Volume 27, Issue 1

The background of the conflict study presented in part II consists of ten transdisciplinary and transcultural anthropological studies based on the paradigm of historical anthropology. On this basis, the “Berlin Ritual and Gesture Study” financed by the German Research Foundation (DFG) was carried out. This 12 years lasting research project examined the role of rituals and gestures in the major fields of socialization “family”, “school”, “peer-group” and “media” in the context of a Berlin inner city primary school. It provided the conceptual and methodological starting point for the exploration of the possible beginning of a mobbing conflict and the difficulties to handle it. In this study, a methodology of ethnography of education was developed which served as basis for the analysis of the mobbing process in Part II.

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.

This chapter presents “Scenic Narrative Microanalysis” and its potential contribution to research on significant interactive moments. It discusses the method’s roots at the intersection of two paradigm shifts. The first is the interactive turn in psychoanalysis, which itself is situated within the overarching cultural context of a performative turn. Second, as an approach addressing short-term interactions (moments), SNMA points to the temporal turn in sociology, economics and technology, the background for microanalytic infant research approaches that have been influential since the 1970s. Finally, the future prospects of interdisciplinary method triangulation within the research group are discussed.

This article reconstructs a conflict arising in a primary school in an inner-city district of Berlin. A pencil case of a newly enrolled girl with a migration background has been hidden. Is it a mobbing act? The teacher feels affected and reacts aggressively. In a longue monologue she collectively holds to account the children. Through her facial expressions, her gestures, her posture, and the prosody of her voice she communicates her moral point of view and her critique of the children. Emphatically she demands not to exclude but to integrate the girl. The interruption of the lesson indicates the importance of the conflict. To avoid the creation of a scapegoat the situation is taken seriously. Committed to the idea of a parenting instruction the teacher wants to secure recognition and appreciation among the children. The question arises if her strong emotional reaction is the adequate way to avoid the exclusion of the girl.

This article investigates a class room sequence with the methods of dance studies. Hence the teacher’s behaviour is seen as a stage performance. With a main method of dance theory, the Laban Movement Analysis (LMA) teacher’s handling of the classroom space, including body effort and shape, is analysed. Following Daniel Stern’s conceptualisation of forms of vitality I consider the teacher’s behaviour, focusing on the phenomenology and the temporal contour of feelings of anger. In terms of movement, this essay explores the dynamic experience of vitality affects.

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.

The chapter presents an application of Scenic-Narrative Microanalysis (SNMA) to a videotaped conflict situation in a Berlin primary school. The analysis is limited to the presented video material, not involving any additional information. SNMA uses the video spectators’ reactions as a tool to identify significant moments (Now Moments or Moments of Meeting as defined by Daniel Stern) in the video and to find a consensual hypothesis on the presumed group dynamics of class and teacher that can be linked to the field of attention research in school pedagogy. Necessary adaptations of the SNMA method to documentary video material are discussed.

This article provides insight into the mixed-method-analysis of a testimony of a survivor of the Shoah. The aim of the study was to compare the clinical-hermeneutical understanding of the unconsciously re-enacted scenic memory of the Shoah with the results of objective methods. Relevant moments throughout the videographed conversation that indicated the scenic re-enaction of the traumatic experiences in the Shoah were understood as “Now Moments” or “Moments of Meeting” (Stern 2004). Those moments were assessed both by the clinically working Interviewer of the survivor Ms. K. herself as well as by independently applied empirical methods. A computerized Text Analysis System (CM, Mergenthaler 1997) identified Emotion-Abstraction Patterns and Narrative Styles in the transcript of the video, a computerized Motion Energy Analysis (MEA, Ramseyer 2010) measured and quantified movements in terms of synchronicity of the interacting dyad. An external validation was conducted by carrying out group hermeneutical discussions as additional clinical assessments of relevant moments in the video-testimony.

Referring to the video testimony of Holocaust survivor Mrs. K. and interviewer and psychoanalyst Kurt Grünberg, I propose to analyse the body movement behavior in interaction in this interview as the “Gestalt” of memory units. According to the theory of embodiment and following Daniel Stern, I show how it is possible to co-construct sense while watching nonverbal aspects of giving testimony. Using different methods of movement analysis such as KMP, LMA, NEUROGES and MEA, this study was conducted by means of phenomenological inquiry. I suggest that a hermeneutic perspective on movement aspects can thus be used to enrich the transcript and provide a broader and highly specific understanding of this testimony. Movement can thus be seen as an integral part of transmission.

To speak about the horror of the Holocaust is still extremely difficult. An exploration of our data, a video testimony of a female survivor of the Ghetto in Łódź, showed that she employs certain styles of narration (narrative motifs). This paper first examines some of those motifs and suggests that they might function as a means of self-regulation. In our data they either assist in preventing retraumatization or facilitate the re-experiencing of the dreadful past. The features of those motifs are analysed on a semantic, a prosodic and an embodied level through the usage of Conversation Analysis, PRAAT and Multimodal Analysis.

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.

Material objects play a central role in the development of human beings. The following paper reconstructs their importance in the testimony of a holocaust survivor. Materials play an important role in the formation of the lifeworld. In a concentration camp, they often gain an unexpected existential importance. According to the context clothes, wood, food, earth change their meaning for the detainees. The kind of clothes corresponds with the type of camp and may be an indicator for the chances to survive. In a concentration camp, a piece of wood can either be used to heat a room in extreme cold and contribute to the survival of a detainee or to beat and torture a prisoner. Finally, the materiality of food is experienced as a prerequisite of life; its absence is a threat, its availability a hope for survival.

