Chapter 14

Pauses are conversations

What they tell us when we listen

Michael B. Buchholz

Clinical experience – our point of departure

German belle lettres distinguishes between pauses (Pausen), silence (Schweigen), and quiet (Stille). This distinction is not based on the dimension of duration. In music there are pauses which are very brief, but also pauses which last an entire bar, with a fermata marked above the final bar-line; the pause can and should be lengthened by feel, and not in accordance with the exact beat of the bar.1 We would not call this silence. One difference might be that the type of pause tells us whether there is something to come, that the communicative figure has not ended.

This is reminiscent of the “phatic communication” postulated by Bronisław Malinowski (Ogden & Richards, 1923), sometimes called “phatic communion”.2 It refers to expressions inviting us to “hold the line” (as they used to say on telephone switchboards), that is, they are related exclusively to maintaining social contact. Remarks include “Nice weather today, isn’t it?”, greetings and final remarks such as “OK” or “Bye”. From a psychoanalytical perspective, they formulate a compromise – between recognising the temporary end of a relationship and the prospect of swift continuation. Such phrases could be assigned to the psychopathology of everyday life, structured like compromises. Yet an assessment of “pathological” cannot be reasonably advanced.

Even in the case of the musical pause, the question of whether there is continuation, whether the “line is held” is just that – a question, and the answer provided by the immediate recognition that music does not end but goes on is always rather consoling.

In silence something has come to an end and firmly independent initiative is required to take it up again. Therapeutic practice locates silence between the poles of “repelling secrecy” and mutual, pensive silence. In the case of the latter, phatic communion is particularly clear. Herein lies the silent recognition of mutuality which is virtually broken by its antithesis, the act of repelling. Defence, although usually understood as intrapsychic, reveals its communicative informative function even in silence. Defence ensures that the “line is cut off”.

Quiet is another case entirely. In psychoanalysis, the expression “reverie” has become established, in overt allusion to religious devotion. Conversation is quiet, the spiritual world can come to the fore in its realisation; an entirely different conversation opens up in the quiet of prayer. Quiet has connections with the holy, the sacred; it has certain designated places such as cathedrals, but it is by no means reserved to this sphere. The noise of everyday life barely allows it. Ultimately, silence can be intensified as falling silent; then the proximity of death can be felt, as in Mahler’s symphonies for instance. What exactly is happening in longer silences, during phases of reverie or devotional quiet, largely remains a mystery to scholarship, but it can be studied by conversation analysis (CA) (see Dreyer & Franzen, this volume).

Let us turn to “brief pauses”, since they allow something to be expressed which is not without significance for therapeutic practice. Experienced clinicians occasionally maintain that “which is essential” plays out in silence, while others (Cremerius, 1969) have regarded silence as an expression of regression (oral component) or resistance (with a rather anal component of refusal, truculence, or retention). In this understanding, silence articulates yearning for a return to the earliest childhood experience of wordless communication, expresses helplessness, or the desire for control. Classical drive theory offered a coherent frame of reference for this phenomenon too. Motivated by drives, silence was the opposite of conversation (see Chapter 8).

Lane et al. (2002) provide an extensive survey of the importance of silence as described by psychoanalytical authors from Balint and Bollas to Langs and Winnicott, drawing on Freud. Whereas Freud recognised in silence in particular a form of (anally retentive) resistance, the later authors clearly approached silence as a form of communication – of sadness, barely articulable feelings, yearning. Hence Lane et al. (2002) can honour silence as an “intrinsic element” of all conversations. Patients are said to be silent due to the abovementioned motivations, but the therapist’s silence is examined as a “tool” (p. 1102), as part of interventionist practice; it is not recognised that this division may well do justice to silence, but not to pauses.

Relational psychoanalysis offered different frames of reference. Silence was seen not so much as a drive derivative but as an element of communication (Gale & Sanchez, 2005). This conceptual change from pauses as opposites to elements of conversation is where CA provides helpful insights for clinical conversations in the treatment room.

