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How Speakers Orient to the Notable Absence of Talk: A Conversation Analytic Perspective on Silence in Psychodynamic Therapy

Silence has gained a prominent role in the field of psychotherapy because of its potential to facilitate a plethora of therapeutically beneficial processes within patients’ inner dynamics. This study examined the phenomenon from a conversation analytical perspective in order to investigate how silen...

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Autores principales: Knol, A. S. L., Koole, Tom, Desmet, Mattias, Vanheule, Stijn, Huiskes, Mike
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7750524/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33364999
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.584927
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author Knol, A. S. L.
Koole, Tom
Desmet, Mattias
Vanheule, Stijn
Huiskes, Mike
author_facet Knol, A. S. L.
Koole, Tom
Desmet, Mattias
Vanheule, Stijn
Huiskes, Mike
author_sort Knol, A. S. L.
collection PubMed
description Silence has gained a prominent role in the field of psychotherapy because of its potential to facilitate a plethora of therapeutically beneficial processes within patients’ inner dynamics. This study examined the phenomenon from a conversation analytical perspective in order to investigate how silence emerges as an interactional accomplishment and how it attains interactional meaning by the speakers’ adjacent turns. We restricted our attention to one particular sequential context in which a patient’s turn comes to a point of possible completion and receives a continuer by the therapist upon which a substantial silence follows. The data collection consisted of 74 instances of such post-continuer silences. The analysis revealed that silence (1) can retroactively become part of a topic closure sequence, (2) can become shaped as an intra-topic silence, and (3) can be explicitly characterized as an activity in itself that is relevant for the therapy in process. Only in this last case, the absence of talk is actually treated as disruptive to the ongoing talk. Although silence is often seen as a therapeutic instrument that can be implemented intentionally and purposefully, our analysis demonstrated how it is co-constructed by speakers and indexically obtains meaning by adjacent turns of talk. In the ensuing turns, silence indeed shows to facilitate access to the patient’s subjective experience at unconscious levels.
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spelling pubmed-77505242020-12-22 How Speakers Orient to the Notable Absence of Talk: A Conversation Analytic Perspective on Silence in Psychodynamic Therapy Knol, A. S. L. Koole, Tom Desmet, Mattias Vanheule, Stijn Huiskes, Mike Front Psychol Psychology Silence has gained a prominent role in the field of psychotherapy because of its potential to facilitate a plethora of therapeutically beneficial processes within patients’ inner dynamics. This study examined the phenomenon from a conversation analytical perspective in order to investigate how silence emerges as an interactional accomplishment and how it attains interactional meaning by the speakers’ adjacent turns. We restricted our attention to one particular sequential context in which a patient’s turn comes to a point of possible completion and receives a continuer by the therapist upon which a substantial silence follows. The data collection consisted of 74 instances of such post-continuer silences. The analysis revealed that silence (1) can retroactively become part of a topic closure sequence, (2) can become shaped as an intra-topic silence, and (3) can be explicitly characterized as an activity in itself that is relevant for the therapy in process. Only in this last case, the absence of talk is actually treated as disruptive to the ongoing talk. Although silence is often seen as a therapeutic instrument that can be implemented intentionally and purposefully, our analysis demonstrated how it is co-constructed by speakers and indexically obtains meaning by adjacent turns of talk. In the ensuing turns, silence indeed shows to facilitate access to the patient’s subjective experience at unconscious levels. Frontiers Media S.A. 2020-12-07 /pmc/articles/PMC7750524/ /pubmed/33364999 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.584927 Text en Copyright © 2020 Knol, Koole, Desmet, Vanheule and Huiskes. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Knol, A. S. L.
Koole, Tom
Desmet, Mattias
Vanheule, Stijn
Huiskes, Mike
How Speakers Orient to the Notable Absence of Talk: A Conversation Analytic Perspective on Silence in Psychodynamic Therapy
title How Speakers Orient to the Notable Absence of Talk: A Conversation Analytic Perspective on Silence in Psychodynamic Therapy
title_full How Speakers Orient to the Notable Absence of Talk: A Conversation Analytic Perspective on Silence in Psychodynamic Therapy
title_fullStr How Speakers Orient to the Notable Absence of Talk: A Conversation Analytic Perspective on Silence in Psychodynamic Therapy
title_full_unstemmed How Speakers Orient to the Notable Absence of Talk: A Conversation Analytic Perspective on Silence in Psychodynamic Therapy
title_short How Speakers Orient to the Notable Absence of Talk: A Conversation Analytic Perspective on Silence in Psychodynamic Therapy
title_sort how speakers orient to the notable absence of talk: a conversation analytic perspective on silence in psychodynamic therapy
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7750524/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33364999
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.584927
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