Cover not available
Part of
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. 105–126

So let’s say men can’t understand that much

Gender and relational practices in psychotherapy with women suffering from eating disorders

 | Adam Mickiewicz University Poznań
 | University of Padua
In this paper we look at three extracts of two psychotherapy sessions between a female therapist and a woman patient suffering from bulimia and depression. We use conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis to examine how gender, indexing the quality of the emotional bond between participants, is interactionally managed in view of the session’s goals.
The findings show the patient relying on gender as category-sharing to account for her actions and seek understanding. The therapist, however, tends to resist the category-sharing and engages the patient in extensive work around gender categories. Women psychotherapists should be particularly attuned to women patients’ invoking of category-sharing and critically consider its relevance and application in the situated context of therapy work.
Keywords: gender, psychotherapy, eating disorders, alignment, affiliation, conversation analysis, membership categorization analysis
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Psychotherapy and relational practices
  • 3.Data and methods
  • 4.Data analysis
  • 5.Concluding remarks
  • Transcription conventions (see Jefferson 2004)
  • References
Published online: 7 September 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.331.05paw
References (53)
References
Ackerman, Steven, and Mark Hilsenroth. 2003. “A Review of Therapist Characteristics and Techniques Positively Impacting the Therapeutic Alliance.” Clinical Psychology Review, 23 (1): 1–33. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Antaki, Charles. 2008. “Formulations in Psychotherapy.” Discourse Studies 7 (6): 627–647 DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Benwell, Bethan, and Elizabeth Stokoe. 2006. Discourse and Identity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bordin, Edward S. 1994. Theory and Research on the Therapeutic Working Alliance: New Directions. In Wiley series on personality processes. The working alliance: Theory, research, and practice ed. by Adam O. Horvath, and Leslie S. Greenberg, 13–37. John Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
Buchholz, Michael, B. This volume. “Doing We – Working alliance in psychotherapeutic relationships. A recursive model.”
Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Gender Identity. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Carlson, Jennifer. 2018. “Representation.” In The Social Life of Gender, ed. by Raka Ray, Jennifer Carlson, and Abigail Andrews, 33–55. Los Angeles: Sage. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ekberg, Katie, and Amanda LeCouteur. 2015. “Clients’ Resistance to Therapists’ Proposals: Managing Epistemic and Deontic Status.” Journal of Pragmatics 90: 12–25. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Enfield, N. J. 2006. “Social Consequences of Common Ground.” In Roots of Human Sociality: Culture, Cognition and Interaction, ed. by N. J. Enfield, and Stephen C. Levinson, 399–430. Oxford: Berg.Google Scholar
Ferrara, Kathleen. 1994. Therapeutic Ways with Words. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Fitzsimons, Annette. 2002. Gender as a Verb. Gender Segregation at Work. Aldershot: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Gerhart, Diane R., and Randall Lyle. 2001. “Client Experience of Gender in Therapeutic Relationships: An Interpretive Ethnography.” Family Process 40 (4): 443–58. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Guxholli, Aurora, Liisa Voutilainen, and Anssi Peräkylä. This volume. “What about you? Responding to face-threats in psychotherapy.”
Guxholli, Aurora, Liisa Voutilainen, and Anssi Peräkylä. 2021. “Safeguarding the therapeutic alliance: Managing disaffiliation in the course of work with psychotherapeutic projects.” Frontiers in Psychology 11:596972. DOI logo.Google Scholar
Hepburn, Alexa, and Galina B. Bolden. 2017. Transcribing for Social Research. London: Sage. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heritage, John. 2011. “Territories of Knowledge, Territories of Experience: Empathic Moments in Interaction”. In The Morality of Knowledge in Conversation (Studies in Interactional Sociolinguistics), ed. by Tanya Stivers, Lorenza Mondada, and Jakob Steensig, 159–183. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hester, Stephen, and Peter Eglin. 1997. “Membership Categorization Analysis: An Introduction.” In Culture in Action. Studies in Membership Categorization Analysis, ed. by Stephen Hester, and Peter Eglin, 1–23. Washington, D.C.: International Institute for Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis & University of America Press.Google Scholar
Holmes Sue. 2016. “‘Blindness to the Obvious?’: Treatment Experiences and Feminist Approaches to Eating Disorders.” Feminism and Psychology 26 (4): 464–486. DOI logo.Google Scholar
Jacoby, Sally, and Elinor Ochs. 1995. “Co-construction: An Introduction.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 28: 171–183. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jefferson, Gail. 1990. “List Construction as a Task and Resource.” In Interaction Competence, ed. by George Psathas, 63–92. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.Google Scholar
. 2004. “Glossary of Transcript Symbols with an Introduction.” In Conversation Analysis: Studies From the First Generation, ed. by Gene H. Lerner, 13–23. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Rebekah. 2007. “The Co-Construction of Roles and Patterns of Interaction in Family Discourse.” Working Papers in TESOL & Applied Linguistics 7 (2): 1–26.Google Scholar
Lerner, Gene. 2004. Conversation Analysis. Studies from the First Generation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Levinson, Stephen. 1983. Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Malson, Helen, and Maree Burns (eds). 2009. Critical Feminist Approaches to Eating Dis/orders. London – New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Muntigl, Peter. This volume. “Forging relationships in psychotherapeutic interaction.”. DOI logo