CA makes visible via empirical observation of therapeutic conversations something that psychoanalysis describes via more global concepts. In the best case, CA allows us to see which details of conversation constitute “intuition”. Empathy is of course not something one has on tap; sometimes one can turn it on, sometimes one is deaf and dull – and CA with its love of details seeks to find possible reasons in the conversation. Speaking must take place so that “the case” can appear thematizable3; the receptive “organ” of hovering attention can be located in the communication’s environment; we think of something while listening. The result of thinking and contemplating with ideas one has to that end, must be realised as contributions to the therapeutic conversation. Or we would know nothing of them and they would remain lost to it. If one observes a conversation very closely one can pleasingly recognise both the “dance of insight” (Buchholz & Reich, 2015) and fine grades of spoken rhythm (Buchholz & Dittmann, 2017; Buchholz, Spiekerman, & Kächele, 2015; Harrison, 2013).

Psychoanalysts combine music theory (Rose, 2004), descriptions of musical experience and concepts (Sand & Levin, 1992) or history (Cheshire, 1996) or of family relations (Feder, 1981). Thus, receptive aspects of experiencing music become subtly describable. However, there is the productive side: how and in what fashion music is created in the concert hall: how it comes about, how it is made. It is the productive side that makes countertransference a valuable tool. Experiencing (in) the therapeutic session could and should thus be complemented by investigation of the “score”; here, the score is the transcription. In conversation it follows the “performance”. It allows a reader familiar with the few diacritic signs to “hear” or internally reconstruct conversational detail, to understand how receptive experience is produced. To a significant degree experiencing reacts to conversational events going unnoticed. The musical aesthetic of therapeutic dialogue (“dance”, prosody, rhythm) can be made accessible by careful transcription (Buchholz, 2014). Pauses are a part of communicative practice, not its antithesis. Gale and Sanchez (2005) suggest demystifying silence by regarding it as an “essential ally of speech in the therapeutic process”. As allies in the therapeutic process, I want to examine their significance by transcriptions of the CEMPP study.4

Slip: “fall out a questionnaire”

A fourth cognitive-behavioral session begins thus:

(10.00) (squeaking noises))

P: so these question::aires: (-) they are always very difficult to fall out (1.2) a to fill out h h h h ((nasal))

T: What err:: what [do you find =

P: =↑ [.hh ((laughing)) I FIND

IT SO SO SHTREN (.) SO ↑STRESSFUL because I always think

I can’t judge that.

The patient has to fill out a form she received in the previous sessions and begins the session by commenting on this task. A psychoanalytic ear perceives her slip (“to fall out”) as a condensation of “to fill out” and “to fall out” and wonders how fitting such an interpretation might be. The small pause for 1.2 sec. following the slip might provide some indication. Compared with the abovementioned points on the organisation of turn taking, this pause is unusually long. Its significance is quite clear, since it is followed by a “self-initiated self-repair” (Schegloff, 2013). Unlike when self-repairs are initiated by others, here the patient has noticed her mistake independently and corrected herself.

The patient was able to correct herself because on the basis of “my mind is with you” (MMWY), as Harvey Sacks & Jefferson (1992/1995) named this presupposition of talk, she was listening to herself in the same way as the therapist might have listened to her. This process of listening to oneself (with the other’s ears) would require the same neuronal processing time of 0.6 sec. as when one is listening to someone else who says something so unexpected that one cannot plan one’s own speech. In this interpretation, the patient would be surprised by her own slip; she listens to herself and now has to plan a new turn, also around 0.6 sec. in length. Both temporal components add up to 1.2 sec. According to this hypothesis, the length of the pause (in third line) is no coincidence.

Thinking about how what one says oneself sounds to the ear of the listener motivates “repair” on the part of the speaker (Schegloff, 2013). The same author (Schegloff, 2000) analyses slips the way Freud taught (Freud, 1901), namely that a conscious and an unconscious intention to speak are in conflict with one another and the slip is the result of their interference. Furthermore, Schegloff adds that a slip that goes uncommented has the tendency to cause further slips for the following one and a half minutes.5 This is exactly what happens here. The effect of these slips runs through the entire therapy session (Alder, Brakemeier et al., 2016).

“Suicide suspects” – thirtieth session of a psychodynamic psychotherapy

Here there is a different example of a small pause after a slip. The patient sought therapy due to several suicidal crises which he had managed to conceal from his family and work colleagues. He begins to sense that concealing is not the solution but part of his problem, and asks both himself and the therapist whether anyone could empathise with such a gloomy and discouraging situation:

P: Now [the question arises again

T: [Mhmh;

P: in me .h (--) can you understand; because you have certainly had to deal with a lot of eh .hhh self murder suspects eh:: (1.2) candidates in your life and and .h (-) can you actually imagine yourself in in

in: that situation? .hh (1.1) HOW ONE

or °mh::° HOW IT (.) actually can happen to someone

THAT he is capable of taking such a= step. (.)

