1. Introduction
2.Talking with another: Conversations in Conversation
3. Poetic Moments in Conversation
4. Social Poetics – a Therapeutic Perspective
5. Encouragement in Therapeutic Conversations – Dissolving Distinctions Made in Language
6. Wondering – A Philosophical or a Therapeutic Attitude
7. Relationship-Engaged Reflection – Emotions in Therapeutic Conversation

1. Introduction

The following paper will describe language and conversations as constructing processes in social interaction and present the view that social processes realize themselves especially by talking with one an other. Talking with one another can be devided in language as mutual understanding and social constructing (or inventing) — both complement each other. 

Therapeutic conversations are a special kind of these social processes. In these processes, understanding and constructing are centered around the client’s ´problem storiesª. These stories can be characterized either as ´me, my problem - and the othersª or ´we, our problem - and the othersª. The task of the therapy is to understand the client’s description of his/her problem by talking with each other and to conversationally open up new descriptions with new opportunities. In this way, therapeutic conversations contribute to client’s invention of him/herself. (Deissler, 1997). 

My theses are intended as a contribution to the understanding of these conversational processes. 

2. Talking with one another: Conversations in Conversation 

It is not especially imaginative nor is it especially innovative to understand the world as a network of simultaneous and sequential conversations in conversation with each other. (Gadamer (1986), Rorty (1989), Shotter (1993), Gergen (1994)). In these partially interwoven conversations people are trying to understand, create, transform and organize realities. This attitude is currently being held by people who call themselves Social Constructionists and who maintain that we don’t see our world through biological, physiological and psychological optics (lenses, glasses, colors), but that we comprehend and form our world of relationships by talking with each other (Deissler (1996)). This has been expressed in two sentences which have become renown: ´Sein, das verstanden werden kann, ist Spracheª (Gadamer, op.cit., p. 478) and ´Communicamus ergo sumª(Gergen, op.cit, p. viii). 

One can distinguish between different types of conversations: for instance, every day conversations: those which take place in a bar, while shopping or when acquaintances happen to meet. There are goal-oriented conversations such as negotiating a sale, price bargaining or legal negotiations in court. The diversity of conversational forms may be as endless as the possibilities of human communication. 

One special variety is therapeutic conversations. To paraphrase Günter Eich it can be said that when a person decides to be a psychotherapist, it is
also a decision to describe the world as conversations and one’s self as a part of these conversations. When a therapist greets clients and
asks them to explain what brought them, this isn’t just an empty therapeutic statement, but an invitation to tell a story, which will tell how the narrator describes his or her problem, the relationship of this problem to other people and which developmental options the client sees, and so on. This means that a therapeutic relationship always begins with a request to explain, in and by speaking; whereby in conversation the client and therapist will respond to one and other in turn. The client’s story can be seen as a narrative in the first person: ´Me, my problem and my relationships to others...ª. If several clients describe the ´same problemª, there will be more than one story, differences will be made and those involved in the conversations — such as therapists — who, by asking questions, will contribute to the way the stories branch out and to the different ways of understanding which develop in the course of the conversations. 

Especially when several clients and colleagues are present — but even in a so-called individual conversation — a (therapeutic) conversation can be thought of as a series of dialogs, one following the other, commenting and reflecting on each other in which a variety of meanings are created which generate different ways of understanding the stories. These dialogs within a conversation and conversations in dialog open a wealth of diverse opportunities to understand both yourself and your relationships to others in the past, present and future and to open opportunities for action in the present and future thus opening opportunities to create yourself and your relationships to others. In other words: the realm of our relationships is generated in and through conversations. 

3. Poetic Moments in Conversations 

Everyone is familiar with the following phenomenon: We are talking with someone we really like with whom we have a relationship of trust. After a conversation with this person we feel better, and we say to the other or maybe only to ourselves: ´That was a good conversationª. One might ask: what makes a good everyday conversation or when are they successful? I have spent a lot of time thinking about this question, have talked about it with friends and colleagues and have finally come to the conclusion that everyday conversations work when they convey something which helps the people involved to go further. These kinds of conversations enable us to understand each other better by making it possible for us to understand what we are being told and finally by helping us to develop a creative understanding which will then open new possibilities for the future. These conversations will enable us not only to understand ourselves in relation to others in the present and in the past but also to construct or create ourselves in relation to others in the future. To put it briefly, these kinds of conversations open two different types of understanding: comprehensive (self)understanding and creative (self)understanding (understanding self-invention).I like to refer the moments when this occurs as poetic moments in conversation. 

