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Conversation Analysis and Psychotherapy Process Research

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Abstract

Applied conversation analytic research seeks to understand the ways in which conversational practices are modified in order to fulfill institutional aims. Psychotherapy is one such institution, and in recent years, a research literature has developed in which conversation analysis has been applied to psychotherapy interaction. This chapter provides an overview of the five main features of talk-in-interaction of interest in conversation analysis: turn-taking, sequence organization, repair, word selection, and action formation. An extract from psychotherapy interaction is explored in relation to each of these five features of talk. The analytic lens of conversation analysis and its conceptualization of key phenomena are different in many respects to that of traditional psychotherapy research. Moreover, when directed towards psychotherapy, selection of material has been, in the main, in accordance with conversation analytically informed, as opposed to therapy-informed, observations. The result is that conversation analytic research may seem psychologically shallow to the psychotherapy community: too removed from basic assumptions about human subjectivity and mute on questions of experiential change which are likely of interest to therapists. However, this therapy-neutral orientation may be a significant strength in allowing conversation analysis to complement and enhance process research through revealing what psychotherapy may not notice about itself.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    As translated in the original from Norwegian. The authors describe their transcription conventions as a simplified version of that developed by Jefferson and provide a key in Appendix A of their paper.

  2. 2.

    As translated in the original from Italian. The transcription conventions for Examples 2, 3, and 4 in the present chapter are described as based on the Jefferson system, and a key is provided on pages 198–199 of Peräkylä et al. (2008).

  3. 3.

    As translated in the original from Finnish.

  4. 4.

    As translated in the original from Spanish. The authors describe their transcription conventions as the Spanish version of the psychotherapy transcription standards as outlined in Mergenthaler and Gril (1996).

  5. 5.

    See also, for example, Chap. 8 in this volume.

  6. 6.

    In this respect, conversation analysis represents the far end of the scale in terms of microanalysis of talk-in-interaction. Some forms of discourse analysis which draw heavily on conversation analysis may fulfil a similar function, but “discourse analysis” as a term encompasses a range of methods, some of which are highly theoretical (e.g., Foucauldian) and which seek to explicate the presence and use of macro-cultural resources on the scale of “grand narratives.”

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Acknowledgment

I am most grateful to Professor Celia Kitzinger (University of York, UK) for her inspirational instruction on conversation analysis. I extend huge thanks also to Dr. Sonja Ellis (Sheffield Hallam University, UK) for her support and for her extremely helpful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter. Anna Madill is Chair of Qualitative Inquiry and Deputy Head of the School of Psychology, University of Leeds, UK (https://leeds.academia.edu/AnnaMadill). She cofounded and is former chair of the British Psychological Society Qualitative Methods in Psychology Section and is associate editor of the British Journal of Clinical Psychology.

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  1. School of Psychology, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK

    Anna Madill

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  1. Anna Madill
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Correspondence to Anna Madill .

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  1. University of Salento, Lecce, Italy, and Sigmund Freud University, Vienna, Austria

    Omar C.G. Gelo

  2. Sigmund Freud University, Vienna, Austria

    Alfred Pritz

  3. Sigmund Freud University, Vienna, Austria

    Bernd Rieken

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Madill, A. (2015). Conversation Analysis and Psychotherapy Process Research. In: Gelo, O., Pritz, A., Rieken, B. (eds) Psychotherapy Research. Springer, Vienna. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7091-1382-0_24

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7091-1382-0_24

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