T: Mhmh;

P: And you don’t have to answer that now

The pause following the small, very original slip (“self murder suspects”) lasting 1.2 sec. is what interests us here. It prolongs “Selbstmord” (suicide) with “Mordverdächtigen” (murder suspect) and plays with the possibility of portraying oneself as a “murderer” and the therapist somewhat ironically as leading a kind of “murder inquiry”. But the speaker cannot know for sure how the therapist takes such a transformation of role and situation and hence has to pause to think how the formulation might sound to the ear of the listener (MMWY supposition) before selecting a correction: “-Kandidaten” (suicide-candidate). Hence the slip is of relevance to the relationship between listener and speaker, as was the case with “falling out” a questionnaire. In conclusion: it is due to this relevance that there is a need to correct oneself.

The second pause of 3.3 sec. is worth analysing in terms of MMWY. The patient had not only asked the therapist a question, which with conditional relevance makes a response within said timeframe of 0.8 sec. expectable. The question itself is “face-threatening”; asking a therapist who has clearly helped him through a difficult time if he could “understand” after 30 sessions, implies doubt and has the potential to put the past collaboration in an entirely new, unfavourable light. On the other hand, it is via the course of therapy hitherto that the patient has developed the courage to ask such a question. That the therapist hesitated to answer (except for an information receipt token) would be determined by this experience of being doubted and the accompanying assessment; the pause is motivated by countertransference. We can see how countertransference is “made”. According to the MMWY supposition, the patient now reacts to the pause himself, takes the pause as a conversational element, and initiates continuation by offering to relieve the burden on the therapist by saying he does not have to answer his question just “now”. He could certainly assume that the therapist’s pause is determined by his doubting question – in psychoanalytical terms, we can recognise how an “attack on linking” (Bion) is followed by feelings of guilt.

Thus, conversation analysis and psychoanalysis can supplement their considerations. The relevance of the slip for the relationship with the listener consists in the fact that the speaker must ask her/himself whether and to what extent s/he might have injured the listener’s interests or self-definitions. To want to let questionnaires “fall out” would be to contradict the therapist; to implicitly depict the therapist as an “investigator” is to insult his professional self-understanding; to doubt him in face-threatening fashion is to become wracked with guilt. In all these cases, the speaker cannot know for sure how the listener might react, be it to a slip or to doubts. And thus he corrects the slip with the same self-initiation as in the case of the longer pause. The self-initiation of repair, in the case of slips and doubting questions, would thus be psychologically motivated, assuming my argumentation is valid. My analysis combines conversational form with psychological motivation.

First session of an analysis: “how shall I put it?”

I would first like to consider a few more examples in order to demonstrate that the small pause regularly occurs in the case of such self-initiated self-repairs within the same turn:

P: because I always have the feeling that she’s a completely (1.4)((clicks tongue)) well should I say .h such a controlled person who hmhm who is quite not ve:ry or quite quite hard (.) has hardly any feelings then I think that she wouldn’t understand it .h that she would find it ridiculous .h

(1.0)

T: hm

(10.3)

P: an=well for it’s always like that when I (-) .h have or sEE someone in my circle of friends when I notice he is a bit (1.2) hhh yes how should I put it .hh wh=wh=who is a bit weaker (---) I trEAt them the same way (---) do you understand? .hh and then I think th=that they perhaps do exactly the same thing I don’t want that

(2.7)

In this excerpt from an initial analytical session, five pauses (marked with arrows) can be observed. The first and the fourth pause show an embodied conflict in the speaker’s speech planning: the clicking of the tongue slightly prolongs the 1.2-second pause and in both cases the “hesitation marker” (Chafe, 1985; Lerner, 2013) of “how should I put it” can be interpreted as an indicator of this conflict. Such an interpretation is coherent with a Freudian perspective.

