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. 79–104

What about you?

Responding to a face-threatening question in psychotherapy

| University of Helsinki
| University of Helsinki
| University of Helsinki

In psychotherapy, the envisioned change in patient’s feelings, thoughts and behaviour often targets their self-experience. This threatens simultaneously the patient’s face and the therapeutic relation. We focus on face-threats in transformative question-answer sequences where therapists question the patient’s face by shifting the focus of talk on patient’s self and in response patients confront the dilemma of having to choose between saving their face or the relation with the therapist. Data come from 47 video recorded psychotherapy sessions conducted in Albanian language. Analysis shows that patients resist the transformation but only after making considerable efforts to save both their face and the therapeutic relation. We conclude that challenging the patient’s self-experience is a delicate task in terms of the therapeutic relation.

Keywords: psychotherapy, change, face-threat, therapeutic relation, transformative sequence, self-experience
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Data and method
  • Patient’s dilemma in response to therapist’s focus-of-talk shifting question
    • Patient’s responses to carefully mitigated face-threats
    • Patient’s responses to mitigated face-threats
    • Patient’s responses to upfront challenging face-threats
  • Discussion
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
Published online: 07 September 2022
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.331.04gux
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