Conference Agenda

This workshop aims to introduce participants to (critical) discursive research methodologies for the study of training processes in psychotherapy research, focusing on the methodology of (critical) discursive psychology (DP). DP is a discourse analysis approach, closely affiliated with conversation analysis. DP considers all phenomena, including the psychological ones, as situated within discursive practices and assigns language-use a constitutive role with regard to such phenomena. DP suggests specific ways for the analysis of discursive practices, like psychotherapeutic training, which allow for an in situ, sequential analysis of naturally occurring dialogues between participants in such dialogues. Critical DP further takes into consideration the contextual, historical and ideological processes constructing phenomena, like wider ideological dilemmas such as the one about knowledge and expertise vs. democratic principles, which inform the institutionally constructed asymmetry between trainers and trainees. In this workshop, I will first introduce participants to the basic premises of discursive psychology and critical discursive psychology as well as to their key steps and tools regarding analysis. I will then invite participants to experiment with analysis of extracts of transcribed, live conversations between trainers and trainees, by drawing from a discursive psychology study focusing on the analysis of the negotiation of authority within systemic psychotherapeutic training. Overall, participants will have the chance both to familiarize themselves with discursive and critical discursive psychology but also with their application to the study of processes, like psychotherapeutic training processes.