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Methods - Building Context: Transpersonal Reality in Existential Psychotherapy1 SCOTT BORTLE  [4] Some misalignment and pragmatic repair work follow, as Leila aligns one way with Laing's newsmark--"Yes, they're very religious"--while Laing offers an alternative characterization of what is new: "Well, you're very religious." Leila has apparently understood a different basis-her family's religiosity-for the newsworthiness pointed to in Laing's "I should have known." Leila pauses as though to consider his last remark, and then gives a qualified agreement. Laing rapidly adds, interrupting her, "No, it's not meant as an insult," presumably designed as a repair of the pragmatic force of his 296. What has struck Laing as noteworthy is evidently not immediately apparent to Leila-not surprisingly, since it is a coincidence, a connection, that she has been living as natural necessity her entire life. Leila freely offers more detail on her parents in the next several utterances-we learn they run a shelter in Saginaw, Michigan-but Laing gives minimal responses to this until he is I able to ask, in line 307, "How do they feel about you?" Lines 307 to 329 can be read as the progressive development of an answer to this question, first in the form of a collaborative articulation of an account of Leila's relationship with her parents and finally, to jump ahead, with the declaration "'Cause maybe they hate me after all I, after being, an unfaithful daughter" (329). But at first Leila ducks Laing's question, disclaiming her ability to reply--she insists she does not know the answer. Then, in 308 to 312, she offers a narrative which, strikingly, invokes again both the context of family and that of Christianity-Christmas being an event both of religious significance and of family celebration. 307 T: How do they feel about you? 308 L: [Laughs] [T: heh] I don't know, [laughs] I don't know 309 um, I wrote them, I don't know, I wrote 'm a letter and 310 asked 'em. And, I haven't picked them up in the mail yet. I 311 asked 'em ah if it was okay for me to send a 312 Christmas present. [laughs] That's I don't know. 313 T: No reply? 314 I haven't been to the Post Office yet to pick it up. To, if 315 they did reply, I mean ah, they probably did. Yet still the point of her story appears to be that, since she's not yet retrieved her parents' reply to her letter, she can't say how they feel about her. She has offered an answer to Laing's question, but it is still the answer that she can't answer. That Laing accepts her narrative as relevant to the topic, as an offered answer to his question, is shown by his asking, in line 316, "Do you expect them to send you a Christmas present?" And Leila's response-"Oh God [whispered] I don't know" (317)-is sufficiently laden with affect-strained, a hint of exasperation- for us to interpret it as about more than simply the sending of a gift. After some repair work Laing pauses, then challenges the force of her account: 325 T: Uh huh. (4) I would never have though of, uh sending, 326 writing my parents and asking them if it was okay for 327 me to send them a present for Christmas. Eh ah and 328 why wouldn't it be ok? Laing's assertion--with all its pointed emphasis--that he wouldn't have thought of asking permission of his parents, and his subsequent question, call for Leila to clarify what in the circumstances of her situation has made her do such a thing-what the nature of her relationship with her parents is that she has explicitly ask permission to do something which would normally be a matter of course. Her story, he says in effect, sits oddly in the context of family. It presupposes family conflict that runs counter to the norm, so that it is not a canonical story. He is ; pointing out that what her narrative presupposes is already more of an answer to his original question than the narrative itself. Her narrative makes the point that she doesn't know how her parents feel, but surely she would ask for permission only because her parents have negative feelings. And in response to this challenge Leila finally offers a direct reply to Laing's original question: 329 L: Well, cause maybe they hate me after all I, after being, 330 an unfaithful daughter Her words do not come easily. She makes a self-initiated self-repair and hesitates before calling herself "an unfaithful daughter." Her response here serves to answer both the immediate question (328) and the question posed back in 307. With all this work Leila has now positioned herself and her parents within the family context. She positions herself as an "unfaithful daughter,” uncertain whether her parents understand her need for independence ("I have my own life to live"). She and her parents are estranged, far apart not just geographically, she in Arizona, they in upstate Michigan, but also alienated from each other. Their relationship is one of indifference or even enmity. Leila's qualification here--"maybe"--is I think an important one. Note that its scope is somewhat unclear. Is she saying that she has been unfaithful, and her parents perhaps hate her because of this? Or is she saying that her parents may view her as unfaithful, and consequently may hate her? If the latter, then we can say that she suffers from the same ontological uncertainty or insecurity in the family context as she has displayed in the other contexts invoked earlier. She is not clear whether she's "an unfaithful daughter" or not. Laing asks a question that is easy to miss, and indeed Leila does not seem to grasp its force: 331 T: Was unfaithful to? 332 Yes 333 Eh... There is a misalignment here: Leila's second pair-part ("Yes") doesn't match Laing's first pair-part: his question doesn't permit a yes/no answer. And Laing's next utterance, a terse "Eh..." calls for something further, displaying his dissatisfaction with her reply. It is possible that Leila took Laing's utterance as a continuer; that she took him to be repeating "unfaithful" to confirm that he had understood and encourage her to continue. His Glasgow accent makes his words here hard to comprehend. But the misunderstanding goes unrepaired-and apparently unnoticed-by Leila as she continues, further developing her account of her conduct towards her parents. 334 L: I haven't visited in, in years [laughs]= 335 T: Ump 336 T: And, in fact, and I don't communicate well well with= 337 them either. But, you see, I have my own life to live. 338 Ea, you know, I hope they understand that, but maybe 339 they don't It will not be until line 340 that Laing develops further what he starts to say in 331. Page ..1 ..2 ..3 ..4 ..5 Next... Hermeneutic Research on Psychotherapy. Methods: A Joumal For Human Science [Special Issue, Annual Edition]. Guest Editor: Martin J. Packer. University of Dallas, 2000. How do I cite a webpage? 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