Chapter published in:
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. 51–78

Doing We – Working alliance in psychotherapeutic relationships

A recursive model

| IPU Berlin

Larger chunks from psychotherapeutic cooperations are presented. Cooperation is studied in empirical psychotherapeutic process research as “working alliance” of which conceptual conflicts are outlined.

I follow a proposal by Ginzburg and Poesio (2016) to micro-analyze hesitation markers as conversational equivalents to embodied pointing gestures. Several stories by patients are told in order to “point” to comparisons between the stories. The concept of “tacit comparisons” is, thus, introduced. Then, a recursive model of common ground is proposed with reference to cognitive-linguistic theory of metaphor (Cienki und Müller 2010; Lakoff 1987). The conversation creates in describable steps new metaphors indicating important change.

Keywords: psychotherapy, conversation analysis, larger chunks, meaning making in therapeutic relationships, interactional metaphors, tacit comparison, common ground, psychoanalysis
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Early psychoanalytic efforts and empirical research
  • 3.First example: A “failed” we-construction
  • 4.“My-mind-is-with-you” (MMWY): A silent dimension
  • 5.From sequentiality to larger chunks: Tacit comparisons
    • Hesitation markers as pointing to tacit comparisons
  • 6.From pointing to metaphor: A recursive model
  • 7.We-Constellation: To overcome emotional deafness
  • 8.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 07 September 2022
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.331.03buc
References
Albert, Saul und J. P. de Ruiter
2018 “Repair: The Interface Between Interaction and Cognition.” Topics in Cognitive Science 10 (2): 279–313. Crossref.Google Scholar
Antaki, Charles
2008 „Formulations in psychotherapy.“ In Conversation Analysis and Psychotherapy, hrsg. von Anssi Peräkylä, Charles Antaki, Sanna Vehviläinen und Ivan Leudar, 26–43. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Aron, Lewis
1996 A Meeting of Minds – Mutuality in Psychoanalysis. Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press.Google Scholar
Barnes, B.
2000 Understanding agency. Social theory and responsible action. London: SAGE Publications Ltd. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Birkner, Karin und Oliver Ehmer, Hrsg
2013 Veranschaulichungsverfahren im Gespräch. Mannheim: Verl. für Gesprächsforschung.Google Scholar
Bögels, Sara, Lilla Magyari und Stephen C. Levinson
2015 „Neural Signatures of Response Planning Occur Midway Through an Incoming Question in Conversation.” Scientific reports 5:12881. Crossref.Google Scholar
Bordin, Edward S.
1979 “The Generalizability of the Psychoanalytic Concept of the Working Alliance.” Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training 16: 252–60. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Brockmeier, Jens
2017 „From Memory as Archive to Remembering as Conversation.“ In Handbook of Culture and Memory, hrsg. von Brady Wagoner, 39–72 1: Oxford University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bruner, Jerome S.
1995/2014. „From Joint Attention to the Meeting of Minds (1995).” In Moore, Dunham, and Dunham 1995/2014, 1–14.Google Scholar
Buchholz, Michael B.
2015. „Listening to Words, Seeing Images – Metaphors of emotional involvement and the movement of the metaphor.” Psychoanalytic Discourse 5 (1): 20–38.Google Scholar
Buchholz, Michael B.
2016 “Conversational Errors and Common Ground Activities in Psychotherapy – Insights from Conversation Analysis.” IJPS 8 (3): 134–53. Crossref.Google Scholar
Buchholz, Michael B.
2019a. „Commentary I: Clinically rethinking CA studies to improve therapeutic conversation.” Communication and Medicine 16 (2): 184–90. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Buchholz, Michael B.