Muntigl, Peter, Naomi Knight, Ashley Watkins, Adam O. Horvath, and Lynne Angus. 2013. “Active Retreating: Person-Centered Practices to Repair Disaffiliation in Therapy.” Journal of Pragmatics 53: 1–20. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Muntigl, Peter, Naomi Knight, and Ashley Watkins. 2014. “Empathic Practices in Client-Centered Psychotherapies: Displaying Understanding and Affiliation with Clients.“ In Discourses of Helping Professions, ed. by Eva-Maria Graf, Marlene Sator, and Thomas Spranz-Fogasy, 33–57. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Muntigl, Peter and Adam O. Horvath. 2015. “The Therapeutic Relationship in Action: How Therapists and Clients Co-manage Relational Disaffiliation.” In The Therapeutic Relationship. Innovative Investigations, ed. by Hadas Wiseman, and Orya Tishby, 41–59. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Norcross, John C. (ed). 2011. Psychotherapy Relationships that Work: Evidence-Based Responsiveness (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pawelczyk, Joanna. 2011. Talk as Therapy. Psychotherapy in a Linguistic Perspective. Berlin – Boston: Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pawelczyk, Joanna, and Małgorzata Talarczyk. 2017. “‘What should a woman think and imagine to have bulimia?’: Co-Constructing Patient Expertise in Psychotherapy with Bulimia Patients.” Communication & Medicine 14 (2): 135–149. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pawelczyk, Joanna, and Aleksandra Sokalska-Bennett. 2019. “Co-Constructing and Re-Constructing Self: Client Change in Psychotherapy.” In Pragmatik der Veränderung: Problem- und lösungsorientierte Kommunikation in helfenden Berufen, ed. by Eva-Maria Graf, ‎Claudio Scarvaglieri, ‎and Thomas Spranz-Fogasy, 65–88. Tübingen: Narr.Google Scholar
Pawelczyk, Joanna, Elena Faccio, and Małgorzata Talarczyk. 2021. “Working with Gender in Psychotherapy: A Discursive Analysis of Psychotherapy Sessions with Women Suffering from Bulimia.” Text & Talk 41 (2): 187–210. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Peräkylä, Anssi. 2013. “Conversation Analysis in Psychotherapy.” In The Handbook of Conversation Analysis, ed. by Jack Sidnell, and Tanya Stivers, 551–574. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.Google Scholar
. 2019. “Conversation Analysis and Psychotherapy: Identifying Transformative Sequences.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 52 (3): 257–280. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pomerantz, Anita. 1980. “Telling my Side: ‘Limited Access’ as a Fishing Device.” Sociological Inquiry 50 (3–4): 186–198. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1984. “Agreeing and Disagreeing with Assessments: Some Features of Preferred/Dispreferred Turn-Shapes.” In Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis, ed. by John M. Atkinson, and John Heritage, 57–101. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey, Schegloff Emanuel A., and Gail Jefferson. 1974. “A Simplest Systematics for the Organization of Turn-Taking for Conversation.” Language 50: 696–735. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel. 2002. Reflection on Research on Telephone Conversation: Issues of Cross-cultural Scope and Scholarly Exchange, Interactional Import and Consequences. In Telephone Calls: Unity and Diversity in Conversational Structure Across Languages and Cultures, ed. by K. K. Luke, and Theodossia Soula Pavlidou, 249–281. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel, A. 1997. Whose Text? Whose Context. Discourse & Society 8 (2): 165–187. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Smithson, Janet, and Elizabeth Stokoe. 2005. “Discourses of Work-Life Balance: Negotiating ‘Genderblind’ Terms in Organizations.” Gender, Work and Organization 12: 147–168. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Speer, Susan, and Elizabeth Stokoe. 2011. “An Introduction to Conversation and Gender.” In Conversation and Gender, ed. by Susan Speer, and Elizabeth Stokoe, 1–27. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stivers, Tanya. 2008. “Stance, Alignment, and Affiliation During Storytelling: When Nodding Is a Token of Affiliation.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 41 (1): 31–57. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stivers, Tanya, Lorenza Mondada, and Jakob Steensig (eds.). 2011. The Morality of Knowledge in Conversation (Studies in Interactional Sociolinguistics). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stokoe. Elizabeth. 2010. “Gender, Conversation Analysis, and the Anatomy of Membership Categorization Practices.” Social and Personality Psychology Compass 4 (7): 428–505. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stokoe, Elizabeth. 2012. “Moving Forward with Membership Categorization Analysis: Methods for Systematic Analysis.” Discourse Studies 14 (3): 277–303. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thomassen, Gøril. 2009. “The Role of Role-Play in Medical Education: Managing Activity Ambiguities in Simulated Consultations Between Medical Students and Patients.” Communication & Medicine 6 (1): 83–93. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Voutilainen, Liisa, and Anssi Peräkylä. 2016. “Interactional Practices of Psychotherapy.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Adult Mental Health, ed. by Michelle O’Reilly, and Jessica Nina Lester, 540–557. Basingstoke: Palgrave. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sacks, Harvey. 1984. "On Doing ‘Being Ordinary'." In Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis, ed. by Maxwell Atkinson and John Heritage, 413–429. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Voutilainen, Liisa, Federico Rossano, and Anssi Peräkylä. 2018. “Conversation Analysis and Psychotherapeutic Change.” In Documenting Change Across Time: Longitudinal Studies on the Organization of Social Interaction, ed. by Simona Pekarek Doehler, Johannes Wagner, and Esther González-Martínez, 225–254. London: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wampold, Bruce E. 2001. The Great Psychotherapy Debate: Models, Methods and Findings. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Weiste, Elina, Voutilainen Liisa, and Anssi Peräkylä. 2015. “Epistemic Asymmetries in Psychotherapy Interaction: Therapists’ Practices for Displaying Access to Clients’ Inner Experiences.” Sociology of Health & Illness 38 (4): 645–661. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Kabatnik, Susanne
2024. “Because he was disgusting”: transforming relations through positioning in messenger-supported group psychotherapy. Frontiers in Psychology 14 DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.