Anssi Peräkylä – författare

Conversations between AIDS counsellors and their clients bring delicate and potentially threatening issues into play. In this study Anssi Peräkylä applies the principles of conversation analysis to his exploration of AIDS counselling, using data from video-recorded counselling sessions in a London teaching hospital. He meticulously analyses this data to show how various questioning techniques, in this case arising from the Milan School Family Systems theory, operate in these situations, and how counsellors attempt through the design and placement of their questions to achieve the cooperation of their clients, with varying success. His conclusions provide a timely and illuminating insight into the management of a sensitive topic through various techniques of indirectness.

Psychotherapy is a 'talking cure'- clients voice their troubles to therapists, who listen, prompt, question, interpret and generally try to engage in a positive and rehabilitating conversation with their clients. Using the sophisticated theoretical and methodological apparatus of Conversation Analysis - a radical approach to how language in interaction works - this book sheds light on the subtle and minutely organised sequences of speech in psychotherapeutic sessions. It examines how therapists deliver questions, cope with resistance, reinterpret experiences and how they can use conversation to achieve success. Conversation is a key component of people's everyday and professional lives and this book provides an unusually detailed insight into the complexity and power of talk in institutional settings. Featuring contributions from a collection of internationally renowned authors, Conversation Analysis and Psychotherapy will appeal to researchers and graduate students studying conversation analysis across the disciplines of psychology, sociology and linguistics.

Conversations between AIDS counsellors and their clients bring delicate and potentially threatening issues into play. In this study Anssi Peräkylä applies the principles of conversation analysis to his exploration of AIDS counselling, using data from video-recorded counselling sessions in a London teaching hospital. He meticulously analyses this data to show how various questioning techniques, in this case arising from the Milan School Family Systems theory, operate in these situations, and how counsellors attempt through the design and placement of their questions to achieve the cooperation of their clients, with varying success. His conclusions provide a timely and illuminating insight into the management of a sensitive topic through various techniques of indirectness.