CONVERSATION ANALYSIS AND PSYCHOANALYTIC PSYCHOTHERAPY RESEARCH: QUESTIONS, ISSUES, PROBLEMS AND CHALLENGES

Abstract

Understanding the talk of the ‘talking cure’ remains a central goal of researchers in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Here, we consider whether conversation analysis (CA) can provide techniques to understand better the conduct of the psychoanalytic therapeutic interaction. Following discussion outlining the participant‐oriented nature of this qualitative methodology we consider reasons for the emergence of CA‐informed studies of psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Amongst other aims, CA focuses on uncovering the process and procedures which make the therapy encounter a distinct form of ‘institutional life’. For psychoanalytically‐oriented researchers, CA can refine their skills of attention and engender sensitivity to understanding material in sessions. Using examples from segments of talk between a training therapist and client we highlight both the advantages of, and constraints on, employing CA as an aid to understanding psychotherapeutic sessions by considering contrasting conceptions of temporality in conversation analysis and psychoanalysis. In the former participants are oriented towards the ongoing production of sequential understandings and local ‘context’ in an unfolding present, in the latter participants aim to enhance the emergence of the remote past into the present of the therapeutic interaction. While recognizing the research benefits of CA methodology concluding comments raise questions regarding the potential complementarity between our dispositions towards the close monitoring of the activity and the feelings of fellow humans.

Notes

1. Buttny (2001) makes the point that researchers in this area have often attempted to characterize the particular talk of therapeutic encounters in discourse analytic terms where ‘therapeutic discourse appears to be a specialized though informal mode of interaction’ (p. 304).

2. A short extract of conversation which serves as an indication of what ‘participant‐orientation’ means: (adapted from Atkinson and Drew 1979: 52)1 John: Is there something bothering you or not?  (1.0)2 John: Yes or no?  (1.5)3 John: Ehhh↑ ?4 Fred: No.In this extract John asks Fred a question and according to normal conversational conventions, when you are asked a question you reply. Now, the 1 second gap between lines 1 and 2 is significant because it is longer than what you would expect, i.e. normally people reply immediately, that is in less than a second. John displays a specific orientation to this normative convention or ‘rule’ by asking Fred in line 2 to answer either ‘yes’ or ‘no’. He is indicating to Fred his knowledge and understanding that when people are having a conversation and somebody asks a question, then a reply is expected. If you don't get a reply then we might assume that something is wrong or not understood – and in fact John provides Fred with the specific answers that might be given to the question he has just asked.Then, and after John's second question, Fred again flouts or ignores the question/answer rule by allowing an even longer gap or silence. This leads John in line 3 to then say ‘Ehhh’ accompanied by a very specific rising intonation towards the end of the utterance (this is indicated by the upward arrow). This shows that not only is John asking Fred to act normally and obey the usual rules for turn‐taking in conversation, but also we can surmise that he is showing some annoyance at Fred's refusal to answer, which this time eventually elicits a response by Fred in line 4.Now, if we were investigating the nature of turn‐taking in conversation and trying to understand what sort of models or ideas people had about how you do it, then we can see that in this example John and Fred display a specific orientation to a rule or convention about asking and answering questions which they both share. This form of micro‐analysis is first and foremost a participant‐oriented method.

3. In addition to these most commonly employed strategies of data collection and explication, one can also observe and to paraphrase Ten Have (1999) that the researcher may also begin with whatever one has at hand, or with what Gail Jefferson in a data session once called some ‘virtuoso moments’, episodes that strikes the observer as being carried out in a particularly felicitous manner, or with two cases that seem to be instructively contrastive. We note that these are really the noticings by the analysts – not those linked to statistical or distributional regularity (inductive patterns) nor those of the ‘deviant moments’ but instead those of the analyst – and these probably have a certain correspondence or correlation with the role of case material in psychoanalytic psychotherapy.

4. It is becoming common in CA work for transcripts to be linked to publicly available audio‐recordings for verification and study by other workers in the discipline – see Schegloff (2000) for an example at http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/schegloff/RealSoundFiles/papersounds.php?directory = When_Others_Initiate_Repair.