2019b „Re-Petition in (Therapeutic) Conversation: A Psychoanalyst’s Perspective Using Conversation Analysis.“ In Repetition, Recurrence, Returns: How Cultural Renewal Works, hrsg. von Joan R. Resina und Christoph Wulf, 85–108. Lanham, Boulder, New York, London: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
2019c „Veränderung braucht Verbindung.“ In Pragmatik der Veränderung – Problem- und lösungsorientierte Kommunikation in helfenden Berufen, hrsg. von Eva-Maria Graf, Claudio Scarvaglieri und Thomas Spranz-Fogasy, 75–95. Berlin: Springer.Google Scholar
2020 “Seeing the Situational Gestalt – Movement in Therapeutic Spaces.” Gestalt Theory 42 (2): 1–31. Crossref.Google Scholar
Buchholz, Michael B., Oliver Ehmer, Christopher Mahlstedt, Stefan Pfänder und Elke Schumann
2021 „Speaking that silences. A single case multi-method analysis of a couple’s interview.“ In Silence and silencing in psychoanalysis. Cultural, clinical, and research aspects, hrsg. von Aleksandar Dimitrijević und Michael B. Buchholz, 333–97. Abingdon, Oxon, New York, NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Buchholz, Michael B. und Horst Kächele
2017 „From turn-by-turn to larger chunks of talk: An exploratory study in psychotherapeutic micro-processes using conversation analysis.” Research in Psychotherapy: Psychopathology, Process and Outcome 20:161–78. Crossref.Google Scholar
Bühler, Karl
2011 (1934) Theory of language. The representational function of language. (transl. by Donald Fraser Goodwin and Achim Eschbach). Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Calbris, Genevieve
2013 „Elements of meaning in gesture: The analogical links.“ In Body – Language – Communication. An International Handbook on Multimodality in Human Interaction, vol. 1, hrsg. von Cornelia Müller, Alan Cienki, Ellen Fricke, Ladewig, H. Silva und David McNeill, 658–77. Berlin [u.a.]: De Gruyter Mouton. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Chafe, Wallce
1985 „Some Reasons for Hesitating.“ In Perspectives on Silence, hrsg. von Deborah Tannen und Muriel Saville-Troike, 77–89. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corp.Google Scholar
Clark, H.
2003 “Pointing and placing,” In Pointing: Where Language, Culture, and Cognition Meet, ed. by Sotaro Kita, 243–268, Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Cienki, Alan und Cornelia Müller
(Hrsg.) 2010 Metaphor and Gesture. Paperback. Gesture studies 3. Amsterdam: Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Corballis, Michael C.
2011 The Recursive Mind: The Origins of Human Language, Thought, and Civilization. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Deppermann, Arnulf
2011 “The Study of Formulations as a Key to an Interactional Semantics.” Human Studies 34 (2): 115–28. Crossref.Google Scholar
2015 „Agency in Erzählungen über Gewalterfahrungen in Kindheit und Jugend.“ In Narrative Bewältigung von Trauma und Verlust., hrsg. von Eduard C. Scheidt, Gabriele Lucius-Hoene, Anja Stukenbrock und Elisabeth Waller. 1. Aufl, 64–75. Stuttgart: Schattauer.Google Scholar
Deppermann, Arnulf und H. Blühdorn
2013. „Negation als Verfahren des Adressatenzuschnitts: Verstehenssteuerung durch Interpretationsrestriktionen.” Deutsche Sprache 13 (1): 6–30. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Deppermann, Arnulf und Axel Schmidt
2016 “Partnerorientierung zwischen Realität und Imagination: Anmerkungen zu einem zentralen Konzept der Dialogtheorie.” Zeitschrift für germanistische Linguistik 44 (3). Crossref.Google Scholar
Edwards, Derek und David Middleton
1987 “Conversation and Remembering: Bartlett Revisited.” Appl. Cognit. Psychol. 1 (2): 77–92. Crossref.Google Scholar
Edwards, Derek und Jonathan Potter
1992 “The Chancellor’s Memory: Rhetoric and Truth in Discursive Remembering.” Appl. Cognit. Psychol. 6 (3): 187–215. Crossref.Google Scholar
Ehmer, Oliver
2011 Imagination und Animation. Die Herstellung mentaler Räume durch animierte Rede. Linguae & litterae 7. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Elliott, Robert, Arthur C. Bohart, Jeanne C. Watson und David Murphy
2018 “Therapist Empathy and Client Outcome: An Updated Meta-Analysis.” Psychotherapy (Chicago, Ill.) 55 (4): 399–410. Crossref.Google Scholar
Emirbayer, Mustafa und Ann Mische
1998 “What is Agency?“. The American Journal of Sociology 103 (4): 962–1023. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Enfield, N. J.
