<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<p>This paper starts with a short review of recent developments in psychotherapy process research and analyzes that a medical, or better, technical approach in process research – using words such as ‘intervention’, ‘effect’ and ‘outcome’ – is gradually acknowledged as only one side of psychotherapy; the other, more human or ‘humanistic’ side, is ‘conversation’, described by prominent authors as ‘low technology’. Conversation analysis cannot study psychotherapy as a whole. Sessions are subdivided into ‘situations’. What are situations? I make a proposal to answer this question by three components: open up, select and control options. Then, 11 transcribed extracts from psychoanalytical therapy sessions are used to describe three types of situations and the special kind of requirements they demand from a therapist. Obviously, such situations appear during a session, they can be handled if therapists are sensitized for certain difficulties to arise. Shift-of-situation and double meaning are new observations in this approach to define the situational gestalt and train ‘seeing’ it.</p>
</abstract>

This paper starts with a short review of recent developments in psychotherapy process research and analyzes that a medical, or better, technical approach in process research – using words such as ‘intervention’, ‘effect’ and ‘outcome’ – is gradually acknowledged as only one side of psychotherapy; the other, more human or ‘humanistic’ side, is ‘conversation’, described by prominent authors as ‘low technology’. Conversation analysis cannot study psychotherapy as a whole. Sessions are subdivided into ‘situations’. What are situations? I make a proposal to answer this question by three components: open up, select and control options. Then, 11 transcribed extracts from psychoanalytical therapy sessions are used to describe three types of situations and the special kind of requirements they demand from a therapist. Obviously, such situations appear during a session, they can be handled if therapists are sensitized for certain difficulties to arise. Shift-of-situation and double meaning are new observations in this approach to define the situational gestalt and train ‘seeing’ it.

Seeing the Situational Gestalt - Movement in Therapeutic Spaces

Gestalt Theory

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

{"article-title":"Seeing the Situational Gestalt - Movement in Therapeutic Spaces"}

This paper starts with a short review of recent developments in psychotherapy process research and analyzes that a medical, or better, technical approach in...

Seeing the Situational Gestalt - Movement in Therapeutic Spaces

Publié en ligne: 17 août 2020

Pages: 101 - 132

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/gth-2020-0011

Mots clés
Conversation analysis, psychoanalytic therapies, Situational gestalt, shift-of-situation, double meaning

© 2020 Michael B. Buchholz, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Seeing the Situational Gestalt - Movement in Therapeutic Spaces

Publié en ligne: 17 août 2020

Pages: 101 - 132

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/gth-2020-0011

Mots clésConversation analysis, psychoanalytic therapies, Situational gestalt, shift-of-situation, double meaning

© 2020 Michael B. Buchholz, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Mots clés
Conversation analysis, psychoanalytic therapies, Situational gestalt, shift-of-situation, double meaning