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Relationships in Organized Helping: Analyzing interaction in psychotherapy, medical encounters, coaching and in social media
Edited by Claudio Scarvaglieri, Eva-Maria Graf and Thomas Spranz-Fogasy
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 331] 2022
► pp. 27–50

Forging relationships in psychotherapeutic interaction

| Ghent University

Creating and maintaining a positive therapist-client relationship is considered to be essential in achieving therapeutic success, whereas damage to this relationship and the inability to repair disaffiliative episodes may have detrimental effects. So far, very little research has focused on how the relationship between therapists and clients is accomplished and negotiated through talk. Drawing from research in conversation analysis/ CA, I examine a diverse corpus of video-taped psychotherapy sessions to explore the interactional practices that may be ‘typically’ used to forge and create potential shifts in relationships and affiliation. In this paper, I not only set out to illustrate the central role that talk and conduct plays in therapist-client relationship-building, but also how the relationship is an ongoing interactional achievement.

Keywords: affiliation, conversation analysis, disaffiliation, disagreement, person references, relationship, social networks, troubles-telling, weak-tie support
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Relationships: A social/ interactional view
    • 2.1Social networks and relationship ties
    • 2.2Affiliation: A conversational building block of social relationships
    • 2.3Accomplishing relationships in interaction
  • 3.Using explicit relationship categories: Person and role references
    • 3.1Person references
    • 3.2Role references
  • 4.Practices associated with incumbency of relationship categories: Troubles-telling activities
    • 4.1Affiliating with the trouble
    • 4.2Client displays of opposition
      • 4.2.1Disagreement – Resolution
      • 4.2.2Criticizing therapist interventions
    • 4.3Topicalizing the relationship
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
Published online: 7 September 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.331.02mun
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