I would like to clarify this with an example: 

Mr. Kern, who lived in a large city in the general vicinity of Marburg, Germany, came to me for therapeutic conversations. He told me that his wife was
dissatisfied with him and sent him to therapy. When asked if he thought that therapy was necessary, he evaded the question and said that he wasn’t sure, being that he had already been in therapy several times. He continued to tell me that his wife was dominant, she earned more money than he did, and from time to time he escaped from the confinement of the relationship; he would travel for days at a time and not show up at relatives until he ran out of money. His wife wouldn’t hear a word from him while he was gone. And then, the longer he was away from home the harder it was to come back to her. Which was why it is perfectly understandable that as soon as he returned home, his wife was angry and unhappy with him. 

Mr. Kern talked about his professional life, his insecurity toward himself as a person and a few negative characteristics, which he, his wife or other people have noticed in him. When I asked if he also had positive sides, he talked about a few positive characteristics, which he saw in himself, but which others may take little note of. When asked if we were on the right track with this subject or if this conversation was a diversion; he answered that we were approaching the ´problem areaª. This changed when we started talking about his ´problemsª in a more positive manner. I suggested that probably the only way to approach this ´problemª and solve it together was to learn to see things like his ´escapesª positively. So we started talking about whether some men who take ´time outª could be looking for erotic adventures. Mr. Kern agreed and also said that it could also be so in his case; he added that it is a sensitive subject for him and that we were at the heart of the problem...

This simple example demonstrates how comprehensive understanding leads to creative understanding which then opens new areas of conversation. The poetic moment is when a new shared understanding is made possible and with it new opportunities for conversation which open possibilities for action to the people involved in the conversation. The conversation transforms both itself and the people involved.

I am convinced that these kinds of poetic moments occur in each everyday conversation. Each conversation — whether it be with neighbors, friends, or taxi drivers, for instance, - contains such poetic moments. Psychotherapy, however, differs from everyday conversations; one of the differences is that in this conversational form, poetic moments are supposed to occur more frequently. This is related to the fact that clients and therapists engage themselves in the process of dissolving ´problemsª in conversation. Thus this can be referred to as a relationship-engaged activity.

4. Social Poetics — a Therapeutic Perspective 

In order to explain more fully how such processes occur, I would like to return to a few thoughts I have formulated elsewhere. 

Relationship precedes — with this quote from Bateson I would like to introduce the following section. Although it was formulated in 1979 at a workshop in Cologne, it has lost none of its relevance. In fact, for me it symbolizes the heart of the view of language which I stand for and which I would like to refer to as social poetic. (Shotter, 1993, 1995, 1997; Deissler, 1997, Deissler & Zitterbarth, 1998). But what does that mean, in particular?

In answer to this question, I would like to more closely define the concept ´relationshipª. There are two ways in which we can relate to each other: we can
discuss, negotiate, have dialogs, etc., in short: we can talk with each other. On the other hand we can work together, cooperate, collaborate etc. in other words: common action. To counter the impression which this comparison may seem to imply, it should be emphasized that talking and acting should not be seen as seperated, but as complementary components forming a relationship. We differentiate between talking and acting using linguistic tools. This distinction can also be removed (through language). In this case we can combine the activities which have been separated from each other: talking with one and other and common action will be referred to as communicating or relating to each other.

Social constructionism (Gergen, 1994) takes these ideas, developes and stretches them to fit the field of psychotherapy (McNamee & Gergen, 1992;
Anderson, 1997, Deissler, 1997). Here talking with one and other is seen as a component of social reality for generating meaning. 

Several Social Constructionist views have proven to be very useful for therapeutic conversations. The concept social poetics is an attempt to apply the four following statements to the field of psychotherapy:

1. Social constructions are ´producedª in communication; namely in conversation, especially any form of knowledge and in the generation of meaning
(interpretation). Conversations can be called the forge of all knowledge and every kind of social construction.

