Dialogical analysis of storytelling in the family therapeutic encounter

Abstract

In this article we want to present some dialogical conceptual tools that can offer family therapists an interesting perspective on storytelling in family sessions. We will address the dialogical complexity of storytelling and discuss some important aspects of it. Furthermore, we will give an overview of our main theoretical concepts that can be useful for a dialogical analysis of family sessions: voice, words/actions, positioning and sequentiality. While the theoretical presentation of these concepts in the first part of the article is rather abstract, in the second part we will concentrate on the way we use these concepts in our attempt to dialogically analyze storytelling in family sessions. We will illustrate our way of working in detail using a brief vignette of an actual family therapy session.