Observations on silence in telephone delivered cognitive behavioural therapy (T-CBT)

Chatwin, JR; Bee, P; Macfarlane, GJ; Lovell, K

Abstract

In psychotherapy and counselling, and many other institutional settings, the occurrence and interactionally derived meaning of pauses and silence have an array of implications over and above those of ‘everyday’ interaction. In this study we utilised conversation analysis to explore aspects of silence in one particular therapeutic setting: telephone delivered cognitive behavioural therapy (T-CBT). We outline how instances of silence which are notionally ‘problematic’ can result in remedial action which we broadly categorise as: ‘Same party prompt’, ‘same party repair’, or ‘synchronous repair’. We observe that ‘therapeutic’ silences that were oriented to by interlocutors as non-problematic generally occur in particular phases of an encounter, and we argue that it is often the issue of how parties switch between and signal orientation towards different modes of silence that can create interactional misalignment, rather than the silence itself.

Citation

Chatwin, J., Bee, P., Macfarlane, G., & Lovell, K. (2014). Observations on silence in telephone delivered cognitive behavioural therapy (T-CBT). Journal of Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice, 11(1), https://doi.org/10.1558/japl.27652

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Online Publication Date: Apr 30, 2018
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2014
• Deposit Date: Jun 28, 2018
• Journal: Journal of Linguistics and Professional Practice
• Print ISSN: 2040-3658
• Electronic ISSN: 2040-3666
• Publisher: Equinox Publishing
• Volume: 11
• Issue: 1
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1558/japl.27652
• Publisher URL: https://doi.org/10.1558/japl.27652
• Related Public URLs: https://journals.equinoxpub.com/index.php/JALPP/index