The paradox of disengagement: Bodily displays of inattention in couple therapy

Abstract

Using concepts developed by Goffman and the theory of inter-corporeality, this paper describes non-speaking spouses' responses to complaints made about them by the other spouse in the context of couple therapy first consultations. While the turn-taking system of couple therapy effectively precludes the possibility of a direct verbal response, non-speaking spouses often display bodily their disengagement from their spouse's talk. Using multimodal conversation analysis as the method, we show the repertoire of such disengagement behaviors and trace the moment-by-moment contexts in which they arise. While disengagement behaviors embody their producer's inattention to their spouse's talk, at the same time, they are, paradoxically, interactional moves produced in the presence of others, conveying their producer's negative stance to the ongoing talk. We argue that the timing of these disengagement practices involves anticipation of the direction of talk: non-speaking spouses display disengagement in moments when the speaking spouse's talk takes a direction toward an intensification of complaints about them.