2. To describe the process of communication, it may be linguistically necessary to rely on certain prerequisites of communication, or to admit that these
prerequisites are necessary for participation in communication. These prerequisites are the communicating person’s ´bio/psycho/cognitive devicesª. The fact remains that the terms such as ´cognitive deviceª, are themselves the result of verbal and therefore social construction processes.

3. Just as we construct social reality by talking with and listening to each other as well as through common action, we perceive it in and through activities in which we are socially connected. These activities simultaneously join and separate us: we generate not only common characteristics, but also differences concerning the ideas produced in conversations, stories, comprehension and interpretations.

4. The social existence of terms (terminology) is to be seen as being directly dependent on using the terms in conversations. In other words: a term is given its meaning — which may be contextual — and its temporary range of validity only when it is used in conversations and is reflected and interpreted. This is a continual process bound in space and time, which is imbedded in certain ´Lebensformenª(Wittgenstein, 1984).

Three statements about social poetics should also be valid for therapeutic conversations:

(1) A therapeutic conversation describes a dialogical (verbal) construction process.

(2) This verbal construction process will be activated in particular with the help of distinctions created in conversations. 
          (a) These distinctions may be mutually contradictory, may be related to or complement each other and they can be partially or completely
          identical. 

          (b) Differentiations between distinctions created by language can be dissolved poetically. 

          (c) The object of a therapeutic session is to remain in conversation, in the sense of removing the distinction between the process and the
          purpose of the conversation.

(3) The (verbal) conversational process in therapeutic conversation is dependent on mutual understanding, which can be divided into comprehensive and creative components and which converge in one specific formative moment, which can be novel and unexpected (unpredictable) (Deissler, 1998, p. 135).

I would like to clarify this view by citing another case example:

It concerns a single woman with three children, who lived at the foot of the Westerwald. Her husband died of cancer approximately ten years ago. Shortly before her husband died both came to me for counseling about this and the wife and I had a few sessions after his death. About eight years later she returned with her — then sixteen-year-old — son, who had social problems at school. The counseling for this problem took three sessions. After another two years she came back because her mother died — at this point I will start the story of our last session:

Mrs. Taubert told how she has felt tremendous anger toward men for some time. She has made use of every opportunity to track down macho behavior in men and expose it with feminine aggression; and whenever possible, to denounce the man in front of an audience. She obviously enjoyed doing this, but it also caused her worry. It was fun to unmask men’s affectations of potency with sarcastic commentary, but she was worried about what else was connected to this behavior. This was even more evident when she talked about her fantasy about her mother’s upcoming funeral: she said, she would most like to use this opportunity to tell all the funeral guests that she was sexually abused by her father and brother, who is a police officer today, and that her mother covered up for her father as well as for her brother. She described the scene at the funeral in tears and with anger and finally imagined standing in front of all the mourners and showing them her raised middle finger. 

In the therapeutic conversation and the intermittent reflective phases it was carefully examined if and how the client’s aggressive behavior toward men could be related to the long unspoken abusive behavior of the father and brother. Thereby the present anger was much more important than the mourning and helplessness.

An additional short episode from a session also dealt with this topic: Mrs. Taubert told me that her neighbor often visited and that they frequently exchanged things such as gifts, she also mentioned that she had an ambivalent relationship to her. The neighbor took the liberty of constantly watching her through the window of her house across the street, and criticizing the fact that she lived alone. As this neighbor recently visited her in the company of another neighbor and they both came to mention the missing male element in the house, she was filled with emotions which she described as 'rejection and anger'. 

At first, this story didn’t make any sense to me in light of the problem stated. Mrs. Taubert said that the neighbor was often beaten by her drunken husband and that she hid her bruises. Everyone in the neighborhood knew about it, but nobody talked about it - especially not in the neighbor’s presence. 

In the reflecting phase, which I carried out with a colleague, we came up with the question of whether there could be a relation between the neighbor’s silence and the client’s silence - in both cases concerning abusive male behavior. An other questions arose, if both women weren’t demonstrating protective behavior toward men and if Mrs. Taubert especially rejected the behavior in her neighbor which she couldn’t tolerate in herself.