2013 Relationship thinking – Agency, enchrony, and human sociality. Foundations of Human Interaction. New York: Oxford University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Enfield, Nicholas J. und Paul Kockelman
Hrsg 2017 Distributed Agency. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Faimberg, Haydée
1996 “ ‘Listening to Listening’.” Intern. J. Psychoanal. 77: 667–77.Google Scholar
Falkenström, Fredrik, Fredrik Granström und Rolf Holmqvist
2014 “Working Alliance Predicts Psychotherapy Outcome Even While Controlling for Prior Symptom Improvement.” Psychotherapy Research 24 (2): 146–59. Crossref.Google Scholar
Falkenström, Fredrik, Mary Kuria, Caleb Othieno und Manasi Kumar
2019 “Working Alliance Predicts Symptomatic Improvement in Public Hospital-Delivered Psychotherapy in Nairobi, Kenya.” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 87 (1): 46–55. Crossref.Google Scholar
Ginzburg, Jonathan und Massimo Poesio
2016 „Grammar Is a System That Characterizes Talk in Interaction.” Front. Psychol. 7:1–22. Crossref.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving
1983 “The Interaction Order.” Amer. Sociol. Rev. 48: 1–17. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Goodwin, Charles
2015 „Narrative as Talk-in-Interaction.“ In the Handbook of Narrative Analysis, hrsg. von Anna de Fina und Alexandra Georgakopoulou, 197–218. Blackwell handbooks in linguistics. Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Wiley Blackwell. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2018a Co-Operative Action. Learning in doing. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
2018b „Seeing in Depth.“ In Co-Operative Action, hrsg. von Charles Goodwin, 275–306. Learning in doing. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hatcher, Robert L., Karin Lindqvist und Fredrik Falkenström
2019 “Psychometric Evaluation of the Working Alliance Inventory-Therapist Version: Current and New Short Forms.” Psychotherapy research : journal of the Society for Psychotherapy Research, 1–12. Crossref.Google Scholar
Huber, Dorothea und Günther Klug
2016 “Münchner Psychotherapiestudie.” Psychotherapeut, 1–6. Crossref.Google Scholar
Kanninen, K., J. Salo und R. -L Punamäki
2000. „Attachment Patterns and Working Alliance in Trauma Therapy for Victims of Political Violence.” Psychotherapy Research 10 (4): 435. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kidwell, Mardi und Don H. Zimmerman
2007. „Joint attention as action.” Journal of Pragmatics 39: 592–611. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kirsch, Michael und Michael B. Buchholz
2020 „On the Nature of the Mother-Infant Tie and Its Interaction With Freudian Drives.” Front. Psychol. 11:596. Crossref.Google Scholar
Korner, Anthony
2015. „Analogical Fit: dynamic relatedness in the psychotherapeutic setting with reference to language, autonomic response, and change in self-state.” Dissertation, Department of Linguistics, Macquarie University.
Lakoff, George
1987 Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things. What Categories Reveal About the Mind. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lerner, Gene H.
2013. „On the Place of Hesitating in Delicate Formulations: A Turn-Constructional Infrastructure for Collaborative Indiscretion.” In Hayashi, Raymond, and Sidnell 2013, 95–134.Google Scholar
Loewald, Hans W.
1971 “The Transference Neurosis: Comments on the Concept and the Phenomenon.” J. Amer. Psychoanal. Assoc. 19: 54–66. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
1979 “Reflections on the Psychoanalytic Process and Its Therapeutic Potential.” Psychoanal. Study Child 34: 155–68. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Mahr, Johannes und Gergely Csibra
2018 “Why Do We Remember? The Communicative Function of Episodic Memory.” The Behavioral and brain sciences 42 (1): 1–93. Crossref.Google Scholar
Mergenthaler, Erhard
2008. „Resonating Minds: A School-Independent Theoretical Conception and Its Empirical Application to Psychotherapeutic Processes.” Psychotherapy Research 18: 109–27. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Miller-Bottome, Madeleine und Jeremy D. Safran
2018 „Ferenczi’s Contributions to Relational Psychoanalysis: The Pursuit of Mutuality.“ In Ferenczi’s Influence on Contemporary Psychoanalytic Traditions. Lines of Development---Evolution of Theory and Practice over the Decades, hrsg. von Aleksandar Dimitrijevic, Gabriele Cassullo und Jay Frankel, 227–31. Milton: Routledge.Google Scholar
Montangero, J.
