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Reflecting on Counselling Conversational Reminders. Joaqu ín Gaete Silva, MSc . Inés Sametband, MSc. Emily Doyle, MC., PhD Candidate. Overview. What are “conversational reminders”? Supervision Conversational Reminders (SCR) Conversational reminders in your practice
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Reflecting on Counselling Conversational Reminders Joaquín Gaete Silva, MSc. Inés Sametband, MSc. Emily Doyle, MC., PhD Candidate
Overview • What are “conversational reminders”? • Supervision Conversational Reminders (SCR) • Conversational reminders in your practice • How conversational reminders can be important • Research Conversational Reminders (RCR): “Misunderstanding” as RCR • Implications summary • Questions/discussion
‘Reflection on Practice’ versus Manuals/Experience
Understanding = Apply Principle ‘x’ (Problem Solving) But only a fool would ask for a rule in order to apply a rule! Episteme Techné Phronesis
Understanding = I get it!... Wittgenstein’s methods (Shotter, 2011) SCR “A philosophical problem has the form: ‘I don’t know my way about’” “Try not to think of understanding as a ‘mental process’ … But ask yourself: in what sort of case, in what kind of circumstances, do we say, “Now I know how to go on,” when, that is, the formula has occurred to me?” .
Some Examples • “That’s an opening!” • “Ask people to answer their own rhetorical questions”
Some examples from others • “An internalized other interview [it’s coming]” (A supervisor behind the mirror) • “Do the miracle question!” (My supervisor in the voice of S. De Shazer) • “Find the grove” Big-league baseball pitcher (In Shön, 1983)
How do conversational reminders “fit” within our formal training as counsellors? Across our training in counselling theories? • Have you found them to be helpful?
How SCR can be important? • “we can, by an inner voicing of the relevant word at the relevant moment, issue ourselves with a ‘reminder’ to act in a certain way, to ‘direct’ our attention toward a certain feature” (Shotter, 2011, p. 65) • Counsellor training and supervision… • ‘ways of seeing’ (Perceptual skills) • ‘ways of doing’ (Executive skills)
Cross-cultural misunderstandings as conversational reminders • We understand each other not only through our words, but by reference to assumptions we attribute and expect from one another (Garfinkel, 1967). • Culture is performed by people in social interactions (Moerman, 1988). • Cross-cultural misunderstandings can be seen as conversational reminders of opportunities to make space for different interpretations (making visible the invisible) • Cross-cultural misunderstandings reminders of openings to co-create new meanings in ways that fit for conversational partners together.
Study Design • Research Question: How do client(s) who immigrated to Canada and counsellor(s) successfully negotiate misunderstandings in therapeutic conversations? • 8 volunteer clients and 8 volunteer therapists engaged in aone hour-single consultation, videotaped. • 15 Follow up individual interviews with volunteer clients and therapists (audio taped), within 2 weeks of first session. • 27 Segments of the videotaped sessions were identified as possible misunderstandings.
10 Th: and so your… concern is which one of those is better task based or time based? 11 Cl: mmh {nods} 12 Th: yah. >and what have you found so far< you said mostly you've done time based. 13 Cl: yes 14 Th: you set a-time aside. 15 Cl: yeah 16 Th: but when you haaavefollowed through with it.. what's been different about those times *what whathas 17 gone on.* 18 Cl: aahs-sorry what you *mean?* {moves head slightly to the right, smiles} 19 Th: >you said some of the time< y-you do follow through with it 10 Cl: yeah 21 Th: >less than half of the time but… 22 Cl: >yeah yeah< 23 Th: some of the time you do follow through 24 Cl: okay? 25 Th: so I am wondering how you've been able to do that like= 26 Cl: oooh! 27 Th: w-what's different about the times that you're following through 28 Cl: t-to be honest that's .. uhm that's the plan >that was< t-that's the easy part of the plan… 29 Th: oookay{nods} 30 Cl: for example this time I will (.) umhtake it easy {laughs} 31 Th: oookay{big nod} 32 Cl: >just an example< but where it is come out do >something easy. something easy.< 33 Th: yah. so might be= 34 Cl: =the:n might be able to make it= 35 Th: =right so if you have a number of tasks for yourseeef(.) 36Cl: yeah
Client’s comments on Segment 4 “Yeah, I did maybe he asked how you did follow through? and I wasn't quite sure about what he meant, yeah. I think that when I bring this issue up, uhm of course I want to like uhm...direct should of this problem. But my feeling was uhm, T wanted to ask me more questions? so instead of giving me a direct answer he wanted to give it in a round way? maybe? cause he asked me that comment if what achieve, what my feelings (...) Yeah. Uhm that's my feeling during the conversation I think maybe that's a trick for most psychologists (laughs). Yeah, so that they can take more from their...clients I guess”.
Counsellor’s comments on Segment 4 “Like...for a little bit we were like on different pages uhm so then I felt like we were on the same page. I think he kinda' of understood my intent as well, that I was asking about that? I was asking about his experiences uhm cause I think he was either hoping for or expecting a quick answer to that question, right, which is better, a task based or time based, is it better to schedule my time or is it better to schedule my tasks. And I don't give him a quick answer I start asking about his experiences, so I think that might have been part of it as well, he was wanting like okay why're you asking me a question when I asked you a question. So there is a little bit of negotiating the counselling process uhm... Yeah”.
Why is this important?Clinical implications • Cross-cultural misunderstandings as reminders: • May point to a need for recognizing which versions of reality are at play in counselling conversations. • May help counsellors to step away from rigid assumptions about cultures as pre-given. • May help counsellors better manage therapeutic relationships to ensure a collaborative process.
Some Implications • epistemology of practice: • what is the kind of knowing in which competent practitioners engage? • Technical Rationality or Reflection-in-action? • “When I do something intelligently…I am doing one thing and not two. My performance has a special procedure or manner, not special antecedents” (G. Ryle) • How do we use what we already know in situations we take to be unique? • Seeing this as that & withness-thinking
(Just in case…More on: What’s a CR?) • CR ‘direct’ us • CR ‘call out’ appropriate responses on us (TU/AGA) • Reminds us about possibilities • Thinking with other’s words • Vygotsky’s law of development • Voices can ‘bewitch’ us • Living tradition • Expresive movement: “my word” • Aboutness thinking: We can reflect on what is ‘in’ our responses.