Perakyla2011

Perakyla2011
BibType	ARTICLE
Key	Perakyla2011
Author(s)	Anssi Peräkylä
Title	After interpretation: Third-position utterances in psychoanalysis
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Tag(s)	EMCA, Conversation Analysis, Medical EMCA, Psychoanalysis, Turn Design, Third Position, Sequence organization
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Year	2011
Language	English
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Journal	Research on Language & Social Interaction
Volume	44
Number	3
Pages	288-316
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Abstract

Using 58 audio-recorded sessions of psychoanalysis (coming from two analysts and three patients) as data and conversation analysis as method, this article shows how psychoanalysts deal with patients' responses to interpretations. After the analyst offers an interpretation, the patient responds. At that point (in the third position), the analysts recurrently modify the tenor of the description from what it was in the patients' responses. They intensify the emotional valence of the description, or they reveal layers of the patients' experience other than those that the patient reported. Both are usually accomplished in an implicit, nonmarked way, and they discreetly index possible opportunities for the patients to modify their understandings of the initial interpretation. Although the patients usually do not fully endorse these modifications, the data available suggest that during the sessions that follow, the participants do work with the aspects of patients' experience that the analyst highlighted. In discussion, it is suggested that actions that the psychoanalysts produce in therapy, such as choices of turn design in third position, may be informed by working understanding of the minds and mental conflicts of individual patients, alongside the more general therapeutic model of the mind they hold to.

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