The parallels were - as stated — introduced by the therapist and his colleague in reflection, in the presence of the client. They have neither a claim to
correctness nor to objectivity and represent nothing more than an additional perspective on the client’s story. - The client was silent for a while after the
reflection and carefully consented to this perspective: ´It could be that there is a relationª. She felt understood and saw new possibilities for action - partially toward her neighbor and partially for the upcoming funeral. The explosive subject of the funeral, the angry and concerned fantasy about the funeral lost its significance. The distinction between her ´problemª and that which she saw as the solution had been partially dissolved (compare Anderson, 1997; Deissler, 1997) - it was irrelevant and was no longer the topic of discussion. (Deissler, 1998, p. 136 ff).ª

5. Encouragement in Therapeutic Conversations — dissolving distinctions made in language 

When we talk about temptation, it is usually semantically linked to an erotic and/or Biblical context depicting people in a situation in which they are inclined to do something which runs contrary to a given system of ethics. If we were to speak of therapeutic temptation, it would lead us onto the thin ice of all the various religious and/or erotic interpretations. It still remains one of the aims of therapy to explore behavioral tendencies which have only partially emerged and which the client is tempted to carry out, as well as to encourage possible alternatives to the problem behavior. 

Psychotherapeutic encouragement in this context should mean to reveal positive tendencies, ways of behavior or ways to speak, which haven’t become
manifest, but which the client wants to develop, and using the therapeutic atmosphere to support them. You may ask e.g. how it is possible to construct a supportive therapeutic situation together with a student who considers himself to be speech inhibited, which will encourage him to overcome his inhibitions. The basic question is: how can a therapist and client work together to create contexts which have incentives, where the client will be inclined to develop new alternative forms of behavior and manners of speech and how is it possible to promote these kinds of attractive situations in collaboration with the client.

The discussion of radical constructivist ideas raised the question of the relationship between cognition and action. The conventional thesis maintains: if you want to act practically or sensibly, you should first consider or carry out sensible recognition processes. Another — similar thought is — if you want to say something, you should first think about what it is you want to say.

Heinz von Foerster (1985, p. 41) turned these ideas upside-down and formulated his antithical ´aesthetic imperativeª in a constructivist context: He said: ´Willst Du erkennen, handle!'!

Heinrich von Kleist formulated a sentence which might be considered social constructionist from our comtemporian point of view: 'Der Gedanke kommt beim Sprechen' and Harry Goolishian said: ´When I want to know what I think, I have to talk (with someone)ª.

Naturally there is also a third point of view which says that the two are related and arguing about which of them is superior or which is more important is like the discussion about which came first, the chicken, the egg or the relationship between hen and cock...

Actually, the question of the relationship between individual insight and action can only then be dissolved when we enter the social arena of conversation or of talking with another. The most important question in a psychotherapeutic contexts is: how can we — clients and therapists — talk with each other so that the constructed distinction (between action and insight) will disappear. As I have tried to demonstrate, this occurs through the social poetics of therapeutic conversations. That means that therapeutic conversations remove the distinction between individual insight and action. That which is created are poetical conversational processes, which take place between at least two people. During these conversational processes insight and action and talking converge and become one. If this is achieved in therapeutic conversations, one can assume that they have a better chance of being successful.

There are certain supportive measures which can be taken to promote these poetic processes in therapy, which I have summed up under the concept of psychotherapeutic encouragement (or temptation) because it can be said that they lure out the poetic processes and allow them to unfold. In gerenal it can be said that supportive measures contribute to the conversational atmosphere, but aren’t generally seen as specific techniques.

The first thing I would like to do is to describe the willingness to allow oneself to be touched by words. Words which can touch the person you are talking with are the kind of words which you find moving. An interesting story as a part of a conversation will be hold the listener’s attention and move her/him. Therefore, it can be assumed that people feel differently following these kinds of conversations than when they entered them. For instance, if a fourteen-year-old girl says in her parent’s presence that she trusts them very little, but the therapist a little more and her pen pal above all, who she doesn’t even know personally, everyone involved will be moved by these statements, so that they will leave the conversation very differently than they entered it. What this example shows is that ´being moved by words' can also mean risking vulnerability and allowing it to change you.

