TALKING ABOUT VIOLENCE: A MICROANALYSIS OF NARRATIVE PROCESSES IN A FAMILY THERAPY SESSION

July 2006 JOURNAL OF MARITAL AND FAMILY THERAPY 313

TALKING ABOUT VIOLENCE: A MICROANALYSIS OF NARRATIVE PROCESSES IN A FAMILY THERAPY SESSION

Peter Rober and Dominiek Van EesbeekGhent University

Robert ElliottUniversity of Toledo and Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

In this article, we look at the development in family therapy of narratives about domestic violence. We report on microanalyses of a family therapy session, using narrative research methods, including some conversation analytic tools. The main questions posed in this investi-gation were: How does storytelling of a highly charged and delicate topic like domestic violence develop in the session?; how do the different actors in the therapy room contribute to telling such stories?; how do actors try to put forward domestic violence as a conversational topic? and how do different actors react to these attempts? Our research illustrates how the recounting of stories of violence seems to go hand in hand with modes of interaction that discourage the telling of these stories. In the back-and-forth process between voices of hesitation and voices of reassurance, the participants weigh the level of safety in the session. In as far as the voices of hesitation can be reassured of the safety, it becomes gradually possible to talk about delicate, problematic experiences, such as violence in the family.

In this article we describe how we examined the process of storytelling about domestic violence in a family therapy session. As part of a pilot investigation into the use of tape-assisted-recall procedures in research and supervision, we videotaped a family therapy session in which it became apparent that the topic of domestic violence was saliently present. Because of our interest in narrative as well as in domestic violence we selected this session for further study. We have microanalyzed it, using a narrative research method and some conversation-analytic tools, focusing on the way stories about violence are put forward in the course of the session.

STORYTELLING IN THERAPY

The process of storytelling in family therapy has hardly been explored. Even after the narrative turn entered the family therapy field, to the point that “story” has now become one of the central metaphors in our thinking and talking about our work, the ways in which stories emerge and develop in the family therapy session has not received much attention in the professional literature. This is remarkable given the fact that so many family therapists agree that clients enter therapy with problematic stories to tell—stories of pain, suffering, fear and violence—and that therapy, first and foremost, consists of a process of making room for these stories.

Journal of Marital and Family TherapyJuly 2006, Vol. 32, No. 3, 313–328

Peter Rober, PhD, and Dominiek Van Eesbeek, MA, Department of Relationship and Family Studies, Ghent University; Robert Elliott, PhD, University of Toledo and Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.

The authors would like to thank Tom Strong (University of Calgary, Canada), Shari Couture (University of Calgary, Canada), Pilar Hernandez (University of San Diego, USA), and Michael Seltzer (Oslo University College, Norway) for their friendship, their support, and their help in writing this article.

Address correspondence to Peter Rober, Feelings & Context, Troyentenhoflaan 87, 2600 Antwerp, Belgium; e-mail: [email protected]

314 JOURNAL OF MARITAL AND FAMILY THERAPY July 2006

Although narrative therapy is very popular in the family therapy field, most research on storytelling in therapy is done in the context of individual therapy where storytelling of the client’s personal experiences is usually seen as a self-making practice (Angus & McLeod, 2004). Lynne Angus’ Narrative Process Model, for instance, views storytelling as arising out of a dialectical interplay of autobiographical memory, emotion, and reflective meaning making of the client (Angus, Levitt, & Hardke, 1999; Angus, Lewin, Bouffard, & Rotondi-Trevisan, 2004). In therapy the client relates what has happened in his/her life, relives what is emotionally evoked, and reflects on ways to understand self and others from a variety of perspectives. According to Angus, successful therapy involves the articulation, elaboration, and transfor-mation of the client’s story.

Another interesting model that sheds some light on storytelling in therapy is William Stiles’ Assimilation Model, the basic structure of which has been supported in a series of research studies (Osatuke et al., 2004; Stiles, 2002; Stiles et al., 1990, 1991; Stiles, Meshot, Anderson, & Sloan, 1992). This model postulates the self as multifaced. The multiple parts are described as voices that are traces of a person’s experiences (Honos-Webb & Stiles, 1998). Each voice strives for the expression of these experiences and for the assimilation of these experiences in the client’s self via storytelling. The Assimilation Model focuses on problematic experiences and describes the process of the assimilation of these experiences into the client’s self in individual therapy, providing a metanarrative framework that tells a larger story about the sequence of client stories about a particular problematic experience. The sequence runs from “dissociation of the experience” through “problem statement” and “understanding” to “problem solution” and finally “mastery.”

These two models both refer to the individual client’s storytelling. Little is known, however, about storytelling in the family therapy session in which stories are often told in a collaborative—or sometimes a competitive—manner. According to White (1993; White & Epston, 1990), the client presents with a problem-saturated story: The client talks about his/her concerns and gives voice to the dominant story of his/her life. The therapist listens and takes this story seriously while looking for collaborative ways to deconstruct the story. The therapist is especially attentive for unique outcomes in the client’s story: subdominant aspects of the client’s lived experience that contradict the dominant story.

In addition to the stories that are told in the session, there are also the stories that are not told. Anderson and Goolishian (1988) define therapy as a process of expanding and saying the “unsaid.” They refer to the not-yet-said as an important resource for change. The therapist’s task in the family therapeutic session is to listen to the stories of the family members and to make room for stories that have not been told yet (Anderson & Goolishian, 1988, 1992). Along this line, in Rober (2002) I focused on the “unsaid” by considering the repressive aspect of conversation. I described how family members in therapy continually make selections about what they want to tell and what they want to keep silent. On the border zone between the said and the not-yet-said the family members sometimes hesitate about speaking, which often expresses itself in prolonged silences. Such silences and related conversational markers often signal the presence of a “delicate” matter that must be broached carefully, if at all (Perakyla, 1995; Schegloff, 1980). However, these silences are not empty, because they are filled with stories untold and with the good reasons family members have not to tell these stories. These good reasons refer to the possible dangers of the telling of stories, or to the risks imagined if the story were to be told (cf. Kagan & Kagan, 1997).

