The challenge: Tailoring qualitative process research methods for the study of marital and family therapeutic sessions

Abstract

Although there is an increased interest in looking at psychotherapy in terms of discourse, narrative and dialogue, most psychotherapy research is still quantitative and psychotherapy research in the field of marital and family therapy (MFT) is rather scarce. While qualitative research (QR) is appreciated in the fields of sociology, pedagogy and anthropology, for instance, in the fields of clinical psychology and psychotherapy it has just started to be accepted as a valid kind of research. This development towards the appreciation of qualitative research is important for our field as words and meanings-the area qualitative research is traditionally focussing on-are central to psychotherapy in general and to MFT in particular. This is the central question: how can we bring research closer to the complexity of MFT practice as a multi-actor setting? The different contributors in this volume will each explain how they tried to answer this question by outlining their theoretical background, explaining their methodology and illustrating their approach by using it to study the therapy of Victoria and Alfonso. While the complexity of conceptual frames like the narrative perspective and Bakhtin’s philosophy has a good fit with the interactional complexity of the MFT setting as a co-constructive and responsive process between people, it is clear that it remains a challenge to use these (or other) conceptual frameworks in researching multi-actor settings.