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Methods - An Interpretive Methodology Applied to Existential Psychotherapy1 MARTIN J. PACKER [6] Conclusion Psychotherapy research has typically focused on the outcomes of therapy rather than its process, and when process has been the object of study, coding-scheme approaches have gen- erally decontextualized the phenomenon and failed to capture therapy's temporal organization. Our purpose here is to illustrate an alternative approach to the study of psychotherapy, one that maintains talk in its context and temporal organization. We hope to demonstrate how a hermeneutic methodology can disclose what other analyses do not. It investigates the pragmatics of language, the power of talk to bring about ontological change. It explores how context is invoked and utilized, and how the temporal sequencing of talk, i.e., its turn-taking structure, is organized. Studies that categorize and code talk in order to measure what happns necesarily decontextualize, removing each utterance from its place in the sequential organization of discourse and stripping it from its contextual background. If, as I have argued here, the power of context is crucial to our understanding of the process of psychotherapy, and to the way the outcome of psychotherapy is achieved, this decontextualization is deadly. The baby is thrown out with the bathwater. The four papers show how much detail will become evident in therapeutic discourse when one looks at it closely. They show how complex is the task of studying therapeutic processes. Arguably we have made our task easier by studying an approach to psychotherapy that is consonant with our own philosophical assumptions. Laing's existential psychotherapy is particularly sensitive, it would seem, to the power of language; to the difference between what is said and what is accomplished by saying. Yet even with this choice of material to work with the analysis has not been easy. The interpretations offered by the four papers do not neatly converge; differences of emphasis and conclusion will be evident to the reader. But I don't consider this an indication of any weakness in our hermeneutic approach; rather it serves as a reminder that any study of psychotherapy must make judgements and evaluations based on values and criteria about which researchers may genuinely and appropriately differ. Nonetheless I hope we show the reader that attention to the pragmatics of therapy can throw light on the ontological effects of talk, and this in turn can help us understand the outcome of therapy as involving change on an ontological level. Much work ) remains to be done, and we ourselves have much to learn, but the papers in this issue offer, I think, much that is new and exciting. Note I am grateful to Jeffrey Zeig, Director of the Milton H. Erikson Foundation, organizer of the 1985 conference, for permission to use the videorecording of Leila and Laing's conversation, and permission to print here our transcription of the conversation. Copies of the video recording can be purchased from the Erikson Foundation. The interpretations, along with any errors of transcription, are of course ours alone. (The transcription appears in the [Appendix]) References Austin, J. L. (1975). How to do things with words. (2 ed.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Berger, P. L., & Luckmann, T. (1967). The social construction of reality: A treatise in the sociology of knowledge. Garden City, NY: Anchor Press. Bernstein, R. (1983). Beyond objectivism and relativism: Science, henneneutics, and praxis. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Bortle, S., Goldman, Y., Harper, L., Hwang, J., & Packer, M. (2000, August). An interpretive methodology applied to existential psychotherapy. In S.D. 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Philosophical investigations (G. E. M. Anscombe, Trans.). Oxford: Blackwell. Page ..1 ..2 ..3 ..4 ..5 ..6 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? Comments and suggestions on the content and/or any problems with the display of this page would be appreciated by the webmistress. Thanks.