STORYTELLING AND SILENCING

Although some understanding of the narrative processes in family therapy is reflected in these publications, much more research and reflection are needed to really understand these processes, especially as far as the telling of delicate stories in families is concerned. Although giving voice to experiences never talked about is a key project of family therapeutic work (Anderson & Goolishian, 1988; McLeod, 1997; Penn & Frankfurt, 1994; Seikkula, 1992), often voices are prevented from speaking by the fear of the consequences of telling tales of shame and confusion that are threatening to the integrity of the family (McLeod, 1997; Sheinberg, 1992). Sometimes when voices speak, they are not heard because others are not willing to listen to the story the speaker is trying to tell. This dynamic is well known from studies of


trauma survivors. Herman (1992), for instance, uses the term “the dialectic of trauma” (p. 12) to describe the conflict between the will to deny the horrible events experienced and the will to proclaim aloud the story of terror, abuse, cruelty, and injustice that one has experienced. There are two imperatives in this dialectic of trauma: telling the story on the one hand and keeping silent about what has happened on the other. Herman describes this dialectic as it operates in individual cases of child abuse, rape, and torture, but she also illustrates how this same dialectic surfaces on a macrosocietal level, for instance in the history of the study of psychological trauma. Professionals are not immune from this dialectic. For therapists and other helpers, for instance, working with cases of psychological trauma means coming face to face both with their own vulnerability as mortal human beings and with the human capacity for violence and cruelty. It means being confronted with the unthinkable and the unspeakable, and as a consequence questions of suspicion and disbelief toward the victim may be raised. In family therapy this is further complicated by the presence of multiple parties, each of whom experiences the dialectic in different, frequently contradictory, ways.

MICROANALYSIS OF STORYTELLING

Our research is framed within a narrative perspective, holding that people try to make sense of their experiences through the telling of stories (Angus & McLeod, 2004; Bruner, 1986; McLeod, 1997; Polkinghorne, 1988; Sarbin, 1986). In this perspective, narrating is often viewed as a cognitive meaning-making process, focusing on the formation of the individual self (McAdams, 1993). This article, however, adopts a dialogical view in which storytelling is viewed as collaborative social performance (Goffman, 1959; McLeod, 1997): A story emerges in a social context and is not the product of a single author alone. In addition, the authors of the story draw on cultural conventions about language, genres, and story structures. Furthermore, besides one or more storytellers, storytelling always implies the presence of at least one addressee (the person spoken to, who may be present only in the speaker’s imagination), as well as of an audience of at least one listener (who can be the same person as the addressee, but does not have to be). In line with this dialogical view of storytelling, we thus conceptualize narration in family therapy as a joint action of all family members and the therapist in which the family members and the therapist are orienting to one another in an effort to reach some level of shared understanding. In this view, very much inspired by Bakhtin (1981, 1984, 1986), the concept of story refers to multiple voices speaking, as well as to multiple addressees, some of whom are present and others who are not. Furthermore, stories are conceived as unfinalizable: The ultimate meaning of the stories told cannot be pinned down and is always evolving. This view of stories told in therapy reflects an underlying social-constructionist, epistemological stance that emphasizes the social construction of the stories told the family members and therapist (Gergen, 1999).

This article thus reports on an exploratory microanalysis of the first session of a family therapy. The goal of this analysis was to gain some understanding of the narrative processes in family therapy practice. A special concern of this work was with the development of narratives about domestic violence. The main questions posed in this investigation were: How does storytelling of a highly charged and delicate topic like domestic violence develop in the session?; how do the different actors in the therapy room contribute to the telling such stories?; how do actors try to put out domestic violence as a conversational topic?, and how do different actors react to these attempts?

METHOD

In this research we have combined conversation analysis (CA), interpersonal-process recall, and narrative analysis. We tried to understand the way stories about domestic violence were told by looking intensively at what happened in the therapy room and using a detailed transcript of the session and the notes on the therapist’s reflections during the session as they were obtained through a tape-assisted-recall procedure. Tape-assisted-recall procedures are commonly used in process research (e.g., Elliott, 1986; Gale, Odell, & Nagireddy, 1995; Levitt, 2002; Rennie, 1994) as a way to access the client’s or therapist’s experience of the therapeutic session. In this case, the whole videotape of the session was viewed by the


therapist (the first author) only minutes after the session finished, and the therapist tried to remember as accurately as possible what he felt, thought, or experienced in the course of the session. Whenever he remembered something he felt, thought, or experienced, he stopped the tape and made a note of it. The complete viewing of the session and taking of notes took the therapist 3 hours.

The AnalystsIt was a deliberate choice to work with multiple researchers. The first author was the therapist of the

session analyzed; he was originally trained as child psychologist. As a family therapist he has a collab-orative/experiential/systemic theoretical orientation and 20 years’ experience. The second author was the other main co-analyst. She is a social worker with experience in working with multiproblem poor families and prostitutes; at the time of the analysis she was working on her master’s thesis in psychology. She added a second, more distant outsider perspective. Although there was a lot of convergence between the two researchers, our divergences pushed us to search for a richer understanding of the material, making us question and reflect on what seemed obvious at first glance. The third author joined our team somewhat later in the research process, supervising the analysis of the transcript and helping out with structuring of the results, writing of the article, and auditing the analyses of the English translations of the key transcript segments presented. He brought expertise in conversation and discourse analysis and an experiential theoretical orientation.

