms of how much it has become jobified as a result of various imbalances across different dimensions of balance (Berglund, 2026). This will be explained more clearly below. Caring can thus be seen as part of the good life, but it can become burdensome the more unbalanced it is, for example, when it involves taking orders, is stressful, and has lost its magic.
Balance Analysis: One proposal for systematizing the multitude of diagnoses made by sociologists while simultaneously integrating different perspectives into a cohesive whole is to use Aristotelian Balance Theory (ABT) (Berglund, 2026) as a foundation. This is one of several possible proposals for how different analyses could be integrated, and not the only option. Other approaches might, for example, center on practices and use the other analyses more as supporting elements. Alternatively, one could use only two or three. This would potentially depend on the sociotherapist’s theoretical foundation as well as the problems or difficulties the client is facing.
ABT is a theory for identifying and understanding how states of balance and imbalance operate in various social configurations at the micro, meso, and macro, levels (situations, organizations, groups, states), materialities, discourses, interactions, practices, and individuals’ habitus/dispositions. The assumption is that balances and imbalances can be stored and remain latent, manifesting themselves depending on the situation. This means that discourse analysis, structural analysis, technosocial analysis, habitus analysis, emotional analysis, socio, ethical analysis, interaction analysis, intersectional analysis, biosocial analysis, and sociodynamic analysis, as discussed above, could be integrated into a single analysis.
There are several advantages to using ABT as the basis for an integrative socioanalysis. The concept of “balance” is used, among other reasons, because it is a super, theme in sociology (Berglund, 2026). It therefore captures a recurring conceptual framework found in sociological thought (Berglund, 2026), which will lay a solid foundation for a socio, analysis aimed at building sociological consciousness.
ABT also centers the moral dimension on the attempt at the “moral turn” in sociology (Hitlin & Vaisey, 2010), which was pioneered primarily by Charles Taylor (1991, 2001, 2004, 2007). ABT views the pursuit of the good life as a complex and even insidious problem involving various dimensions of balance. This captures the complexity of life in that one cannot simply try to maximize a single aspect of life, such as happiness, functioning, flexibility, or love. ABT assumes that people are confronted with ambiguities, dilemmas, and paradoxes that require trade, offs and balancing acts. Socioanalysis and sociotherapy should support the client in navigating this complexity in the pursuit of the good life.
ABT as a framework is based on the following assumptions:
People strive for and seek the good life. In this striving and seeking, they are confronted with dilemmas, ambiguities, and paradoxes across various dimensions that require weighing options and striking a balance (Berglund, 2026). The search for the good life is a complex endeavor that includes 19 different dimensions of balance that are intricately interconnected and influence one another (Berglund, 2026).
Balance and imbalance can be identified through “real utopian sociology” (Wright, 2011) and counterfactual thinking (Paulsen, 2014). People make attempts at achieving eudaimonic balance that may fail for reasons such as: unexpected effects, obstruction by other actors, or a flawed perception of reality.
Balance is a complex and multifaceted process involving two dualisms within a balance dimension, such as embeddedness and autonomy, and must be realized within a complete balance profile. The balance dimensions rely on one another to be realized; when an imbalance exists, this interdependence is lacking in various ways and to varying degrees (Berglund, 2026).
There is a moral dimension that is accessible, where humans can be said to exist within a “moral space” (Taylor, 2004). States of balance, therefore, do not have a clinical meaning intended to facilitate treatment; rather, the purpose is to capture a moral way of being (Berglund, 2026).
Moral realism is assumed, with moral facts that can be discovered because humans possess rationality as a potential, though this rationality is generally limited, varied, partial, and distributed (Simon, 1957; Parfit, 1984; Clark & Chalmers, 1998; Bennett, 2010; Aristotle, 1998). Furthermore, it is a universalist socio, ethical theory that takes into account cultural differences that are morally insignificant in understanding states of equilibrium, but ignores morally insignificant cultural differences (Berglund, 2026; Nussbaum, 2003).
It is a collection of sociological diagnoses previously made by sociologists and social theorists primarily regarding society, but here they are applied at the micro level to the individual, habitus, and situation, which, however, are linked to the meso and macro levels. The “social” aspect of sociological diagnoses lies precisely in their embedding within the states of equilibrium that exist in society, to which actors are bound to varying degrees (Berglund, 2026). This binding is based on the assumption that people’s projectivity and agency (as well as cognition) are distributed, limited, varied, and partial (Bennet, 2010, Mische, 2009, Touraine, 1995, Paulsen, 2013, Callon, 2021, Simon, 1957). Embedding in the social is achieved through cultural technologies (Foucault, 1980, Sloterdijk, 2013, Haraway, 1985, Swidler, 1986, Alexander, 2003), social configurations (organizations, states, groups, etc.), materialities (Bennet, 2010), situations (Collins, 2004), perceptions of reality (Berger & Luckman, 1969), internal thought processes, such as expectations and discourses (Collins, 2004, Mische, 2009, Archer, 2007, Beckert, 2016, Fairclough, 2010), emotions (Wettergren, 2013, Turner, 2006), social constructions (Hacking, 1999), practices (Bourdieu, 1977), forms of governance, and hyperpractices (Berglund, 2026). A state of balance thus emerges from these various interconnections.