However, everyday phrases like “how should I put it?” are more than “fillers” or delay. Recently the proposal was made to view such remarks in analogy to the pointing gesture. There is not only an “origo”, as Karl Bühler (2011/1934) termed what psychoanalysts would call the “ego”; pointing gestures do not only point to a demonstratum in a physical environment:

(Ginzburg & Poesio, 2016, p. 10)

The term “complex reasoning process”, introduced by these linguistic authors is helpful to understand the transcript in the following way. In a non-face-to-face situation, as in psychoanalysis with a patient lying on a couch, phrases like “how should I put it?” can be conceptualised as functional equivalents to gestural pointings to a process of complex reasoning. This complexity originates out of “additional aspects of the interaction situation”. A speaker using such phrases can be conceptualised as someone pointing to elements of his or her own complex reasoning that is being processed at the very moment. We see a large number of such verbal pointing gestures:

  1. a) “well should I say”,
  2. b) “person who hmhm who is quite not ve:ry or quite quite hard”,
  3. c) “she would find it ridiculous”,
  4. d) “someone in my circle of friends when I notice he is a bit (1.2) hhh yes how should I put it .hh wh=wh=who is a bit weaker (---)”
  5. e) “and then I think”
  6. f) “do you understand?”

These elements have different conversational features. They include self-interruptions and self-corrections (b and d), judgements of one’s own’s actions attributed to another agent (as in c), questions addressed to the speaker himself as if he were another speaker (in a and d) and poses questions to the actual listener (as in f) and they document some self-observation of one’s own thinking and speech-production process (as in e).

Taken together, these elements point to complex reasoning a) about other persons outside the treatment room; b) how one’s own reasoning can be communicated to the therapist; c) how to describe other persons in a way that the therapist gets a clear picture (or not too clear a picture); and d) about the patient’s concern how other persons (including the therapist) would describe the patient if they had the chance to listen when present (the MMWY dimension). All these aspects have a two-directional perspective: How the patient evaluates these people and how he imagines he is evaluated (“that she would find it ridiculous”). Directed to the therapist, we hear the question “do you understand?” Such a phrase is not simply used for stalling, but a meaningful event as part of “complex reasoning”.

Complex reasoning here means that the patient makes use of both his actual origo-perspective and, at least, one displaced one. “Displacement of origo” is a term used by Bühler (2011/1934, p. 150ff.) The patient presents questions, judgements, assertions, and a general sense of agency to other agents as if they would not originate from herself but from other agents. This is what Bühler called “displacement of origo” and psychoanalysts would term “projection”.

Psychoanalysts typically hear “one speaker” pointing to real or imagined objects while taking a “one-origo perspective” including a “one-person agency”. In this perspective, what the patient does here is not only an everyday displacement but a pathological compartmentalisation of one’s own feelings whereby undesired ones are falsely attributed to other agents. However, this has to be determined considering many other factors. It is quite clear that displacements of this kind are normal and everyday occurrences in non-pathological conversation.

However, the speech segment analysed here indicates that the speaker deals not only with “pointing to” from a single-origo agency but that he expects a response from the objects pointed to – complex reasoning results. It is as if a rich social world with questions, answers, evaluations, and mutual corrections creates a compulsion to consider too many viewpoints with a confusing effect. This, then, prevents the speaker from unifying these heterogenous voices into a more coherent narrative perspective. This defines what the therapeutic task then is. In order to grasp the complex reasoning, Ginzburg and Poesio (2016) propose one has to proceed from a traditional sequential analysis as is standard in CA to a more complex view so as to get the whole picture. This contributes to a deeper understanding of such patients’ communicative style as they try to let the therapist participate in a confused life.

Two pauses follow in the middle of that segment. After a pause of one second indicating a transition-relevant place, the therapist expresses a “go-ahead” token. It is well known (Peräkylä, 2004) that one of the characteristic features of therapists’ speech habits is to drop a “hm” into a pause – as if someone had just said something. The isolated “hm” can only have the function of placing the therapist in a “second position”. The therapist behaves as if he was coupled to the complex reasoning of the patient.

But the therapist’s attempt to restart does not succeed here. What follows is a pause of more than 10 seconds and then another of 1.2, again with “how should I put it” articulating confused speech planning. This interpretation is compatible with the Freudian supposition of “complex reasoning” describing a current conflict between two speech intentions. According to the MMWY supposition, the question (“you understand?”) implies precisely how the speaker realises that and how she feels being listened to. This detail is a plea for being understood and consecutive doubt: can one’s own “complex reasoning” be understood at all? How does it sound in the listener’s ear?

