Evaluating the Talking Cure: The Contribution of Narrative, Discourse, and Conversation Analysis to Psychotherapy Assessment

Abstract

This article draws upon an extensive review of narrative, discourse, and conversation analyses of psychotherapy in order to outline, critically discuss, and evaluate claims made by these studies regarding the usefulness of these approaches for psychotherapy assessment. These analytic approaches are seen as compatible with the emphasis on language and meaning that characterises much of contemporary therapy theory. The claims regarding what can be evaluated through language-based analysis vary considerably, ranging from assessing the client's problems and/or psychopathology to assessing the degree of change of the client in the process of therapy, the processes through which therapy is carried out, and finally the therapist's interventions. The studies also vary with regard to the extent to which they subscribe to psychotherapeutic assumptions and practices. Along this continuum, the range extends from claims that language-based analysis can be used by therapists themselves to assess clients as part of their routine clinical work to claims that the role of language-based analysis is primarily to evaluate psychotherapeutic assumptions and practices from a critical deconstructive perspective.