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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. 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: 7 September 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.331.03buc
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