“Nett ausziehen”6 – the pause as a temporary refusal to converse

A patient talks about having met coincidentally a former girlfriend and become “so nervous” and then the therapist asks him:

T: why is she not allowed to notice that you are nervous? (-) mh?

P: .h I don’t know I would have h .h yes I would either have the feeling that I am showing her a weakness and I .h I somehow don’t want her to know that (---) that the whole thing gets me so agitated

(1.3)

P: yes of course we [did]n’t

T: [hm::]

P: just nice– (1.2) she didn’t exactly move out ((n German another understanding is possible: “undress”)) in nice circumstances (-) and and=yes (-) but in the end we didn’t get on with each other at all anymore

The pause of 1.3 sec is a transition-relevant place (TRP), after which the patient self-selects himself as the next speaker. Because it is a TRP, it has its own line in the transcript; it is not a pause within the turn. The pause is co-produced by both. The “yes” with which the patient prefaces his next utterance is an element that could only be made in a “second position” again. He starts this turn as if responding to a remark from the therapist attributing the pause to the therapist.

The following pause within the turn of 1.2 sec is followed by an abrupt end of his speech start, followed by a self-initiated self-repair. The ambiguity of the German “ausziehen” (to get undressed or to move out) has motivated the slip which was broken off at the last minute. Again, the patient “repairs” his utterance as this is relevant for the relationship.

Derivative comments – the therapist makes a slip

What about when it is the therapist committing slips or mistakes? A host of recent publications have advocated a benevolent approach to therapists’ “mistakes”. There has been little examination of the effects specific therapists’ mistakes have on therapeutic conversation and how mistakes can be defined. The mistakes analysed here are easy to define; they are mistaken therapeutic utterances (for instance in relation to names) or they are manifest slips. I compare two selected examples, with regard to their influence on pauses.

The same patient as in the previous section relates around 70 seconds later that he hadn’t wanted to tell his then girlfriend that he had failed the exam, since her reaction would have been one of schadenfreude, and continues:

P: (…) I alw↑ays get so nervous (-) I hate it (.) so (.) much.

(-)

T: hm. (.) .h (-) [mm] °°just well°° when you

P:   [HH]

T: have Len[a.

P:  [°Lisa° ]

(-)

P: [yes: when I] meet someone or other who I (2.2)

T: [please excuse me hmhm]

P: yes m hm:: who I somehow know from the past I haven’t seen for a while=and, (--) and with whom I’ve (---) yes well=#rather fallen out, (-) well o- or somehow n:-there was something or other and it hasn’t been sorted out (-).h

The patient fights his “nervousness” (“I hate it”) because it is not pleasant to encounter someone with whom one has “fallen out” or when something has not been “sorted out”. This is the narrative and self-explanatory context.

The therapist commits a slip and incorrectly uses the name of the patient’s current girlfriend. This adds another contextual element with explanatory power for his nervousness, suggesting that he perhaps gets nervous because he has different ties now. In doing so, the therapist cannot recall the current girlfriend’s name and is quietly corrected by the patient; Lena becomes “°Lisa°”. This is an other-initiated repair which very seldom is observed to be performed within the same turn. Hence a small pause must follow, after around a third of a second – the correction must be thought through. Both speakers then start talking at the same moment. The patient begins by continuing his contribution about meeting “someone or other” – when he hears that the therapist has once again committed a second slip by addressing the patient with the familiar “Du” form (in German the therapist says: “Bitte entschuldige”). This irritation causes the pause of 2.2 sec. It must be longer than the type of pause following self-initiated repairs analysed hitherto, since there is more complex reasoning to be done. What is the relevance of the momentary use of “Du” for the status of the relationship? How can one proceed? Should one comment? Pass over it?

The patient takes the latter option with his “Yes hm:”; a certain hesitation serves to extend the “hm::”-token, indicating again “complex reasoning”. The subject of determining relevance alluded to by the slip cannot be processed thus; with “who I”, the patient repeats how he started and the short internal pause in “(-) well o- or somehow n:-there” is followed by a derivative comment: “there was something or other and it hasn’t been sorted out (-) .h” (ll. 151ff.). This utterance can be interpreted in two ways: a) in relation to the narrative theme of the encounter with people who have “fallen out” or b) as a conversational pointing to the therapist’s two slips.7 The way such a micro-event is processed has a decisive impact on the treatment process.

