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This paper starts with a short review of recent developments in psychotherapy process research and analyzes that a medical, or better, technical approach in process research – using words such as ‘intervention’, ‘effect’ and ‘outcome’ – is gradually acknowledged as only one side of psychotherapy; the other, more human or ‘humanistic’ side, is ‘conversation’, described by prominent authors as ‘low technology’. Conversation analysis cannot study psychotherapy as a whole. Sessions are subdivided into ‘situations’. What are situations? I make a proposal to answer this question by three components: open up, select and control options. Then, 11 transcribed extracts from psychoanalytical therapy sessions are used to describe three types of situations and the special kind of requirements they demand from a therapist. Obviously, such situations appear during a session, they can be handled if therapists are sensitized for certain difficulties to arise. Shift-of-situation and double meaning are new observations in this approach to define the situational gestalt and train ‘seeing’ it.

Introduction: The study focuses on the orientation to being recorded in therapy sessions, emphasizing that these practices adapt to specific circumstances and influence subsequent actions. The study suggests a way to deal with the insolubility of the "observer paradox": to accept that observation has an impact on the observed, but that the recorder is not necessarily a negative determinant. Furthermore, the study builds on the idea that participants' orientations to the recorder can be seen as actions. Methods: The data included in this study were collected from four psychodynamic therapies. A total of 472 sessions were searched for orientation to be recorded. Twenty-three passages were found and transcribed according to GAT2. Of the 23 transcripts, six excerpts have been analyzed as part of this article. The analysis of this study was done through Conversation Analysis. Results: The study explores how participants use the orientation to be recorded to initiate or alter actions within conversations, which can help achieve therapeutic goals, but can also hinder the emergence of a shared attentional space as the potential to disrupt the therapist-patient relationship. The study identifies both affliative and disaffliative practices, noting that managing orientation to be recorded in a retrospective design consistently leads to disruptive eects. Moreover, it highlights the dierence between seeking epistemic authority ("being right") and managing recording situations ("getting it right") in therapeutic interactions as a means of initiating patients' self-exploration. Discussion: The integration of recordings into therapeutic studies faces challenges, but it's important to acknowledge positive and negative eects. Participants' awareness of recording technologies prompts the need for a theory of observation in therapeutic interactions that allows therapists to visualize intuitive practices, incorporate active contributions, counteract interpretive filtering eects, facilitate expert exchange, ensure quality assurance, and enhance the comprehensibility of therapeutic processes. These aspects outline significant variables that provide a starting point for therapists using recordings in therapeutic interactio [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conversation analysis (CA) of children-adult—interaction in various contexts has become an established field of research. However, child therapy has received limited attention in CA. In child therapy, the general psychotherapeutic practice of achieving empathy faces particular challenges. In relation to this, our contribution sets out three issues for investigation and analysis: the first one is that practices of achieving empathy must be preceded by efforts aiming to establish which kind of individualized conversation works with this child (Midgley, 2006). Psychotherapy process researchers in adult therapy (Stiles et al., 2015) have found that therapists "invent" a new therapy for each patient (Norcross and Wampold, 2018). The second issue is that it can be difficult for adults to understand the ways in which children express their conflicts and issues. In particular, play activities in therapy, e.g., with dolls, can open up additional scenarios of interaction. The play scenario can be used to disclose unformulated problems masked in everyday and family interactions. The third issue is how to respect the child's higher degree of vulnerability, compared with adult patients. How is it communicated and dealt with in therapy? We present an interaction analysis of a single case study of the first 20 min of a child therapy session with an adopted girl aged 4 years brought to treatment because of "unexplainable rage." The session was videotaped; parents granted permission. We analyze this session using an applied version of CA. In our analysis, we describe "doing contrariness," as a conversational practice producing epistemic and affiliative disruptions, while "avoiding doing contrariness" and "remedying contrariness" are strategies for preserving or restoring the affiliative dimension of a relationship (in child therapy). We show how these practices operate in various modes and how they are used by both parties in our case study to variously aid and impedethe achievement of empathy and understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper gives an overview of psychoanalytic process research, which brings to light the complexity of psychotherapy sessions. This complexity is so rich that many instruments intended to make the process measurable failed in the past because they initially used a strategy of complexity reduction. This method however did not help to further our understanding of the complexity involved. Three former presidents of the Society for Psychotherapy Research (Stiles, Hill, Elliot 2015) decided to solve the following equivalence paradox: many therapies work successfully though they all follow different theories, produce a heterogeneity of processes and often enough a misfit between what theories maintain to be a good process and their realization in the treatment room. As theories are often compared to maps, a driver would wonder which route to take. But therapists-as-drivers go undaunted - and nevertheless achieve their goals together with their patients. Norcross and Wampold (2018) found that good therapists invent new therapies with every new patient. They hypothesize that it is because of conversation. This is in accord with the 3 former presidents' proposal to return to detailed single case analyses including the micro-analytic power of conversation analysis of which a few insights are outlined in this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As shown in my text in Part I of this volume, the Boston theory, Goffman, and