States of balance can exist in various social configurations at different levels: micro, meso, and macro. Sociological diagnoses such as imbalance or balance can be applied to an organization as well as to an individual’s habitus or dispositions (Berglund, 2026).
States of balance can be manifest or latent and exhibit varying degrees of rigidity or stability depending on, for example, how routinized a state is, or how much the actor considers it correct or important to be in that state, as well as the power of the actor or other actors who can influence the actor (Berglund, 2026).
An individual may experience multiple imbalances simultaneously and may oscillate between different states of (im)balance.
ABT can be used for therapeutic purposes to guide the analysis of problems, set goals, support socio, education, provide a theoretical framework for how the conversation can be steered forward, facilitate exercises, and evaluate progress. Here is a brief overview of how it can be used in the various parts of a therapeutic process. A more in, depth framework for sociological diagnoses is provided in Section 5.1, and exercises are included in Chapter 6.
Problem Formulation and Socioanalysis
ABT’s analysis consists of the following parts
Examine the state of the various balance dimensions. Are there any imbalances? What causes these imbalances?
What are the different socialities involved? How are these balanced across the 19 different balance dimensions that will be presented in Section 5.1, “Sociological Diagnoses Based on ABT”?
Balancing practices. What specific practices in life give concrete expression to these imbalances?
An overview of how the states of the various balance dimensions appear to interact. Are there imbalances that reinforce one another?
Work with the client to create formulations rich in content that pay attention to various balance dimensions, power, citizenship, body, action, wisdom, etc.
At the same time, make heuristic sociological diagnoses as part of socio, education. ABT’s imbalances can also be viewed as various sociological diagnoses. These sociological diagnoses would lead to massive overdiagnosis if they were used as psychiatric diagnoses. Instead, sociological diagnoses should be viewed more as tools for socio, education and raising awareness of how social factors affect the individual, and as heuristic tools for reflection.
Social Education
Teach the fundamentals of sociology and the sociological perspective, as Randall Collins does, for example. Collins’ “sociological perspective” involves looking beyond what is directly observable, beyond the familiar and the self, evident (Azarain, 2018, 12). Berger emphasizes seeing the “strange in the familiar” and the “general in the particular” (Azarain, 2018, 12). Bauman discusses “sociological thinking” as viewing every individual action within a larger social context and systematically contextualizing it. Weigert (1981) distinguishes between the “sociological attitude”, which is critical, methodical, systematic, and metaphorical, and the “natural attitude,” which is the taken, for, granted attitude that prevents people from navigating life in the best possible way. “Sociological curiosity” has also been used as a new term (Jacobs, 2021).
Make it clear that the goal is to build more of the “socio, self” as opposed to the “psy, self” or psychological consciousness (Rose, 1999).
Teach about balance as a overarching theme in sociology, provide examples, and relate this to various dimensions of balance.
Focus socio, education on the specific problems the client is facing.
Teach various sociological heuristics to provide a distilled version of sociology. The goal is to build sociological phronesis, or practical wisdom. This is based on phronetic social science and phronetic sociology (Flyvbjerg, 2001). In practice, sociological awareness means being able to apply sociological insights and develop wisdom (phronesis) grounded in sociology. This involves transforming sociological theories into tools for use in one’s own life or as tools for interventions at various levels, micro, meso, and macro. It is a form of reification or instrumentalization of scientific theories that represents the best answer we currently have to guide us in an open search for the good life.
Setting Goals
Formulate specific goals for the client. Identify the balances of the various ideal types across the 20 balance dimensions. The goals then become hero, inspired citizenship as an ideal.
Eudaimonic balance as a goal in itself, striving for higher levels of balance as a way of reflecting on one’s pursuit of the good life. The assumption is that people seek eudaimonic balance unless they are misled or blocked.
Specify the path to these goals in terms of what the person should do in practical balancing and partner, based balancing.
Theoretical framework for the conversation
The therapist should be guided by ABT during the session. It can be used to analyze the balances and imbalances present in the ongoing session. Examples of balance dimensions to consider in the relationship between the therapist and the client.
Slow speed: Is the rhythm right? Is there enough time for the process? Is there a pace at which imbalances are shifting for the better?
Safe risk-taking: Is there a safe foundation for taking risks, such as being vulnerable and challenging reified thought patterns?
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?
Exercises: socio- practise
ABT can then be used as a basis for designing various exercises. This is the balancing of practice that the therapist supports the client in performing. These can, for example, be exercises in citizenship, community, building, education, and raising awareness. This is explored in greater depth in the chapter “Socio, asceticism and Socio, pharmacy,” where ABT serves as a framework for systematizing various exercises.
Evaluation and Follow-Up
This is a repetition of the initial socioanalysis. It is necessary to monitor the client to see what happens in the various balances.
Then, the remaining components are analyzed to identify areas for improvement. For example, one might ask critical questions about whether the client’s entire interaction with the therapist is balanced across the various balance dimensions.