Psychotherapeutic discourse analysis

Psychotherapeutic discourse analysis is a significant, largely unexplored, tool for psychotherapist and an ideal data sight for linguists. Increased multidisciplinary research in this area would be particularly fruitful. Conversations, including therapeutic conversations, are far from transparent conduits of information from one person to another. Complicating surface communication is "metacommunication," which takes the form of unconscious conversational styles--culturally influenced rules, norms, and expectations of how a conversation should proceed. If the therapist and the patient are working with different conversational styles, then blocks in communication and understanding are inevitable. Through discourse analysis conversational styles can become more available to awareness for use in the service of therapeutic goals. This paper is an example of a discourse analysis of an individual therapy session. I attempt to bridge the gap between broad psychodynamic treatment strategies and minute micro-conversational strategies that can be used to enhance the therapeutic process.