Psychotherapeutic magic, which summons moving poetic moments in the listener, can be intensified by creating appropriately unusual differences in
conversation with the client which move toward removing the pathological stigma which has been attached to anything which has been considered unhealthy and/or bad. This is also what is behind the classic examples; when hunger strike is used instead of anorexia, strong emotional expression which causes others to suffer in place of aggression, lack of inhibitions or unbridled wish fulfillment of instead of mania.

Finally the old religious argument — between Zwingli and Luther — whether the bread at the Last Supper represents or is the ´Body of Christª — can be seen as a verbal conflict concerning the distinction between map/territory (Deissler, 1996). Both can be thought of as linguistic constructions which can be discussed, separated and combined using language — depending on which purpose they serve. First when (conversational) language constructions have been identified as such, will partners in conversation be able to understand each other. Therefore, the removal of distinctions created by language, for instance between insight and action, speaking and acting, dream and reality, can be seen as a promotion of therapeutic encouragement which makes relationship-engaged conversations possible in which both partners can work toward dissolving the problems in the relationship and encourage new behavior.

6. Wondering — a philosophical or a therapeutic attitude? 

To find out which therapeutic attitude promotes poetic processes, you have to know more exactly what the therapeutic attitude is supposed to make possible. What should be encouraged is something like creativity in conversation, magic, which can make space for possibilities and eliminate the distinctions between hard reality and gentle fantasy, for instance. At the same time future opportunities for thought and action should be inspired. Or the matter can be simplified by saying a poetic attitude is necessary for the promotion of poetic processes. 

Jostein Gaarder (1993) said in his book, ´Sophie’s Worldª that the only thing necessary to remain a philosopher is to keep hold of the childish attitude of
wonder. He means that on should nurture the childlike questioning attitude in order to approach the central philosophical problems. You could say that ´to wonder' and ´to be amazedª creates the wish to want to understand what you encounter. I believe that this willingness to wonder also benefits therapeutic processes, you shouldn’t act as if you were an ´expert for psychosocial problemsª and therefore know things about the people you talk with, which you have no way of knowing. Before you have spoken with someone you can react only on the basis of prejudice, bias and preconceived notions. In my opinion therapeutic wonder comes closest to what Cecchin (1988) calls ´curiosityª and Anderson and Goolishian (1992) call ´not knowingª. This wonder includes a willingness to recognize, the content of conversation, which you have never heard before, as something new, and so couldn’t possibly have known and to keep on being amazed by that which seems familiar.

This also implies the willingness to recognize that no one can completely understand another person and therefore you should always be willing to ask about anything which you don’t understand — with the consent of the person you are talking with.

Finally this wondering is related to affection to your conversational partner. This affection in a therapeutic context has little to do with physical love or erotic seduction — it expresses interest in that which the other person is talking about and a willingness to develop an interest in the surrounding relationships and to get engaged.

That means that first of all there has to be a willingness to listen (Levin, 1998). Not until this has been achieved will the opportunity arise to reflect on the content of the conversation, to come up with new meanings and to open new possibilities. It follows that wondering can be referred to as a reflective
relationship-engaged therapeutic attitude.

This attitude can be used 'therapeutically' by promoting encouragement to enter new territory, to discover new things or to create as well as by opening new opportunities for the future.

To explain this attitude of wondering, I would like to tell about a client, Mr. Becker, who I encountered at the beginning of my professional career.

Mr. Becker was a young man — in his early thirties. He worked in a print shop and was trying to find another job because he was suffering from the noise of the printing presses he worked with. I was a little skeptical and didn’t believe his story at all. I assumed that he was trying to go into retirement or was looking for an easier way to earn money without admitting it. My distrust was never expressed — at least at the beginning of the therapy — while he in turn was withholding subjects which he couldn’t talk about until after many sessions had passed. So I had a feeling that we were both facing each other full of distrust and weren’t talking about that which ´actuallyª should have been the topic of conversation. This changed abruptly after the following incident: Mr. Becker had made a habit of greeting me with a very firm handshake before the start of every session. This handshake was so firm that it caused pain in my right hand, which I concealed. At the fourth session I decided to make my handshake so much stronger that Mr. Becker would, at the very least, be aware of it. As we greeted each other at the session and offered our hands, Mr. Becker remarked impressed and amazed: 'You have a firm Handshake!?'.

