Recursive Frame Analysis: A Practitioner’s Tool for Mapping Therapeutic Conversation

Abstract

Recursive frame analysis (RFA), both a practical therapeutic tool and an advanced qualitative research method that maps the structure of therapeutic conversation, is introduced with a clinical case vignette. We present and illustrate a means of mapping metaphorical themes that contextualize the performance taking place in the room, recursively enacted to produce a lineal progression from an opening act to a closing act. RFA is offered to therapists, supervisors, teachers, and researchers as an exit from impoverished ways of framing both the choices we have in how to work with clients as well as the ways in which pedagogy is structured and research conducted.