Orientation of the AnalysisA prime aim in our research was to examine how space is made in the therapy room for stories about

domestic violence. In this context, Michael White’s Foucaultian views of dominant narratives and the importance of liberating subjugated stories has some relevance (White, 1993; White & Epston, 1990). Stories about domestic violence often are secret, and their voice is often subject to exclusion in the family. The dominant stories in the family often push out shameful episodes of family life, such as violence, pain, and fear. This disconnects and isolates the victim of the violent acts and makes the burden of shame and pain even harder to bear. It also disconnects the other family members from the victim, who often sense something is wrong without being able to reach out or understand. It is not possible to express the raw experience of suffering in a narrative frame, and the worst suffering is probably expressed in silences (Charmaz, 2002); nevertheless, the sharing of delicate stories appears to be healing in itself, because it breaks the isolation of the family members and brings them together again.

It is clear that the family therapist can play an important role in making room for these stories. However, in our research we wanted to take care not to portray therapists as liberators of victimized family members. Presenting therapists as the heroes of the therapeutic dialogues, liberating clients from their discursive shackles, amounts to privileging therapists and diminishing clients (Anderson, 1997; Bohart, 2004; Morss & Nichterlein, 1999; Paré & Larner, 2004). Therefore, in this analysis we choose not to single out the therapist but to consider him as one of the participants in the conversation. We adopted a dialogical view focussing on what happened among all participants of the session, especially on the way they made room for narratives about delicate topics threatening the family. In this framing the therapist was viewed as an active agent in the dialogue as he contributed to the telling of stories as listener, as speaker, and as addressee. In the same line of reasoning, we preferred not to take a normative, God’s-eye perspective, focusing on what the therapist should be doing. Instead of evaluating the therapist’s interventions, we analysed what the participants of the session were saying and doing and tried to understand the purpose of what was said and done in the context of the narrative processes in the conversation.

AnalysisOur research consisted of two steps. In the first step we did a narrative analysis of the transcript of

the session. We examined the transcript and tried to identify all words referring to violence. This included words referring to actions (“to fight,” “to hit,” “to kick,” “to push,” etc.), to weapons (“sword,” “shield,” “fist,” etc.), to violent movies (“Jackie Chan,” “Bruce Lee,” “manga,” etc.) or to angry emotions (“angry,” “cross,” etc.). We initially did this analysis separately. Then we compared notes and worked toward a


consensus about the categorization of words referring to violence, or not referring to violence. Then we worked out a way to cluster the words referring to violence in distinct meaningful narrative episodes. Again notes were compared and consensus was found around four narrative episodes.

In the second step, the boundaries between the episodes were analysed. Key questions here were: Who introduced the new narrative?; and what were the reactions of the other participants? In this second step CA tools were used (Hutchby & Wooffitt, 1998; Schegloff & Sacks, 1973; ten Have, 1999). As we opted for maximal transparency for readers not familiar with CA, our transcript is not as detailed as is traditional in CA. However, we did try to represent as faithfully as possible what happened in the session. We borrowed elements of CA that seemed most useful in helping us understand the process of storytelling. We focused on microactions of the participants, considering each utterance, turn by turn, as both a reaction to the previous turn and as the context for the next one. The CA notion of adjacency pair was a central starting point here. We focused on the adjacency pair invitation–acceptance/rejection, as we considered the introduction of a new violence narrative as an invitation to talk about it. We then examined the next turns to see how the other participants dealt with this invitation.

The SessionThe session was one of several videotaped as part of a pilot study of a research project at Ghent

University (Belgium) combining a dialogical perspective in family therapy with considerations of the importance of the therapist’s inner conversation (see also Rober, 2005a, 2005b). We were using tape-assisted-recall procedures to experiment with these methods before using them systematically in another research project. Clients were informed about the project, gave permission for the video recording prior to the session, and filled in an informed consent form, in line with the University of Ghent’s ethical requirements. After the session was transcribed by the second author, we were struck by the topic of domestic violence, which was so central as a topic of conversation in this particular session. It made us question how the topic developed in the session and how the story became gradually told. That was the reason why we decided to single this session out for a more detailed analysis. We suspected that microana-lysing this session could help us to understand something about storytelling about delicate topics in family therapy. Again, the clients were asked for their permission to use their tape for this research purpose.

The session took place in a community therapy center in an urban area in the Flemish-speaking part of Belgium.1 The family was referred by the school psychologist because of multiple behavioral problems of the two boys, Han (7 years old) and Tony (10 years old). Mother had divorced the fathers of both sons and had a new partner called Jimmy. (All names are pseudonyms.) He had been unmarried before, and he had no children. In the first session, in which only the parents were present, the therapist explored their concerns about both children and made an appointment with them for a first family therapy session. The therapist informed the parents about the research project and asked for their permission to tape the session. The parents consented. The therapist also requested the four family members each to bring a toy to the next session. He explained that by talking about the toys in the session, he could get to know the participants better. This technique, described by Rober (1998), is used as a pleasant and informal way to get acquainted with the family members at the start of therapy.

ANALYSIS

The first step in our study of this session was to try to understand how the topic of violence evolved in the session. We decided to use a narrative analysis, trying to distinguish between different episodes in the story of the family members about the violence at home. This narrative analysis was methodologically informed by the work of McLeod and Balamoutsou (2000). Their approach is hermeneutic in nature and aims at understanding how therapeutic dialogue develops as well as how a narrative is co-constructed by all participants of the conversation. As a second step in our research, we focused on the shifts from one narrative episode to the next, and using some CA tools, we tried to understand how these shifts were made.


Step 1. Narrative Analysis of the SessionThe narrative analysis resulted in distinguishing four thematic episodes in the session (see Figure 1).

