Reformulations of agentless talk in psychotherapy
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Katja Kurri
Katja Kurri, Ph.D., works as a Researcher and a Psychotherapist at The Finnish Association for Mental Health, Education Center and Psychotherapy Clinic. She is interested especially in interaction in psychotherapy. Her doctoral thesis (2005)
The Invisible Moral Order explored agency, accountability, and responsibility in therapy talk. She has published international articles on interaction in counseling and couples therapy.
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Jarl Wahlström
Jarl Wahlström, Ph.D., is a Professor in clinical psychology at the Department of Psychology, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. He holds a diploma in family and systems therapy and is qualified as a trainer in psychotherapy. His main research interest is in psychotherapy discourse, a topic on which he has published in several international journals and books. He is a member of the DANASWAC group.
Abstract
In this paper we describe and analyze the development of a psychotherapist's reformulations of one client's initial agentless problem narration. The concept ‘agentless’ refers to the use of impersonal constructions—passive voice, nominalizations, zero-person construction, and iterative verbs— which all imply having no control over the described actions. ‘Agentless talk’ is viewed in this paper as a strategy to escape full personal responsibility and thus as a strategy to save one's moral face (Brown and Levinson 1978, 1987; Goffman 1955). In this case, the therapist approached the dilemma between protecting the client's face and fulfilling the institutional goal of helping the client by varying the footing in his reformulations of problem descriptions. Delicateness in the therapist's reformulations, as found in the data, can thus be seen as more than conversational etiquette; it is a necessary therapeutic tool. To account for the changes taking place in the therapeutic process, no reference to models of inner psychological structures or organization was needed, which poses a question of the quality of ‘therapeutic change’.
About the authors
Katja Kurri, Ph.D., works as a Researcher and a Psychotherapist at The Finnish Association for Mental Health, Education Center and Psychotherapy Clinic. She is interested especially in interaction in psychotherapy. Her doctoral thesis (2005) The Invisible Moral Order explored agency, accountability, and responsibility in therapy talk. She has published international articles on interaction in counseling and couples therapy.
Jarl Wahlström, Ph.D., is a Professor in clinical psychology at the Department of Psychology, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. He holds a diploma in family and systems therapy and is qualified as a trainer in psychotherapy. His main research interest is in psychotherapy discourse, a topic on which he has published in several international journals and books. He is a member of the DANASWAC group.
© Walter de Gruyter
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- Formulations and the facilitation of common agreement in meetings talk
- Folk notions of um and uh, you know, and like
- Reformulations of agentless talk in psychotherapy
- Conceptual manipulation by metaphors and frames: Dealing with rape victims in legal discourse
- Intonation units in spoken interaction: Developing transcription skills
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Formulations and the facilitation of common agreement in meetings talk
- Folk notions of um and uh, you know, and like
- Reformulations of agentless talk in psychotherapy
- Conceptual manipulation by metaphors and frames: Dealing with rape victims in legal discourse
- Intonation units in spoken interaction: Developing transcription skills
