Consideration of Multiple Therapeutic functions of Therapists' Questions

• TORIGOE Junichi

  Faculty of Liberal Arts Nihonbashi Gakkan University

Bibliographic Information

Other Title

• 質問介入の治療的多重性の考察

Abstract

This paper aims to consider the function of therapists' questions in psychodynamic oriented psychotherapy, especially psychoanalysis in Japan. Object-oriented questions (Spotnitz 1969) and unsaturated questions (Busch 2010) are introduced as examples of questions to facilitate emotional communication with clients. Unlike the type of question often asked to clarify the speaker's intention, these questions are designed to work through the client's emotional resistance to the therapy. I argue that the questions Spotnitz and Busch propose could help therapists understand the therapeutic relationship with their clients better, but that it is necessary to modify the form of these questions in Japanese clinical situations due to cultural and language differences between English and Japanese. On this point, I focus on how the subject is treated in object-oriented questions, becuase object-oriented questions are meant to protect the vulnerable self of the client as a speaker by avoiding the pronoun "you" in English culture and language, but the subject "you" is normally omitted in Japanese. Then, I suggest that object-oriented questions in Japan could serve in a way comparable to the object-oriented question in English by emphasizing the client's ("your") freedom of speech-i.e. private self-as not being violated by others. This notion is based on the hypothesis that the private self, the subject of consciousness, plays a more important role in Japanese, while the public self, the subject of communication, is primarily significant in English.This is discussed with a question such as, "What's your assumption?" from my clinical experience as an example of question to promote clients to freely express what they think or feel. I argue the possibility that protecting clients' individual right to think and feel the way they do - i.e. ensuring inviolability of the private self - may be quite important in engaging in free-association safely in Japanese clinical situations.

Journal

• The bulletin of Nihonbashi Gakkan University

  The bulletin of Nihonbashi Gakkan University 13 (0), 71-80, 2014

  Kaichi International University

Keywords

• Therapeutically multiple functioning question
• rapist's question as intervention in resistance
• question as emotional communication

Details

• CRID: 1390001205322377216
• NII Article ID: 110009751413
• DOI: 10.24581/nihonbashi.13.0_71
• ISSN: 18842518
• ISSN: 13480154
• Text Lang: ja
• Data Source:
  • JaLC
  • CiNii Articles
• Abstract License Flag: Disallowed