In each episode a distinct narrative about violence was told. In the first episode, the narrative was about violence between the children’s toys. Then, in the second episode, Mother talked about her concerns about the fighting between the children and introduced stories about violence between the children. In the third episode, the children’s stories about their fears led to a focus on violence between the adults. Finally, in the fourth episode, Mother started to talk about the violence of the adults toward the children. We will now give an overview of the whole session and discuss, in chronological order, each of these four narratives in greater detail.

First episode: Narratives about violence between the children’s toys (lines 12–169). At the beginning of the session Han immediately introduces himself, referring to his doll as Lee, saying “Lee can fight” (line 12). The topic “fighting” was not picked up by any of the family members or by the therapist. Scanning the therapist’s tape-assisted-recall notes, it seems that the therapist had not even noticed the topic in Lee’s introduction. Clearly, all participants initially ignored the topic of violence as a topic of conversation. A few minutes later, however, Han and Tony talk about their toys. They focus on the toys’ weapons: swords and guns (lines 26–47). An interaction develops between the two boys and the therapist in which the boys show the weapons, and the therapist admires them. Then the therapist explores stories of violence between the children’s toys. Han also talks about his heroes: Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, and Jean-Claude Van Damme (lines 65–74). Then he starts to talk about a shield (line 85), which introduces some vulnerability in the dialogue, and the therapist recognizes a shield as a protective weapon (line 86) that one might need

Narratives about violence between toys

Narratives about violence between children

Narratives about violence between adults

Narratives about violence between adults and children

Time

Figure 1: In the session there are four narratives about violence.


when one feels threatened, differentiating it from an offensive weapon like a sword. Then Tony introduces himself (lines 88–169). He shows a Playmobil warrior. He too talks about violence referring to toys as well as to Manga cartoons and movies. In contrast to Han’s stories about violence, Tony’s stories are richer and more complex, as they are imbedded in narratives of brave fights and a quest for a protective harness (lines 150–151).

Second episode: Narratives about violence between the children (lines 237–366). After Mother and Stepfather have introduced themselves (line 170–232), the therapist invites the family members to talk about their worries (line 233–236). Mother then starts to talk about her concern for the violence between the children (line 237). So there is a leap from the fantasy world of toys and movies to everyday life in which the boys engage in violent fistfights. The therapist reacts to Mother’s stories of the violence between the children by pointing to their quiet playing together in the session so far. He also brings up exceptions by pointing out that the boys do not fight all the time (lines 243–249). Mother agrees that there are times when the boys do not fight, but she insists that sometimes their fights are very violent. The children sponta-neously corroborate this (lines 253–258). The therapist then invites them to talk about their feelings, and Han has no trouble talking about his anger (line 259). Then the therapist starts to explore these narratives of violence between the children, trying to understand what makes them so angry. The tape-assisted-recall notes of the therapist suggest that he is puzzled by the contrast between these children who, on the one hand, play so nicely and quietly in the session and who can express themselves so well verbally and who, on the other, talk about extreme violence. Talking about what has happened at home, the children disagree, and the tension in the session rises (lines 261–305). The tape-assisted-recall notes of the therapist reveal that the therapist is concerned about possible violence between the boys in the session. He then jokingly mentions this possibility (lines 306–307). This offers some relief as the children join the therapist in joking about fighting, filming the fight with the videocamera, and then watching the video of it at home (lines 308–316).

Then the therapist tries to link the theme of violence with fear, saying “some children have told me that they become angry when they are scared” (lines 318–320). The first reaction of the boys is to deny that they are afraid. Han even boasts, “Nothing scares me” (line 323). Then they tell stories about being afraid of spiders, snakes, and wasps (lines 332–432). Also, Mother and Jimmy talk about their fears: Mother being afraid of wasps and Jimmy of blood, needles, and operations (lines 438–454). Interestingly, when Han is afraid he goes to his brother for protection. When he has a frightening nightmare, for instance, he goes to Tony’s room and joins Tony in his bed (lines 456–484). Then there is an abrupt shift to talking about violence between the adults.

Third episode: Narratives about violence between the adults (lines 485–629). In the context of the narratives of Tony comforting his brother when he is afraid, Tony suddenly says: “I don’t like to sleep in the bed with Han, and when Mother fights with someone . . .” and Han finishes the sentence: “then I go to my brother” (line 488). In his tape-assisted-recall notes, the therapist mentions that he was surprised by this sentence. He even doubted that he had heard correctly that there is talk about Mother fighting with someone. He checked with the family members asking: “When Mother fights?” (line 491). Jimmy answers: “Yes, in the past, in previous relationships” (line 492). Han points out that these fights were between Mother and his father (line 497). Then the therapist invites stories about how Han coped with this violence (line 498), and Han, Tony, and Mother talk some more about Tony helping his brother (lines 499–515). The topic of violence between Mother and her ex-partner, however, submerged again.

A little later the therapist picks the topic up again, asking the children if they still think about the violence from the past (line 568), and questioning if the violence is really over (lines 578–579). Everyone agrees that the violence is over, but the children explain that when there is tension or hostility between Mother and Jimmy, they are afraid the violence might erupt again (lines 582–604). Also, as Mother narrates, the children try to prevent more violence in the family (lines 595–601). Furthermore, she points out that what the children call “fighting” is not always real fighting in her opinion (lines 627–628).

