TRANSCRIPT ANALYSIS AS A POTENTIAL TOOL
IN PSYCHOTHERAPY
LEON A. ÀJAMES
Department of Psychology, Univ. of
Hawaii
Hawaii Psychological Association
Annual Convention, Dec. 1982
This paper describes the procedures involved in analyzing transcripts
or portions of talk in the therapy interview. Transcripts may be prepared in
full through recording and transcribing, or they may be merely recorded and
listened to, or they may be merely remembered quotations from clients? talk.
This paper shows in particular how talk is analyzable into ?speech acts? which
have clearly discernable psychodynamic information about the clients? level of
functioning interpersonally and intrapersonally. The method illustrated here is
based on a system of thought developed by Emanuel Swedenborg (1668-1771) and
developed for this purpose by me. The paper is designed to be a œmini-lesson?
so that a prospective therapist or user may instantly decide whether it is
useful or not. The following steps are involved in the use of this analytic
system:
Step 1.ÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀ Study
and learn CHART OF SYMPTOMS (table 5) which relates clients? discourse
or talk to basic psycholinguistic functioning.
Step 2.ÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀ Select
discourse segments (or units) that are of particular interest to you as
therapist because of their ?psychodynamic? import (such as clients? statements,
comments, expressions, etc.)
Step 3.ÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀ Score
selected discourse units using CHART OF SYMPTOMS (see illustration on p.6).
Step 4.ÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀ Retrain
clients for each dysfunction you?ve thus identified by focusing their attention
on them and providing them with better alternatives (use Tables 1 through 4)
