Therapists’ responses for enhancing change through dialogue: Dialogical investigations of change

Abstract

The point of view on research represented here is based on a dialogical framework. Our emphasis is on understanding the contribution of the therapists to the process of change. We conceptualize therapeutic conversation as a dialogical activity. In using the research method The Dialogical Investigation of Happenings of Change (DIHC) the focus is on how therapists participate and answer from a specific position of "responsive responsibility." In this chapter our aim is twofold: (1) to present a method for conducting a dialogical analysis of couple sessions and (2) to track detailed sequences of events of change. To make sense of the details of this process, we use Bakhtinian concepts including," "voice," "addressee," and "positioning" which are all facets of the larger prism of dialogue. In the first phase of investigation it is (1) defined the topical episodes and thereafter within each of them, (2) explored the series of responses, and (3) the process of narration and the language area. In the second phase (4) the microanalysis is conducted in the specific episodes of change. In the couple therapy, we found the second session being the one in which the change happened and for this reason it was focused in more detail. Most of the topical episodes emphasized the couple’s relationship to Alfonso’s family of origin and in the dialogue of this topic the change was noticed. Both Alfonso and Victoria spoke to each other in quite a different manner compared to when they started. Both therapists were actively responsive especially to those particular utterances that having to do with what has happening in the here-and-now present moment. The Dialogical Investigations of the Happenings of Change seems to help to synthesize large amounts of information about couple therapy and see both the core element of dialogical exchange and their variation from session to session.