Fourth episode: Narratives about violence between the adults and the children (lines 670–696). Then Mother starts to talk about misunderstandings between Jimmy and the children; “a silent war” she calls it (line 620). She then talks about Jimmy’s pushing and shoving Tony (lines 670–672). Jimmy corroborates


this story of Mother’s. He admits that his violent actions disturbed Tony (line 673) and that Tony is afraid of Jimmy. The therapist asks the parents if they experienced violence as children (line 678). Mother talks about psychological abuse and Jimmy about physical and sexual abuse by adults. He also explains that he was committed to the psychiatric hospital because of his aggressive outbursts. The therapist tries to bridge Jimmy’s experiences as a child with the experiences of Han: “Can you understand what it is like for Han to be angry like that?” (lines 696–697). After some hesitation Jimmy says he can understand Han’s anger a bit. Then the therapist tries to get Jimmy to talk about this with Han (lines 712–734). But at the same time, Tony starts to show signs that the session should end (asking Mother the time, making a lot of noise, which makes Mother reprimand him, etc.; lines 735–736). Jimmy tells the story of his youth in which he, like Han, had violent fits. Asked by the therapist what could have helped him then (line 765), Jimmy says that he missed “the attention and love of certain people” (lines 766–767), referring to his mother who left his father after he had abused his children and who worked as a stewardess on a ship sailing around the world, so she could not take care of the children. It becomes clear to the therapist, however, that it is too late in the session for the children to listen to these stories of Jimmy. He tries unsuccessfully to get Han to listen, then decides to end the session (line 795).

Summarizing, the first part of our analysis resulted in the description of four episodes in the session, each with a distinct kind of violence narrative: first narratives about violence between toys, then narratives about violence between the children, then narratives about violence between the adults, and finally narratives about violence between adults and children. This raises some interesting questions. For instance we could pose the question if the chronological order in which the stories were told makes sense, or should we consider it as just a coincidence that the stories in the session were told in that particular order? Although we cannot give a definite answer to this question based on our analysis, it seems to us that the stories told in the beginning of the session were less delicate in comparison with stories that were told later in the session. For instance, talking about Playmobil dolls fighting with plastic swords seemed to be less risky than talking about violence between Mother and Han’s father. And if less delicate stories were told first, could it then be that each narrative functioned as a test of the response of the participants? Could it be that a participant who told a story of violence was trying to read the safety of the session from the other participants’ responses to the story before taking the risk of telling a more delicate story of violence? These are fascinating questions that beg for further research. All these questions are based on the assumption that storytelling is a dialogical process and that narratives told in a conversation cannot be considered to be independent from one another. As McLeod pointed out, each story can be called a “foreteller” (p. 8) of the next narrative (McLeod & Balamoutsou, 2004) in the sense that each narrative carries an implicit hint that there are other stories waiting to be told. By the same token, each subsequent story draws meaning from the previous stories as the theme develops.

Step 2. Analysis of the Conversational Episode BoundariesTo further explore the emergence and development of narratives of violence in the session, we wanted

to focus on the boundaries between the different violence narrative episodes. How were the shifts made from one narrative episode to the next? Who took the initiative? What were the reactions of the others? The traditional CA notion of adjacency pairs (Hutchby & Wooffitt, 1998; Schegloff & Sacks, 1973) seemed to be an interesting starting point for this analysis. The idea behind adjacency pairs is that when one person says something, this creates a “slot” for the next person to fill in a particular way. Examples are question–answer, greeting–return greeting, and so on. The first part of the pair needs the second part for its completion. Especially the adjacency pair invitation–acceptance/rejection seemed to be useful to our study as the participant who introduces a new violence narrative can be considered to be inviting the others to join him/her in the sharing of an experience. We were interested in the way other participants would react to these invitations. We wanted to know who reacted to the invitation, if it was accepted or rejected, and how this acceptance or rejection was accomplished.

To get a better understanding of these boundaries we have selected the sequences of the four narrative shifts for microanalysis.

1. First shift: From introducing oneself to narratives about violence between toys.


2. Second shift: From narratives about violence between toys to narratives about violence between the children.

3. Third shift: From narratives about violence between the children to narratives about violence between adults.

4. Fourth shift: From narratives about violence between adults to narratives about violence between adults and children.

Let us first consider the fourth shift (from narratives about violence between adults to narratives about violence between adults and children) in more detail. Mother and Jimmy are talking about their arguments and their fights. Jimmy mentions that he has a loud voice that sometimes scares people. Mother agrees that he has a loud voice and starts to talk about how Jimmy scared Tony once:

670 Mother: “. . . once you 671 pushed and shoved Tony (Jimmy makes arm movements demonstrating how he pushed Tony) You did it once and672 it scared him very much.”673 Jimmy: “Yes, it scared him.”674 Therapist: “So there is fear of aggression in the family?” In this sequence Mother changes topics and starts to talk about violence between Jimmy and Tony

(lines 670–671). In that way she invites the other participants to join in the telling of this new story. Jimmy accepts her invitation, at first nonverbally (line 671). He does not neglect the topic, nor does he deny that it happened. On the contrary, he nonverbally corroborates the story as Mother recounts it. He also agrees with Mother that it scared Tony very much (line 673). This can be considered to be an example of the adjacency pair invitation–acceptance. Mother invites, Jimmy accepts. Also the therapist accepts the invitation to talk about this narrative, and he gives words to it by more explicitly saying it is about aggression in the family (line 674). This makes further room for the telling of stories of violence between adults and children.

Also in the beginning of the session, in the first narrative shift (from introducing oneself to narratives about violence between toys), we can recognize a sequence of invitation and acceptance.

7 Han: “I am Han and I am 8 years old.” 8 Therapist: “8 years old.” 9 Han: “and this is Lee” 10 Therapist: “and that’s Lee. Tell me something about Lee.” 11 (While Han is talking, Tony is sitting quietly.) 12 Han: “This is um, um, Lee can fight and in fact he is a Playmobil doll.” 13 Therapist: “Mmm.”

Here Han introduces himself (line 7). He has brought a toy called Lee (line 8). Lee can fight, he says, introducing the episode of the narratives about violence between toys. Nobody picked up the topic, however. Neither is there any mention of this sequence in the tape-assisted-recall notes of the therapist. It is not surprising that the topic of the violence between the toys submerges for a few turns before Han shows the weapon of his Playmobil doll: a gun. Tony shows the Playmobil sword he brought.

