Family therapists' participation in therapeutic dialogue with clients is typically informed by evidence of how such dialogue is developing. In this article, we propose that conversational evidence, the kind that can be empirically analyzed using discourse analyses, be considered a contribution to widening psychotherapy's evidence base. After some preliminaries about what we mean by conversational evidence, we provide a genealogy of evaluative practice in psychotherapy, and examine qualitative evaluation methods for their theoretical compatibilities with social constructionist approaches to family therapy. We then move on to examine the notion of accomplishment in therapeutic dialogue given how such accomplishments can be evaluated using conversation analysis. We conclude by considering a number of research and pedagogical implications we associate with conversational evidence.

In this article we challenge a common definition of therapeutic advice as a linear, one-way accomplishment, enacted by therapists toward clients. We also offer a novel conception of advice as a dialogical "performance," to which both therapists and clients contribute. We discuss the results of a conversation analysis of a family therapy session by Karl Tomm, showing sequential practices employed by a family therapist and a family as they jointly work out common ground to set the stage for the therapist's eventual offering of advice. We discuss the results of this study in light of the literature on advice provision in various contexts.

210Following the 'discursive' turn in family therapy, the attention of practitioners shifted towards understanding how culture and language shape meaning-making in therapy. In this article, we demonstrate how conversation analysis (CA) can be used to examine the processes and outcomes of systemic/constructionist practice. We used CA to study collaborative interactions of a renowned constructionist therapist Karl Tomm and one client-family. Viewing collaboration as a pivotal aspect of the therapeutic alliance, we demonstrate how the 'split' within-system alliances were developed and sustained in the course of therapy and how they were discursively transformed into 'intact' alliances. The therapist's efforts to align with perspectives of family members (and subsystems) seemed pivotal in this process.In the mid-1980s family therapy 'went' postmodern. The postmodern critique of conventional family therapy revolved primarily around the issue of therapist power and influence vis-à-vis families. The proponents of postmodernism challenged an instrumental, hierarchical approach to working with clients and advocated replacing it with a more collaborative, participatory engagement. What this collaborative engagement entails has remained a matter of controversy; nonetheless, the collaborative dimension of the therapeutic relationship has become a distinguishing feature of postmodern therapies and some have even used the term 'collaborative' to refer to postmodern approaches to working with families (Perlesz & Brown, 2005).Against this backdrop, we discuss a research study that investigated the use of language in postmodern, 'collaborative' therapy. Our objective in writing the article is twofold. First, we offer an exploratory account of how an avowed collaborative therapist shared his expertise in interaction with a family in ways that acknowledged and utilised family members' understandings and preferences.For us, therapeutic collaboration, and therapeutic alliance more broadly, 1 is created and sustained through repeated collaborative interactions. By observing specific examples of collaborative client-therapist interaction, it may be possible to understand better how the alliance is built (or not) discursively, that is, in communication. Second, we introduce conversation analysis (CA), a sociological tradition of research, arguing that it has a strong potential both for investigating therapy as an inter-subjective and interactive endeavor, and for offering not only a detailed account of the therapy process but also of its outcomes.We begin the article by providing our conceptual definition of 'collaboration', followed by the key assumptions and practices of CA, along with the details of this study. We conclude with the discussion of the results of a family therapy session facilitated by Karl Tomm, MD. Tomm's major contributions to the field of family therapy relate to how therapists can use language to foster collaborative interactions with families. By attending closely to Tomm's communication with the family we hope to...

Studies of actual conversational behaviours used to generate positive change in family therapy are relatively rare. In this study such conversational details were examined as they occurred in a single session of family therapy. With passages identified by family members as helpful, discursive methods of analysis (conversation analysis and critical discourse analysis) were used to examine an actual conversation between a renowned family therapist (Karl Tomm) and a family formerly at a conversational impasse. Conversational practices and sequences in talk used by the therapist and family members to bridge these differences in their ways of relating are discussed.Traditionally, process researchers have focused on examining change moments in therapy as one-way interventions delivered by the therapist. Few researchers have investigated how therapists and families constructed change in the back-and-forth of their conversations. As a post-modern family therapist I find this an important area of focus as I understand therapists and clients as constructing change in therapeutic interactions. Being influenced by post-modern notions I believe a person can alter her or his actions by constructing different understandings through language (Anderson, 1997;Kaye, 1995). Furthermore, as a family therapist I see this construction as occurring through non-linear, ongoing circular processes. Consequently, I utilized discursive methodology in my research. With a discursive investigation I could study the conversational behaviours of both the family and the therapist and highlight the importance of interaction and language in creating solutions.