1. Therapeutic Conversation
Chapter 2
Therapeutic Conversation
Created by: Noah M.P. Spector and Shaofan Bu

2. Therapeutic conversation as a specialized form of talk
Therapeutic conversations are made up of specific rules and agreements (i.e. what is counseling for?).
These rules and agreements are often unspoken.
A central facet of a counselor’s skill is making these rules explicit (e.g. limits to confidentiality).

3. Power in the Consulting Room
Between counselor and client ?
How does this play out in the counselor-client relationship?
Instructions:
Ask students: How does power play out between counselor and client?
Write responses on slide
Ask students how their responses play out in the counselor client relationship.
Write these responses on slide.
Discuss: What are some of the positive and negative aspects of power? How do these aspects play out in the consulting room?

4. Language games: Working with theory
Wittgenstein (1953): We use talk for different purposes, bound by unspoken rules.
counseling conversations, like many other conversations, are bound by rules—like those of a game.
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5. Language games: Working with theory
Many of these “rules” come from the theories which we use to guide our conversations.
If we hold too closely to our theories we are in danger of not listening to our clients.
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6. The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity.
Ludwig Wittgenstein

7. counseling and psychotherapy as venues for world making
“Just a conversation, she thinks, but something feels different…”
In counseling conversations we focus on our clients’ subjective experience of their lived realities.
These conversations have the potential to open up new ways to experience these realities.
Lived experience is shaped sentence by sentence.
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8. Therapeutic conversation and culture
Words mean different things to different people.
These differences have to do with peoples’ various cultural locations—their multi-cultured identities.
As counselors it is our responsibility to try and understand the meaning for clients of the language they use

9. Being Understood
Small group discussion: Give an example of a time when someone was trying to give you guidance or advice and you had a sense they didn’t understand where you were coming from…they didn’t have a handle on your experience. What was that like for you? How did their failure to understand affect your receptivity to their input?
Instructions
1. Break students up into groups of three or four.
2. Ask them to discuss the scenario presented in this slide.

10. Being Understood (and the failure to be understood…)
Impact on you as person sharing your concerns? ?
Openness or willingness to collaborate with the other?
Ask students to reflect back on the scenario discussed in the previous slide.

11. Talk as Poetry
It can be a challenge to understand what words mean to the people saying them.
We all use language in unique ways, putting a poetic spin on our utterances.

12. Talk as Poetry
The poetic quality of language gives it its richness while simultaneously presenting challenges for mutual understanding.
This poetry is what makes counseling conversations so challenging.

13. Meaning: Beyond information transmission
Counselors and their clients do not just trade information.
Words have meaning depending on the ways they are said, how they are received, and the other words they are associated with.
The ways counselors respond to their clients’ words have effects on how clients perceive themselves.

14. Meaning: Beyond information transmission
“The speaker and listener produce the information together….” (Bavelas, 2012)
Counseling conversations are about constructing meaning… not just transmitting information.
Counseling is never about merely transmitting meaning; it is a conversation with a purpose.

15. Intentionality: Doing things with words
“Words are deeds”. Talking is not a simple exchange of information. Words get things done.
Stakes are always high in therapeutic conversations; never lose sight of one’s purpose.
Many skills used in counseling are already familiar to us from employing language for everyday purposes; one has to become conscious of them and use them with great intentionality.

16. Intentionality
We communicate because we intend a particular (helpful) effect.
Our talk is action that has effects.
Being mindful of effects involves attention to the meaning we intend to convey.
In the end it is the meaning received–not what was “actually said”--that is key.