Interdisciplinary Reflections on Conversation Analysis, Power, and Open Dialogue

Abstract

As a psychologist and family therapist my professional education has had a significant impact on my personal life and how I see the world. Over the past four years I have been privileged enough to work on a PhD, which has again changed my perspective. This research examines Open Dialogue sessions using conversation analysis, which focuses on normative conversational structures and how they are utilised to achieve social actions. Conversation analysis forced me to abandon previous therapeutic concepts and look at Open Dialogue and family therapy generally from an interdisciplinary perspective. Through this process I have noticed a few recurring ideas: interactions are sequential, psychotherapy involves abstraction, and power is unavoidable and not inherently ‘bad.’ In this article, I elaborate on these ideas in the first person and how they have changed the way I practice and think about family therapy with reference to the appropriate research and literature.