To my amazement, after this moment I could take him seriously (and vice versa). It was easier for me to believe his story and to appreciate his situation.

In the language which has been developed here, this is called mutual amazement through the ´recognition per handshakeª which enabled us to broach new topics of conversation which included bringing up my suspicion.

7. Relationship-Engaged Reflecting — Emotions in Therapeutic Conversations 

In classical systemic family therapy emotions were taboo; that means they weren’t allowed to be talked about — under any circumstances, this is what our instructor demanded, they should not be asked for. They were thought of as a maneuvers to maintain the homeostatic balance. If a mother cried during a session, a father became aggressive and the fourteen-year-old son withdrew more and more into himself, these types of behavior could be thought of as individual maneuvers which served to maintain the equilibrium within the family — the family being seen as a rigid unit, fixed on a certain way of functioning. 

With the help of a relational oriented social constructionist way of thinking (Gergen, 1994, McNamee & Gergen, 1998) emotions can be seen in a new light: they can be thought of as shades of qualitative invitations to relate, which invite the other person involved in conversation to other emotions (offers to relate). This centers less around an established interpretation of a certain emotion than a multiplicity of meanings which corresponds to the uncertainty of feeling. The reflection on these invitations to relationship (emotions) presents the opportunity to understand and to create both yourself and the others involved. This way of seeing things focuses on the diversity of possible ways of understanding and opportunities for transformations. Instead of concentrating on structures or functions with their limitations this outlines relational processes with their possibilities. This ensures that emotions are valued in social poetics: they contribute to the realm of possibilities of therapeutic conversations.

The following case study will present a more concrete explanation. 

Conflicts arose in a three person family as the fifteen-year-old daughter wanted to stay out later than her parents allowed. The father had taken sick leave because of a heart condition and an early retirement was being discussed. The more the father tried to use his illness to prevent the daughter from staying out later, the more the conflict about her behavior escalated. Finally he admitted to having threatened his daughter ´...if you keep coming home later than we have allowed, you will make yourself responsible for my death of a heart attack...ª. The situation seemed stuck: the parents and the daughter held to their positions. This changed dramatically when in an individual session I talked with the father about the ´death threatª he made to his daughter. He defended reaction to his daughter’s behavior, convinced that he was right to threaten with a fatal heart attack. As I listened I noticed that an abrupt indignation was growing in me the longer the father defended this position. Finally I forgot everything I knew about neutrality, curiosity, not-knowing, etc. as a therapeutic attitude. I exploded, ´How can you threaten your daughter with your own death? I find it contemptible. Do you want to make your daughter will feel guilty for the rest of her life, if you should die?ª. — The rest of the conversation was more reserved, I noticed that I was feeling guilty toward my client because I lost control of myself, ´Is he going to get too upset? (Am I going to end up being responsible for his death?) We reflected on the entire process including my guilt and agreed that the mother should come to the next session. — After the session, I wasn’t very proud of myself and I was feeling anxious about the session with the mother. Amazingly she told that the problems with her daughter had practically vanished and everyone in the family was getting along with each other better. — We all agreed to end the therapy after one additional session with the parents. 

How is the therapy process described above to be understood in light of the preceding considerations? Surely my outbreak of emotion can be considered relationship-engaged. This engagement in the relationship opened new opportunities for action by the fact that we could reflect together on my own guilt in relation to my indignation at the father. Seen this way, the intense emotions, invitations to relate, from both sides (father and therapist) are what made relationship-engaged reflection possible.

Within the framework of this discussion, the significance is that relationship-engaged reflection contributes to the social poetics of therapeutic conversations and it promotes an aesthetic therapeutic practice — as do all the remaining aspects of the social poetics of therapeutic conversations mentioned.