5 - Some interactional uses of co-counsellors' questions

Summary

In the preceding chapter we examined in detail the management of participation frameworks related to co-counsellors' questions applying the family therapeutic technique called ‘live open supervision’. At the end of that analysis, the question was raised whether the complicated way of delivering the co-counsellors' questions could have functions other than those referred to in the Family Systems Theory textbooks. The purpose of this chapter is to explore empirically the interactional uses of co-counsellors' questions, both those that are referred to in textbooks and those that are not.

Like any CA work, my analysis of the uses of co-counsellors' questions employing the live open supervision format progressed in an inductive fashion. In other words, I examined all my data where this type of question was asked, identifying the recurrent patterns of interaction in different types of cases. In organizing the presentation of my results in this chapter, however, I use a somewhat more deductive approach. In presenting some of the recurrent patterns, I use the counsellors' theory as the point of departure. This is possible because it happened in the data analysis that some of the interactive uses of co-counsellors' questions were nicely in line with this theory. However, there are other interactional uses of the co-counsellors' questions which seem to transcend the theory. In presenting those, the theory of course cannot be used as the point of departure.

In what follows, I present first those interactional uses of the cocounsellors' questions which seem to conform to the ideas presented in the Family Systems Theory texts.