26 Han: “. . . I brought a gun with me.”27 (Tony stands up and shows his sword)28 Therapist: “You brought a gun?”29 Tony: “I have a sword.”

This time the therapist notices the topic of violence is present in the session. In his tape- assisted-recall notes he writes: “Swords. Guns. The topic of aggression is introduced.” He shows interest in the weapons of the doll and thereby accepts the invitation to talk about violence (lines 28 and 34). This is the beginning of a long elaboration on the fighting between the toys.

So we can recognize a sequence of invitation–acceptance in this shift. There is more, however. Immediately after he said that Lee can fight, Han adds, “in fact he is a Playmobil doll” (line 12). This is


remarkable because everybody can see that it is a Playmobil doll. Why does Han feel that it is necessary to state explicitly what is obvious for everybody? It is as if he wants to reassure everybody that Lee is only a toy, so they should not be afraid of real fighting in the session. It is as if he wants to highlight that it is safe in the session. The question can be posed as to why this reassurance is necessary. Did Han receive cues from the other participants that talking about violence might be dangerous? Or did he feel the threat himself, and was he, in a way, reassuring himself? Anyway, with this remark, Han invited others to talk about the toys and the violence between them, all while reassuring them that, as long as they talk about toys, real violence will be kept out of the session. The therapist, in his playful comments on the weapons, joins Han in highlighting that these weapons may look real, but they are only toys. In this way, he joins Han in reassuring everybody that talking is safe and that there will be no real violence in the session.

In the second narrative shift (from narratives about violence between toys to narratives about violence between the children), the sequence is more complex than in the first and the fourth. Mother initiates this second shift. After the family members introduce themselves, the therapist asks the family members what concerns brought them to the therapy. Mother answers:

240 Mother: “. . . I have come because in my opinion you 241 quarrel and fight a lot. I want you to agree more and for242 you both to learn to treat each other differently.”243 Therapist: “A moment ago Tony talked affectionately about his little brother 244 and they play together so nicely.”245 (Han and Tony have stopped playing and now watch the therapist, while a moment ago, during their mother’s explanation, they played quietly on their own, seemingly not taking notice of the adults)246 Mother: “Yes, but it is not always like that.”247 Therapist: “Not always like that. But sometimes it is. There are moments 248 when it works out all right between them, aren’t there? Like now, they are playing quietly together already for ten minutes.”249 Mother: “There are indeed moments when they play together like brothers.250 But sometimes they start to fight, and they fight until … Yes, then I have to251 intervene and it really escalates.”252 Han: “Until the end.”253 Therapist: “Until the end?”254 Mother: “That’s when I get scared.”255 Han: “Really hitting each other with our fists.”256 Tony: “Yes.”

In this sequence Mother starts to voice her concern about the violence between the children (lines 240–243). In response, the therapist points to the behavior of Han and Tony during the session so far: They did not fight at all. On the contrary they have behaved as loving brothers (lines 243–249). This is interesting. The therapist does not reject Mother’s invitation, but neither does he accept it. He expresses surprise and invites Mother to comment on the boys’ good behavior in the session (lines 248–249). Such responses are often taken as “predisagreements,” signaling that the speaker may in fact disagree with the other and giving the other a chance to back down, in this case by following the alternate topic proposed by the therapist. Why does the therapist not accept Mother’s invitation to talk about the violence between the children? The tape-assisted-recall notes of the therapist’s reflections show that the therapist sensed the danger that they would feel blamed by their mother. He wanted to make sure that the children would be recognized for their constructive play and their concern for each other. In other words, the therapist initially declines the topic in order to make room for some appreciation of the children’s commitment to each other as brothers. It is only after Mother explicitly comments on the good behavior of the boys (line 250) and Han and Tony support their mother by saying that they really fight seriously (lines 253–257) that the therapist seems to be reassured and makes room for the story of the violence between the boys. Then the story of violence between the boys is further elaborated in the session. So, in this shift, the two parts of the adjacency pair invitation–acceptance are not strictly adjacent. There is an insertion between the first


and the second pair parts of a few conversational turns. In these conversational turns, another adjacency pair can be recognized: hesitation–reassurance. The therapist hesitates to accept the invitation because he senses danger (the danger that the children might be blamed). In this way the development of the new story is postponed. The second part of the inserted segment is the reassurance by Mother and the boys. Only after the therapist was reassured by Mother that she recognized their constructive play—and by the boys that they agreed with Mother that there was serious violence between them—did the therapist accept the invitation to make room for this story of the violence between the children. This segment thus illustrates the use of interpersonal negotiation in the raising and taking up of conversationally delicate topics such as domestic violence.

Also in the third shift (from narratives about violence between the children to narratives about violence between adults) there is not a simple invitation–acceptance sequence. Because of its complexity and unusual nature, we present turn-by-turn annotations of this segment. Just before the shift, Tony and Han are talking about nightmares. Tony explains that when Han has a nightmare, he comes to sleep in his big brother’s bed. Then Tony says:

485 Tony: “I don’t like it when Han comes to sleep in my bed. Yes and usually when Mother 486 fights with someone . . .” (Turn 1.1, offers possible violence topic as part of complaint about brother)487 (Tony did not yet finish his sentence and Han drops in…)488 Han: “. . . Then I go to my brother.” (Turn 1.2, a collaborative response; agrees with complaint)489 Tony: “Yes, then he comes to my room.” (Turn 2, an agreement/confirmation of Turn 1.2)490 Han: “Yes, then I go to my brother.” (Turn 3, acknowledges agreement; end of agreement sequence)491 Therapist: “When Mother fights with someone?” (Turn 4; understanding repair initiator; picks up topic from Turn 1.1)492 Jimmy: “Yes, in the past, in previous relationships.” (Offers repair of therapist understanding on behalf of Tony)493 Mother: “In the past you mean?” (Requests confirmation of Jimmy’s repair) 494 Jimmy: “Yes, in the past, in your previous relationships.” (Confirms Mother’s understanding of his repair)

