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A Pragmatic Approach to the Study of Therapeutic Interaction: Toward an Observational Science of Psychotherapy Process

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Psychotherapy Research

Abstract

Psychotherapy research has revealed the centrality of relational factors, such as the alliance, in psychotherapy process. This chapter places these findings in the context of contemporary research in developmental psychology, and in the discipline of pragmatics, the study of human communication in its immediate context. It proposes the adoption of the natural observational methods used in these disciplines for the multidisciplinary study of therapeutic interaction. A review of the relevant background is followed by a demonstration of this analytic approach. The chapter concludes with suggestions for a multimodal programme of research into relational processes in psychotherapy.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge my indebtedness to my colleagues Dr. Jean Knox and Dr. Sumi Kato both of whom have made important contributions both to the analysis and to my thinking in this chapter.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

    Georgia Lepper

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  1. Georgia Lepper
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Correspondence to Georgia Lepper .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Salento, Lecce, Italy, and Sigmund Freud University, Vienna, Austria

    Omar C.G. Gelo

  2. Sigmund Freud University, Vienna, Austria

    Alfred Pritz

  3. Sigmund Freud University, Vienna, Austria

    Bernd Rieken

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Lepper, G. (2015). A Pragmatic Approach to the Study of Therapeutic Interaction: Toward an Observational Science of Psychotherapy Process. In: Gelo, O., Pritz, A., Rieken, B. (eds) Psychotherapy Research. Springer, Vienna. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7091-1382-0_25

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7091-1382-0_25

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-7091-1382-0

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