Children engage in sociodramatic pretend play to develop strategies for dealing with the dangers and uncertainties of their everyday live. This paper examines the path into joint pretend play by a child therapist and her young patient through fine-grained conversation analysis and the usage of the PRAAT-Software. Interactants don’t follow a linear path from the real world into play but are rather negotiating their ideas of how the play might/should unfold. In a second part, this paper deals with the patients’ aggressive behavior as a result of pretended mother-child interactions enacted by the therapist. A special light is shed on how recurrent interactional constellations in the pretend play lead to a development of structures of expectations.

This article is based on the KMP (Kestenberg Movement Profile) for assessment of child development and movement behavior. I investigate characteristic movement patterns in a videotaped child psychoanalytic session. How do therapist and child move together? Since the KMP is commonly applied in dance therapy to evaluate movement skills and give support to development process, I will propose some suggestions for alternative modes of moving and encourage the building up of a new dialogue through action modification.

This paper gives a reading and an interpretation of a psychotherapeutic session between a child (5 year old Ina) and her therapist, drawing on the theory of re-enactment and dramaturgy in performance and theatre studies. The main thesis is that in their interaction child and therapist re-enact the trauma of the abandoned baby in a “play within the play”. Thus significant moments of meeting – in crossing the borders between (mimetic) play and reality – reveal how aggressive emotions are re-enacted and dissolve the rhythms and impact of their negative power.

In the following paper, Scenic Narrative Microanalysis (Hamburger 2015) is applied to a 50-minutes session of a long-term child psychoanalytic play therapy. The aim of the study was to extract Now Moments respectively Moments of Meeting (Stern 2004) in the playful interaction between the psychotherapist and her four-year-old girl-patient. Results of the individual ratings of the transcript, as well as the group’s consensus discussion are critically discussed and related to the psychodynamic content of the session itself and in addition to the results of the other chapters in this section.

This article analyzes how aesthetic experience arises. Referring to Pina Bauschs Kontakthof, I examine the following issues: performance and performativity, Kontakthof as play, comic: disappointed expectations, missing gestures, clothes and objects as actants, music and resonance, gender battle still in old age, repetition and ritualization, rhythm, aesthetic experience through mimetic processes.

The aim of this essay is to investigate “moments of meeting” (Stern 2005) and rhythms of interruption in Pina Bausch’s piece “Kontakthof” (i.e., the version “Kontakthof with Ladies and Gentlemen over »65«”, 2007). Combining the perspective of microanalysis and a close reading of two significant scenes of the piece with a macroanalysis of dance aesthetics and questions of framing in theatre theory, contextualising “Kontakthof” within the history of “Tanztheater” (the 70s/80s in post-war Germany), the article shows how the composition and bodily articulation of movement interactions are constituted between the dancers and the audience. The “Ponyriding” scene is based on rhythms of transgression touching the boundaries both between male and female dancers and between performers and audience. A close reading of the “Tango-Scene” shows how the rhythms of moving together and the disbalances between interruption in the movements and gestures of a “tango” can be compared with performative processes of turn-taking in language interaction.

This essay is about a short sequence of Pina Bausch’s Kontakthof with ladies and gentlemen over 65. It discusses the hypothetical question as to “how to dance tango without dancing a tango?” I argue that the principle movement topics and practices of the Argentine Tango such as leading and following or the cruz are transformed by choreographic modes. In this way they constitute the structure of the Pina Bausch stage sequence .

The interactional quality of Pina Bausch’s staged dance performance challenges the perception and the expectations of social interaction that follow it. Through repetition and combinations of words and movements new expectations and new social roles are created. This shows not only how fragile interaction processes can be disturbed but also how we are prone to make sense out of interactions through observation.

How do actors co-ordinate their actions in a well-tested stage play? And how does a dance-theatre performance contribute to a better understanding of processes of social coordination? The way participants co-ordinate social interactions is guided by mechanisms that are true for the actors involved in the scene. Viewed as a burning glass, the dance-theatre scene is analysed in a cumulative theoretical process, as actors in this scripted coordination are oriented towards i) implicit rules in social contexts, ii) non-linear system attributes, iii) anticipations of events, iv) mutual monitoring and v) rhythmic gestalts. Rhythmic pattern analysis shows when and with what tempo and intensity participants adapt to each other’s multi-modal impulses, establishing (prelude), narrowing (climax) and dissolving (conclusion) a rhythmic co-construction. Micro-macro links between transitions of rhythmic gestalts (co-regulation) and the speakers’ contributions (individual autonomy) reveal rhythm as a fundamental social orientation.

The aim of this study was to conduct a Scenic Narrative Microanalysis of a modern dance performance, “Kontakthof” by Pina Bausch, performed by lay dancers over 65 years of age. SNMA analysis consisted of both individual and group sessions with students of the International Psychoanalytic University. The method was successfully applied to artistic material insofar as relevant moments in terms of “Now Moments” and “Moments of Meeting” (Stern 2004) were identified by the raters throughout the dance piece. The selection of moments showed a notable overlap with the results of different and independent methods of analysis presented in this section.

Im Folgenden werden in einem Dreischritt zunächst 1) die Perspektiven aus einem Rückblick auf unsere Arbeitsweise, 2) weiterführende Gedanken zu Rhythmuskonzepten sowie 3) ein methodischer Ausblick auf die künftige Zusammenarbeit präsentiert.