A microanalytical look at mutual regulation in psychotherapeutic dialogue: Dialogic discourse analysis (DDA) in episodes of rupture of the alliance
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Date
2014
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Abstract
© 2013 Italian Area Group of the Society for Psychotherapy Research.The psychotherapeutic process, like any intimate relationship between two human beings, involves mutual self-regulation processes that support effective communication. In psychotherapy, such regulatory processes are necessary to maintaining a positive working alliance and also contribute to therapeutic change. Episodes in which the alliance is ruptured or these ruptures are resolved constitute key moments during which the aforementioned regulatory processes are manifested. This article outlines a micro-analysis of these rupture episodes, using dialogic discourse analysis (DDA) to depict mutual regulation processes in the psychotherapeutic dialogue. DDA is a microanalytic procedure that makes it possible to identify discursive strategies associated with the processes of the construction, failure, and restoration of the psychotherapeutic dialogue. This analytic tool was applied to 34 rupture episodes identified in long-term psychoanalytic therapy. Following this, an emergent model about the discursive regulatory features in episodes of alliance rupture was developed, distinguishing between the overcoming and repairing processes of the alliance ruptures. The core issue for the resolution of ruptures seems to be the ability to regulate the tension between the participants. In this paper, we discuss the processes of repairing and overcoming of the rupture as two alternatives methods for regulating this tension. It is proposed that strategies that are most similar to repairing are more likely to facilitate the occurrence of psychotherapeutic change. Additionally, the discussion focuses on the value of DDA as a microanalytical methodology that makes it possible to comprehensively account for these processes.
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Dialogic discourse analysis, Mutual regulation in psychotherapy, Ruptures of the therapeutic alliance