Here Tony introduces a narrative about violence between the adults, using the present tense.2 His invitation to talk about it is accepted as Han supports this narrative immediately. The therapist, however, does not accept the invitation right away. This new narrative comes as a surprise for him. In his tape-assisted-recall notes, we can see that he is taken aback and that he even doubts his ears, asking himself if he has understood Tony correctly. When he is confident that he understood Tony correctly, he questions whether he should make room for this story of the fighting of Mother with someone using a common repair initiator, a simple repetition with a question intonation. This response is an unusually delayed fourth-turn repair initiation, which communicates the importance of the topic. (Repair initiations almost always occur in the same or next speaking turn.) Jimmy and Mother, in contrast, act in a confused manner and both point out that Tony and Han are probably talking about things that happened in the past. Did they react in this way to repair the therapist’s confusion, or was it the fear that the topic of the present aggression in the family evoked that made them lead the conversation away to a less delicate story? If so, then this could be called a decoy disclosure (Goodman, 1988). With some hesitation, the therapist goes along with this relocation of the violence in the past (lines 495–496), after which Han also agrees that there were fights between Mother and his father in the past (lines 497–503). This results in the elaboration in the session of the story of the fights between Mother and her ex-husband. The story of the present violence between the adults was thus submerged, only to be told in another session some weeks later.

Obviously, also in this sequence the simple adjacency pair invitation–acceptance does not fit nicely, as the two parts of the pair are not strictly adjacent. Inserted between the two parts there seems be some kind of implicit negotiation between the participants. The therapist’s surprise and hesitation, as well as


the insistence of Mother and Jimmy that the violence is past, lead the participants to develop the story of the violence between Mother and her ex-husband. This bit of storytelling was accomplished by implicit negotiation between the participants, using conversational repair strategies. The story that is finally developed in the session seems to be a compromise among the different participants, taking into account the unvoiced concerns of each. The question can be posed, of course, what these concerns might be. For instance, what made Mother and Jimmy insist on talking about the past, thus silencing stories about violence between adults in the present? Our analysis does not allow us a clear answer to this question. We suspect, however, that probably the session was not considered to be safe enough by Mother and Jimmy to tackle this extremely delicate topic. We suppose that they foresaw dangers or that they felt too vulnerable at this point in the conversation to talk about the violence between them. It is interesting that later in the session Mother admits that she and Jimmy had fights in the past (line 595). In later sessions Mother and Jimmy even told the therapist that they had had some quite violent fights in the course of their relationship.

To summarize, when we look closely at the conversational sequences of the four narrative shifts, we can say that sometimes an invitation to talk about violence was followed by an acceptance (shifts 1 and 4). This fits the traditional CA adjacency-pair concept of invitation–acceptance. In some instances, however, when one participant invited the others to make room for a new narrative about violence, this was countered by another voice hesitating to go deeper into the narrative (shifts 2 and 3). In those instances, the telling of the new story was postponed, as if the participants needed to hesitate before shifting to new, more delicate narratives. It seemed as if tacitly the question was raised as to whether it would be safe to continue to talk about the narrative that is proposed (shifts 1, 2, and 3). Our analysis further suggests that in those instances there can be an implicit negotiation in which other participants reassure the hesitating participant. These reassuring voices encourage and support the development of the new narrative (shift 2). Sometimes, however, an invitation to talk about a violence narrative is not accepted (shift 3) or is replaced by a substitute or decoy disclosure (shift 4). The story eventually told in the session leads the conversation away from a story that is as yet too delicate to tell.

DISCUSSION

Our study of this family session falls into the process research realm that has been explored in marriage and family therapy by researchers such as Jerry Gale (1991; Gale et al., 1995; Kogan & Gale, 1997) and Ron Chenail (1995; Chenail & Fortugno, 1995; Rambo, Heath, & Chenail, 1993). The session was intensively examined from a microanalytical perspective in order to try to understand how talk about domestic violence turns and shifts during a session. Such a microanalysis, while respecting and appreciating the complexity of the dialogical processes of family therapy in practice, can open up new ways of understanding these processes.

Some authors have advocated combining research methods in psychotherapy process research (Gale et al., 1995). In our study, we have combined narrative analysis with tape-assisted recall and elements from CA. This helped us to find richer answers to our questions. Using CA tools helped us to move beyond the content of the stories and make the process of storytelling accessible for analysis. The tape-assisted-recall procedure offered an additional perspective on the session, in the sense that it expanded the said into the not-yet-said (Gale et al., 1995). What was said in the session we could study in the transcript using narrative analytical and CA means. The tape-assisted reflections of the therapist gave us access to things that were not said in the session, but that helped us to better understand what was said.

Our microanalysis reveals that storytelling in family therapy is a collaborative, dialogical process, accomplished by all participants in the conversation. We have described how the recounting of stories of violence seems to go hand in hand with more repressive modes of interaction that discourage the telling of these stories. In the back-and-forth process between voices of hesitation and voices of reassurance, the level of safety in the session is weighed by the participants. In so far as the voices of hesitation can be reassured of the safety, it becomes gradually possible to talk about delicate, problematic experiences such as violence in the family. Sometimes, however, the hesitating voice cannot be reassured, and the delicate story is suppressed. We have described the therapist as one of the participants in that dialogical process.


The therapist can invite new stories to be told, but he/she can also be hesitant and even silence stories of violence and suffering, just like the other participants in the conversation.

