Conversation Analysis and Psychotherapy: Identifying Transformative Sequences

Abstract

The starting point of conversation analytical research on psychotherapy was in Kathy Davis’s work on problem reformulations in the mid 1980s. Since then there has been a growing body of analysis of psychotherapy, based on the close, sequential relations between adjacent utterances. Through examples drawn from CA studies on psychotherapy in the past decade, this review shows that sequential relations between utterances enable a process of transformation of experience. This process pertains to referents, emotion, and momentary relations between the therapist and the client. The utterance-by-utterance transformation contributes to the process of change in more macroscopic time, spanning the continuum of psychotherapeutic sessions. The recent developments of CA research on psychiatric consultants will also be discussed. Data are in Finnish and English.