some parts of mentalization theory all address the phenomenon of special “moments”. These theories value the role of conversation very differently. Goffman’s theory comprises most; conversation is what makes “moments” possible but “moments” are not the goal of every “talk-in-interaction”. More specified conditions of “moments” will be described with the goal to apply them to a transcribed interviewed with a Holocaust survivor. Conversation analysis in the future will have to develop concepts for what has been termed “noticeable absence” (Harvey Sacks). After analysis of what is said and (interactively) done, there remains the question how to deal with what is silenced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The video recording of a pedagogically awkward situation in a school class becomes the occasion of a conversation analysis (CA). At first, the conceptual instruments of CA appearing to be appropriate for the study of potentially violent situations are introduced. Then, the transcript is shown and four observations are discussed in detail. They focus the failure of a ceremony of demotion, the role of bodily stagings, the teacher’s doubtful authority and the difficulty of influencing not only behavior but also attitudes of pupils. It is suggested that CA should far more face such situations which constitute a great part of everyday life in school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Boston-Theory about Now-Moments, Moments-of-Meeting and “present moments” up-to-date has not founded this impressive theory in a precise transcript. What are these moments in detail? How to recognize them? There are strong affinities between the microanalytic work of the Boston-Group and social-scientific conversation analysis, but there are deviations, too. In a first part, I will sound out affinities and differences intending to become able to more precisely determine what these moments are and how they can be detected. In a second paper (this volume), I will turn to an interview with a holocaust-survivor with the methodological goal to find more methodological precise determinations of what now-moments are. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Independent of theoretical orientation therapies of all kind are talk-in-interaction. Influential overall conceptualizations (as e.g. intervention) belong to a certain model of medicalizing the psychotherapeutic endeavor. Talk-in-interaction is the base for applying Conversation Analysis (CA) in psychotherapeutic process research. CA is a powerful tool originating from social science taking data, hypotheses and theories from careful observing in a similar way as infant observers did. The common discovery is that conversation precedes language. Some features of infantile proto-conversation survive in adult life. CA has directed careful attention to processes like turn-taking, repair, conditional relevances, etc. in observing the rules of interaction. However, in studying psychotherapy process turn-by-turn analysis alone does not suffice. It can be completed by a new model of common ground activities and package-by-package analysis turning attention to new objects of observation in therapeutic conversation (allusions, metaphorical framing activities). We propose a methodology for both kinds of analyses based on transcribed examples from the CEMPP-Project. This exploratory designed project (Conversation analysis of empathy in Psychotherapy Process; supported by the Köhler Foundation, Germany) compared psychoanalytic, psychodynamic and cognitive-behavioral treatments in five dyads each taking transcribed sessions from the beginning, the middle phase and the end; our database includes 45 transcribed sessions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

TPS are often self-reported by therapists. However, therapists sometimes feel entrapped in situations without knowing how and why. The microanalysis of situations can further the research process, methodological rules of situationism are outlined. Five TPS - implementing a new evaluation or a new metaphor, the decay of multimodality in speaking suicidality, ironically commenting the therapists professionalism - are presented in a detailed transcription. For two of them analysis of prosody is included. Solutions for a better handling of TPS are proposed. Finally, the role of clinical theories as “sensitizing" concepts is addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The narrative interview is the method of choice for preserving historical experience. However, interviewing as social research method is seriously criticized for neglecting interview interaction. Conversation analysis (CA) could bring in some corrections in this debate. Using this method, the conversational practices in interviews for historical testimony, especially the «recipient design" of interviewee's utterances are examined. In 8 interviews for historical testimony from the years 2005-2006, not only the interviewer but also a third non-present other, an «overhearing audience" (Heritage 1985), is addressed. These findings are discussed in comparison to media interviews. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we use the first ten minutes of an audiorecorded 28th psychoanalytic session in order to detect and describe a new therapeutic procedure which we call «Dancing Insight". The session is transcribed according to the standards of conversation analysis and is analyzed at three levels: first, a clinical analysis which leads to the interpretation that the analyst at two opportunities actively turns the table - speaking as if she were the patient. The clinical view can bring this observation in relationship to the concept of «model scenes" and «completing the scene" and some further findings from infant research. Second, the conversation analytic approach observes how the therapist does this maneuver and how the patient responds to it. A further analysis is directed to the «slots" where such a maneuver can be conducted with a natural flair and without any irony. Third, we complement the picture by an acoustic analysis of some prosodic features using PRAAT-software which shows some interesting patterns. At the beginning the patient speaks with a flat intonation, a prosodic property which we relate to affect isolation and its consequence, the lack of assertive commitment. The therapist manages to drag the patient out of this stance by assuming her role and she does this not only by the meaning of words, but also with prosodic means: She pronounces her turns at a «high plateau", the basic meaning of which we tentatively describe as «projection of the assertion to the partner". This is the procedure we call «dancing insight": The conversational move which leads to a change of metaphorical concepts and to a change of positioning is achieved by a prosodic technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]