Shifting the perspective after the patient’s response to an interpretation

Abstract

Psychoanalytic interpretation is normally understood as a sequence of two utterances: the analyst gives an interpretation and the patient responds to it. This paper suggests that, in the interpretative sequence, there is also a third utterance where psychoanalytic work takes place. This third interpretative turn involves the analyst’s action after the patient’s response to the interpretation. Using conversation analysis as method in the examination of audio‐recorded psychoanalytic sessions, the paper will explicate the psychoanalytic work that gets done in third interpretative turns. Through it, the analyst takes a stance towards the patient’s understandings of the interpretation, which are shown in the patient’s response to the interpretation. The third interpretative turns on one hand ratify and accept the patient’s understandings, but, in addition to that, they also introduce a shift of perspective relative to them. In most cases, the shift of perspective is implicit but sometimes it is made explicit. The shifts of perspective bring to the foreground aspects or implications of the interpretation that were not incorporated in the patient’s response. They recast the description of the patient’s experience by showing new layers or more emotional intensity in it. The results are discussed in the light of Faimberg’s concept of listening to listening and Schlesinger’s concept of follow‐up interpretation.

Key words:

• conversation analysis
• interpretation
• listening
• research

Acknowledgements

I gratefully acknowledge the research grants by the Academy of Finland and the IPA Research Advisory Board. I wish to thank the members of the conversation analysis research group at the Department of Social Research, University of Helsinki, as well as Mikael Leiman and Henrik Enckell, for many helpful comments.

Notes

1. See Peräkylä (2008) for the continuation of Extract 2. In subsequent interaction not shown here, the analyst produces what in this paper is called an explicit shift of perspective, making this extract in fact a hybrid case in which implicit and explicit shifts go together.

2. See Peräkylä (submitted) for ways in which the shifts are reinvoked in subsequent sessions.