Formulations in first encounters

Abstract

The paper describes and compares the use and function of the formulation-decision pair in three types of diagnostic interviewing. The investigatory type of interviewing, which typically occurs in the medical interview, is characterized by the absence of formulations. In the exploratory type of interviewing, which typically occurs in the psychiatric interview, the interviewer uses the formulation-decision pair for exploring the patient's experiences. He does not, however, formulate his professional assessment in the interview. In the collaborative type, which typically is found in psychotherapy, the formulation-decision pair is the main interactional device used by the interviewer for translating the patient's troubles into a professional problem definition. It is suggested that the patient's protoprofessionalization, which is typical for psychotherapy, already begins in the initial interview and that it is an effect of the interviewer's specific use of the formulation-decision device in the interview.

Questions as Interactional Resource in Team Decision Making

“…The interrogative form requires a confirmation of this evidential status from the interlocutors, and in this case, the last question is unequivocally answered by WSM with a plain confirmation ("=yeah"; cf. Hak & de Boer, 1996, for taxonomy of responses to formulations).…”

Third parties' voices in a therapeutic interview

“…It is also through discourse that the therapist and the patient build up a certain representation, or definition of the problem, and sometimes formulate it ex plicitly (Gale 1991;Salazar Orvig 1995Buttny 1996;Grossen and Apothéloz 1996;Grossen and Salazar Orvig 2006;Hak and De Boer 1996;Proia 1998;Antaki et al 2005;Peräkylä et al 2008). A therapeutic interview thus pertains to a certain genre (Grossen and Salazar Orvig 2006), that of pro fessional or institutional discourse (Linell 2009;Sarangi and Roberts 1999;Mäkitalo and Säljö 2002).…”

Voices in the text: The uses of reported speech in a psychotherapist's Notes and Initial Assessments

“…He argued that 'the case Conference like the admission interview analyzed by Barrett, is a site at which the psychiatric discipline exerts its power to create a patient's identity ' (1994: 115;see Soyland 1995, for a review of related literature). Hak and de Boer (1996;cf. 1995) compared the communicative activity of Professionals in three settings during an initial interview: one between a medical doctor and a patient in the physician's office (transcript taken from Mishler 1984); a second between a psychiatric nurse and a prospective patient in an emergency center of a psychiatric hospital; and the third between a psychotherapist (counsellor) and patient in an outpatient clinic.…”