"'Zat make any sense?" A thick description discourse analysis of three psychotherapy consultations.

Format:

Book

Thesis/Dissertation

Author/Creator:

Fritsch, Kilian Joseph.

Contributor:

University of Pennsylvania.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Clinical psychology.

Educational counseling.

Oral communication.

Communication.

Linguistics.

0290.

0459.

0519.

0622.

Local Subjects:

0290.

0459.

0519.

0622.

Physical Description:

447 pages

Contained In:

Dissertation Abstracts International 52-11B.

System Details:

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

text file

Summary:

"Making sense" of a psychotherapy transaction remains one of the most challenging and perplexing tasks facing psychotherapy researchers. Psychotherapy is embedded within and dependent upon language, so that the task of observing linguistic psychotherapy transactions involves the necessity of observing the use of language while depending upon the concepts and formulations upon which psychotherapy rests in the first place. Hence the difficulty of moving to a different vantage point in order to "run a check" on the appropriate practice of psychotherapy.

Three single-session psychotherapy consultations were conducted and analyzed by the author. The sessions were audiotaped and transcribed so as to retain as close a linguistic "shape" to their actual occurrence as possible. The transcripts were then analyzed using methods best characterized as "thick description," with maximum meaning wrung from the transactions without a concomitant reduction in the complexity or ambiguity in the "phenomena" of experience as presented by the consultee.

The results show that the psychotherapeutic relationship is a mutually constructed "on the spot" interactive product which needs precise fashioning to facilitate accurate expression of the "phenomena" of the patient. Such a fashioning often requires the construction of conceptual and linguistic frames which are quite different from the forms in which traditional psychological concepts are given form. Secondly, it becomes clear that the therapist/investigator must include a description of his own "sense-making" process such that the bridge of hypothesis construction and inference testing is made as visible and non-reductionistic as possible.

The method of analysis is shown to be both systematic and rigorous, with the result that claims for the explication of the patient's idioverse can be made while studiously avoiding more universal claims for the existence of reified structure or pattern. The demand thus placed upon the practitioner to engage in such a "here and now," "at hand" creation of reality with the patient argues for the ongoing training of practitioners, since this remains a task geared toward the development of highly crafted means as opposed to a pre-existing set of ends for either diagnosis or treatment.

Notes:

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 52-11, Section: B, page: 6083.

Supervisor: Brian Sutton-Smith.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Pennsylvania, 1991.

Local Notes:

School code: 0175.

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.