Our observations seem to fit with Herman’s (1992) model, in which she found that, in stories about trauma, there is a dialectic between voices eager to tell the story and other voices intent on silencing it. Our analysis, however, does not shed light on the reasons why some voices may be inclined to silence some stories and not others. Is it because of the general preference for agreement and politeness that seems to rule most conversations in our culture (Chilton, 1990; Pomerantz, 1984), or is it because there are special vulnerabilities of family members that have to be protected (Rober, 2002)? We cannot say, but it seems that narratives of violence can be experienced as threatening to some participants, which triggers the hesitation to talk. What our analysis further suggests is that no particular participant owns the hesitating voice in the conversation. Although Rober (2002) hypothesized that hesitation is often expressed by one of the children in the family, in the session we studied, the hesitating voice is expressed by different family members, including adults. Sometimes the therapist hesitates or postpones the telling of the new story (e.g., in the second shift). This can be seen as an illustration that the therapist is a part of the dialogue and in the flow of conversation contributes to the narrative development in the session in the same way as the other participants.

An analysis of any therapeutic session is, in fact, never completed, but researchers at a certain point have to stop researching and arrive at a conclusion. Such a conclusion, of course, is tentative because no analysis of a therapeutic session is free from questions about perspectives taken or about the interpretations made. Every analysis results in a view that is only one of the many ways in which we can achieve some understanding and coherence in the conclusions. This article is a first, tentative formulation of some ideas about the narrative development of sensitive topics in a family therapy session. More research is needed to investigate further this important aspect of family therapy. Of course, because we focused on just one session in our microanalysis, especially the question of the generalizability of the findings needs to be addressed in future research. Can our tentative findings be generalized to other families, other therapists, and other kinds of delicate topics that may be hard to talk about in families (e.g., being imprisoned, being unemployed, being HIV infected, etc.)? Furthermore, in this article we adopted a dialogical perspective in which the therapist was considered to be one of the participants in the session. In this framing the therapist is seen as an active part of the flow of conversation. He was not singled out as having special responsi-bilities or a special position from which he participated in the dialogue. Yet, in therapy practice, therapists typically participate in the dialogue with a specific mission and from a special position: there is a family in distress and the therapist is called upon to help this family. In this position the therapist is an actor with specific training, aims, strategies, and ideas about families and therapy. So the therapist in practice has a double position: the therapist is part of the flow of conversation just like the other participants, but he/she can also take mental distance from the session, reflect on what is happening in the session, and evaluate if his/her contribution to the dialogue is helpful. It might be interesting for further research to look at therapist contributions to narrative processes in therapy sessions. For one thing, it would be interesting to investigate what strategies therapists have at their disposal to help to make room in the session for sensitive topics of conversation. Is it enough, for instance, if the therapist provides a facilitating context in the therapy room in which stories of shame and trauma can be told, or would it help if, in addition, the therapist would talk with family members about their hesitations and try to gain a sense of their good reasons to hesitate, as Rober (2002) suggests? Moreover, should the therapist invite stories of pride as a first step toward the telling of shameful stories (Sheinberg & Fraenkel, 2001)? And so on.

Another line of research that might be worthwhile to pursue would be to study the stories that are not told. How do certain topics remain unexplored in a family therapy session? For instance, in the session we studied no stories were told about Mother’s violent behavior. Yet, in later sessions these stories surfaced. Mother told stories of how she fought with Jimmy and how she became abusive toward her own children. How can we understand why these stories remained unspoken in the first session, whereas other shameful stories were told? Did these untold stories leave observable traces in the conversation, and if so why were they not picked up by the therapist or someone else in the session? These questions are fascinating, but they have not been addressed in this article.


A final interesting line of research we want to mention would be to look in more detail at the vulner-ability of family members in the session. If they are hesitating to speak about something (e.g., domestic violence), we may question what makes them hesitate. What are they afraid might happen when violence is mentioned and discussed? Are they afraid of being blamed or of feeling guilty? Are they concerned that violence might erupt in the session? Or are they afraid that the therapist might undertake action to report the violence to the authorities so that the parents might lose custody over their children? These and many other questions are of the utmost importance for the practice of working with family violence, because answers to them can help the therapist reflect on what he/she has to do to be helpful for the family in making room to talk about violence in the session, while also avoiding more outbursts of violence in the family. Using a tape-assisted-recall procedure to interview the family members, as well as the therapist, might help us gain some understanding on the vulnerability of the family members and on the vulnerability of the therapist. As family therapists and family therapy trainers, we think that research on narrative processes in family therapy may help us to better comprehend what happens in therapy, to appreciate our own contribution to the unfolding stories in the session, and to become more effective professional helpers. Research methods like tape-assisted-recall procedures may also have an unfulfilled potential for contributing to better family therapy training and supervision. Tape-assisted-recall procedures have been extensively used as a method for supervision of individual therapists in which significant events in the session are analysed (Elliott & Shapiro, 1992). In fact, tape-assisted-recall procedures were originally introduced in the field of psycho-therapy by Kagan (1975; Kagan & Kagan, 1997) as a way to train and supervise therapists. However, the focus was on individuals, not on families or couples (Gale et al., 1995). The use of tape-assisted-recall procedures in supervising and training family therapists remains as yet largely unexplored.

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NOTES

1The session was conducted in Flemish. We analyzed the Flemish transcript. The segments in English we use in this article have been translated during the writing of this article to serve as illustrations.

2This is the original Flemish phrase of lines 485–486: “meestal als moeder vecht met iemand.” Although the present tense is used in some languages to tell past stories, this sentence undeniably refers to the present tense.

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TALKING ABOUT VIOLENCE: A MICROANALYSIS OF NARRATIVE PROCESSES IN A FAMILY THERAPY SESSION

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