Embodiments and co-actions: The function of trust and re-enactment in the practice of psychotherapy

Abstract

This paper is an empirically-based theoretical contribution to the field of research that investigates the function of trust and re-enactment in psychotherapeutic interaction. We use an ecological, embodied approach that pays attention to how human interaction is constrained by multiple timescales (past, present and future). The analysis sheds light on how trust, here in terms of a therapeutic alliance, is enabled, performed and maintained in interaction through the work with embodied re-enactments of previous events. Specifically, we describe how this therapeutic work constitutes an emerging, situated opportunity for teaching/practising embodied emotion regulation in the form of a co-participated enaction of “taking a deep breath,” and we emphasise how embodied, co-participated re-enactment of past (dys)functional behaviours outside of therapy can be a resource for redirecting, teaching and reinforcing therapeutically relevant behaviours in the context of therapy presenting themselves as fruitful opportunities for facilitating incremental change. Further, psychotherapy serves as a useful case for demonstrating the relevance of such an embodied interaction approach far more generally.

Communication, Cognition and Competency Development in Healthcare – A model for integrating cognitive ethnography and communication skills training in clinical interventions

“…Informed by phenomenological philosophy and the dialogical turn [26] in patient-centered health communication in recent years, studies in person-centered care have placed more attention on reflexive meaning-making accounts as a way of understanding (some aspects of) experiences of individual actors described through linguistic means, often as an alternative to otherwise established quantitative methods. These studies have stressed the centrality of dialogue as an active method to involve and acknowledge patients in health care treatment, and as a more effective approach to treatment than one-way communication from HCPs [27,28], even though they paid little attention to specific care practices and embodied modalities, as urged by recent scholarship on care [e.g, [29][30][31][32].…”

Practices of relationship management in organized helping

“…Therefore, therapists employ specific conversational mechanisms to uphold an otherwise endangered working relationship such as downgrading, re-framing or explaining their interventions (Scarvaglieri 2020: 11f). In addition, linguistic research has at least in passing documented and analyzed relational management from a temporal and developmental perspective alongside (therapy) sessions and processes (Graf and Jautz 2019;Trasmundi and Philipsen 2020;Scarvaglieri 2020).…”