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This study examined how clients discursively constructed non-agency in their first session of individual psychotherapy. The data comprised videotaped and verbatim transcribed first sessions from nine therapies and was analyzed by open reading and focus on the linguistic exposition of the therapeutic dyads' expressions. Using theory-based considerations and data-based analysis of the expressions of both clients and therapists in their talk, we created a model of discursive means for ascribing agentic or non-agentic positions, the 10 Discursive Tools model (10DT). Here we focused on how the client, when presenting his/her issues, displayed problematic or lacking agency by ascribing him/herself a non-agentic position using the non-agency tools. There was large variability in the frequency of use of the non-agency tools, in how the tools were used in combination with each other, and in how the clients moved from one tool to another. The clients could not be classified according to their non-agency tool use patterns. The content of the clients' problems did not determine which tools were used to construct the non-agentic positioning, that is, the client could speak about the same problem with a variety of different non-agency tools, and the same tools were used when positioning towards a variety of issues. The study shows the potential of the 10DT model for the detailed examination of presentations of "not-being-able" produced by clients in psychotherapy discourse, and it suggests that therapists pay close attention to this diversity of expressions.

Studies on bilingual speech processing have implied that bilinguals may either have two separate or one intertwined system. These findings have been obtained by multiple methods using various types of bilinguals. Our study compared monolinguals and two types of bilinguals. We used the same methods for all groups, i.e. we measured attentive identification scores and preattentive discrimination. Our results show that bilinguals process speech sounds differently from monolinguals, and more importantly, that there is a difference between the two types of bilinguals. We suggest that dominant bilinguals have two separate phonological systems, while balanced bilinguals have one uniform system.

This multiple case study investigated how clients construct nonagentic positions when formulating their problems in the beginning of their first psychotherapy session. The initial problem formulations of nine clients entering psychotherapy were analyzed with a detailed model drawing on discursive methodology, the 10 Discursive Tools model (10DT). We found ten problem formulation categories, each one distinguished by the tool from the 10DT model primarily used to construct nonagency. All clients gave several problem formulations from different categories and constructed nonagentic positions with a variety of discursive tools. When the resulting problem formulation categories were read in comparison with the descriptions of the client's stance at the outset of psychotherapy as presented in two change process models, the Assimilation of Problematic Experiences Sequence and the Innovative Moments Coding System, some similarities were found. However, the 10DT model brought out much variation in the client's nonagentic positioning in the formulations, forming a contrast with the more simplified presentations of the client's initial nonagency given in the change process models. Therapists should pay close attention to how clients express their sense of lost agency at the outset of psychotherapy and how this positions both the client and the therapist as future collaborators in psychotherapy.