2009. „Using dreams in cognitive behavioral therapy.” Dreaming 19: 239–54. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Muntigl, Peter und Adam O. Horvath
2014 „“I Can See Some Sadness in Your Eyes”: When Experiential Therapists Notice a Client’s Affectual Display.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 47 (2): 89–108. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Muran, J. Christopher
2019. „Confessions of a New York rupture researcher: An Insider’s guide and critique.” Psychotherapy Research 29 (1–2): 1–14. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Peräkylä, Anssi und Jörg R. Bergmann
2020 “Practices of joint meaning creation. Dreams in psychoanalytic discussion.” The International journal of psycho-analysis, 1–28. Crossref.Google Scholar
Peräkylä, Anssi, Pentti Henttonen, Liisa Voutilainen, Mikko Kahri, Melisa Stevanovic, M. Sams und Niklas Ravaja
2015 “Sharing the Emotional Load. Recipient Affiliation Calms Down the Storyteller.” Social Psychology Quarterly 78 (4): 301–23. Crossref.Google Scholar
Plessner, Hellmuth
1928 Die Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch (3. Auflage 1975). Berlin/New York: de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Sacks, Harvey und Gail Jefferson
1992/1995 Lectures on Conversation. Edited by Gail Jefferson, with an Introduction by Emanuel A. Schegloff. 2 Bände. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Safran, Jeremy D. und J. Christopher Muran
2000 Negotiating the Therapeutic Alliance – a Relational Treatment Guide. New York: The Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Scarvaglieri, Claudio
2020 “Starting points for therapeutic change.” CAM 16 (2): 117–28. Crossref.Google Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A.
2000 “Das Wiederauftauchen des Unterdrückten.” Psychother. Soz. 2 (1): 3–29.Google Scholar
2006 „Interaction: The Infrastructure for Social Institutions, the Natural Ecological Niche for Language, and the Arena in Which Culture Is Enacted.“ In Roots of Human Sociality. Culture, Cognition and Interaction, hrsg. von Stephen C. Levinson und Nicholas J. Enfield, 70–96. Oxford: Berg Publishers.Google Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A.
2013. „Ten operations in self-initiated, same-turn repair.” In Hayashi, Raymond, and Sidnell 2013, 41–70.Google Scholar
Selting, Margret, Peter Auer, Dagmar Barth-Weingarten, Jörg R. Bergmann, Pia Bergmann, Karin Birkner, Elisabeth Couper-Kuhlen
et al. 2011 “A system for transcribing talk-in-interaction: GAT 2 translated and adapted for English by Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen and Dagmar Barth-Weingarten.” Gesprächsforschung – Online-Zeitschrift zur verbalen Interaktion 12: 1–51. www​.gespraechsforschung​-ozs​.de.Google Scholar
Sinha, Chris und Cintia Rodriguez
2008 „Language and signifying objects: From convention to imagination.“ In The Shared Mind. Perspectives on Intersubjectivity, hrsg. von Jordan Zlatev, Racine, Timothy, P., Chris Sinha und Esa Itkonen, 357–78. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Sterba, Richard F.
1934 “Das Schicksal des Ich im therapeutischen Verfahren.” Intern. Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse 20: 66–73.Google Scholar
Stevanovic, Melisa und Anssi Peräkylä.
2014 “Three Orders in the Organization of Human Action: On the Interface Between Knowledge, Power, and Emotion in Interaction and Social Relations.” Language in Society 43 (02): 185–207. Crossref.Google Scholar
Stiles, William B., Clara E. Hill und Robert Elliott
2015 “Looking Both Ways.” Psychotherapy Research 25 (3): 282–93. Crossref.Google Scholar
Tomasello, Michael
1995/2014. „Joint Attention as Social Cognition.” In Moore, Dunham, and Dunham 1995/2014, 103–30.Google Scholar
Tomasello, Michael und Amrisha Vaish
2013 “Origins of Human Cooperation and Morality.” Annu. Rev. Psychol. 64 (1): 231–55. Crossref.Google Scholar
Trevarthen, Colwyn
1979 „Communication and Cooperation in Early Infancy: A Description of Primary Intersubjectivity.“ In Before Speech: The Beginning of Interpersonal Communication, hrsg. von Margaret Bullowa, 321–48. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Vosniadou, S.
1995. „Analogical Reasoning in Cognitive Development.” Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 10: 297–308. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Wagner Cook, Susan
2014 „Gesture and working memory.“ In Body – Language – Communication: An international handbook on multimodality in human interaction, vol. 2, hrsg. von Cornelia Müller, Alan Cienki, Ellen Fricke, Silva H. Ladewig, David McNeill und Jana Bressem, 1936–42. Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft 38,2. Berlin [u.a.]: de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Weiste, Elina und Anssi Peräkylä
2013 “A Comparative Conversation Analytic Study of Formulations in Psychoanalysis and Cognitive Psychotherapy.” Research on Language & Social Interaction 46 (4): 299–321. Crossref.Google Scholar
Wooffitt, Robin
2005 „From Process to Practice: Language, Interaction and ‘Flashbulb’ Memories.“ In Conversation and Cognition, hrsg. von Hedwig t. Molder und Jonathan Potter, 203–25. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar