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Conversation analysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy: Questions, issues, problems and challenges.

Forrester, Michael A., Reason, David (2006) Conversation analysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy: Questions, issues, problems and challenges. Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, 20 (1). pp. 40-64. (doi:10.1080/02668730500524229) (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:4265)

The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided.
Official URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02668730500524229

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

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1080/02668730500524229
Subjects: B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Human and Social Sciences > School of Psychology
Depositing User: Rosalind Beeching
Date Deposited: 05 Jun 2008 15:30 UTC
Last Modified: 16 Nov 2021 09:42 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/4265 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

Forrester, Michael A..

Creator's ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0632-7042
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