As a psychotherapeutic intervention, interpretation has an extensive history dating back to the beginnings of psychotherapy itself. It has been theoretically expounded as the essence of psychotherapy by some theorists, and rejected as unnecessary by others. However, as the major theoretical orientations have begun to converge, interpretation has entered into their contemporary discourses in one form or another. Empirically, interpretation has been addressed extensively, particularly in the psychodynamic and process psychotherapy literatures. However, few qualitative studies have been conducted on the phenomenon as it presents itself in actual therapy sessions, and these qualitative studies have presented with significant limitations.
The present dissertation conducted a phenomenological study of interpretation in psychotherapy by examining the manner in which it presents itself through three sessions of self-identified psychodynamic, humanistic-existential, and cognitive behavioural therapists. These sessions were followed by separate interviews with the therapists and the patients regarding their experiences of the interpretations within the sessions. The three sessions and six interviews were analyzed by using the phenomenological method. The resulting general meaning structure indicated that interpretation was a core therapeutic intervention in all three sessions, and presented as a highly complex phenomenon. Its deeply interrelated main features indicated that interpretation is a highly dialogical phenomenon immersed in therapist and patient contexts and intentions, as well as pre-interpretive and post-interpretive contexts. Both the therapists and patients contributed to the evolution of interpretations in the interpretive dialogue, and in fact patients were found to initiate some of the interpretations. The dialogical nature of interpretation also implied that, through their interrelationship, the therapist and patient dialogued with the interpreted material as a presence beyond their relationship, giving rise to the actual interpretations.
Interpretive threads interweaved throughout the sessions as the interpretations formed layers of thematic development and increased in complexity. These interpretations involved greater or lesser degrees of intuition or reflection. Intuition and reflection counterbalanced each other; the former reflecting the interpretation's grounding in understanding the patient's experiencing, and the latter reflecting the interpretation's abstraction, complexity, and/or explanatory focus. Through its temporal dimension, interpretation unfolded in the present of the therapeutic dialogue, but reached back into the past and thrust forward into the future, even beyond the session itself. Finally, the present dissertation addressed specific and general patient responses to interpretation, and suggested a novel typology of interpretation.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/29326 |
| Date | January 2006 |
| Creators | Zayed, Richard S |
| Publisher | University of Ottawa (Canada) |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 339 p. |
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