Rhythm and Blues - Amalie's 152nd session: From psychoanalysis to conversation and metaphor analysis - and back again

Conversation analysis and psychotherapy process research is an evolving field promising new insights for therapeutic practice. As the specimen case of Amalie, especially her 152nd session, has been investigated using various methods - of which we give a short overview - we offer a new analysis of session 152 based on a new transcription which allows for more detailed listening to the prosodic properties of this analytic dyad. Our findings show a) how analyst and patient co-create their common conversational object called psychoanalysis; b) how a lot of up-to-now not described analytical tools are applied, that can be described as "practices"; c) how a "dance of insight" is enacted by both participants in a common creation making patterns of interaction visible from "both sides"; d) how participants create metaphors as conversational and cognitive tools to reduce the enormous complexity of the analytic exchange and for other purposes; e) that prosodic rhythmicity and other prosodic features are best integrated in a threefold model for analytic conversation consisting of "interaction engine", "talking to" and "talking about" the patient. The study is presented as hypothesis-generating research based on verbal, not statistical data.