Introducing Novelties into Therapeutic Dialogue: The Importance of Minor Shifts of the Therapist

Abstract

Psychotherapy research has been able to reveal how the therapists do what they are able to articulate as their basic repertory of doing psychotherapy. The research has also shown that the therapists do additional, equally important things which are not usually included in their own accounts of their therapeutic practice and preferences. Therapeutic skills consist of parts which are different layers of therapists’ personal learning histories and professional experience (i.e. vertical expertise), and of other parts which are more context-interactive and relational knowledge based (i.e. horizontal expertise). In this chapter, I am making an effort to construct a picture about the evolution of the therapist’s actions in the beginning phases of four consecutive couple therapy sessions of a young intercultural couple (neither of them or the therapists were using their native tongue in therapy sessions). This is done through a microanalytical reading of session transcripts using dialogical tools and the concepts of Narrative Processes Coding System (NPCS) developed by Angus et al. The emphasis of the inquiry is on the responsive nonchallenging joining and therapist’s attunement with the couple’s interactive approach, minor shifts in the narrative process modes, and some more openly interventive turns through which the therapist introduces novel ways of approaching and dealing with the issues emerging in the therapeutic dialogue. The outcome of these therapist actions is considered both in the microanalytical context of immediate conversation negotiating the couple’s relationship and in the context of this four-session process. The contribution of this perspective aims to provide tools both for marital and family therapy training and research.