An important feature is that the length of pauses changes; there are other moments in which the relationship is regulated however. They can be recognised if we consider the course of the conversation:

  1. 1. Slip on the part of the therapist
  2. 2. Other-initiated correction
  3. 3. Small pause of ca. 0.3 sec
  4. 4. Overlap (both begin speaking at the same time)
  5. 5. Attempted repair with another slip
  6. 6. Somewhat longer pause (2.2) that comes after the therapist’s attempt at repair
  7. 7. Normalising sequence
  8. 8. Derivative comment (“allusion”)

Such a sequence escapes self-observation by the participants during the session. It occurs between an utterance requiring other-correction and an attempt by both participants to resolve the trouble that has arisen by returning to a thematic continuation of the conversation as if nothing had happened. Despite all attempts to repair the first mistake, it is not possible to resolve the trouble; the derivative comment indicates a clandestine fashion. If we summarise Steps 2 to 6 as “face work” (Goffman, 1955; Peräkylä, 2015), we can see how both parties cooperate in attempting to undo what would be face-threatening, without full success. What is repressed returns (Schegloff 2000). A reduced version of this scheme would look like this:

  1. 1. Therapist’s slip
  2. 2. Face-saving activities by both participants
  3. 3. Normalising sequence
    1. a) Continuation of conversation after successful repair or
    2. b) Derivative comment after unsuccessful repair

The conversation can proceed in different ways, depending on the result of the normalising sequence; if it fails, it must be followed by a derivative comment or way of noticing the suppressed topic. By way of comparison, I want to test this scheme with another example in which the therapist commits a slip.

The time of the session – the therapist makes a mistake

In her first therapy session after two initial interviews a patient thinks about how therapy can bring things to the fore that she had suppressed, about what might come up, and whether she will cry – and then adds:

P: and I was also sca:red somehow about the number of hours(--) now it’s three times a week it’s like, (--) well; how should I put it (-) a bit of purpose to my life (--)i=i=if not purpo=>yes how should I put it,< .hh well it=is not where I go three times a week now apart from dancing .hh that would then be roughly the (--) this room would be the place I ehm .hh whe=where I spend the third largest amount of time;

T: yeah:;

(6.6)

T: where would the first two be?

P: yes the first is at home at my place?

T: At home mh[mh]

P: [and] the second dancing.

(--)

T: ah not at your boyfriend’s;

P: no=no he lives at mine doesn’t he

T: Oh of course ((chair creaks)) (-) he=e lives °°at your place°° now

(0.3)

T: [yes?]

P: [yes:;]

T: mhmh (.) .hhh ((swallowing sound))

(13.8)

P: it’ quite funny when I (--) well now but when I leave the session here then I was totally .hh then I felt good and then=I was in a good mood (--) but that only ever lasted as=l=long as (--) .h as how shall I put it (--) as the next session was not very close in sight again (1.2) I mean before the next one I am always completely nervous; and when this is over then I’m gonna be totally psyched

In clinical terminology, one could say that the patient is probing her ambivalence to therapy or that she is beginning to sense and wrestle with her tendency for transference. Comparison of the two therapeutic slips allows us to make another observation. Again, complex reasoning can be concluded from utterances like “how should I put it?” – the patient realises how her analysis would occupy an important time-place in her life. Thus, she compares where in the future she will spent most of her time.

Here, I consider this as contextualisation and omit what happens before the therapist’s failure (not knowing that she lives together with her boyfriend) from a detailed analysis. Turning attention to what happens after this forgetting a relevant detail of the patient’s life, the other initiated repair, and the following face-work one immediately recognises the above four-level scheme. It is worth considering the details.

The therapist has forgotten that the patient’s boyfriend lives with her. She acknowledges this error by “Oh of course”, and so one can assume that she could have been expected to know this from previous sessions.

At the same time, the slip is something more; the utterance contains a hidden interpretative tendency. While in the previous case the point was to remind the patient that he was in a different relationship (with Lena/Lisa), here the “oh” expresses surprise that something is “not normal”. The patient does indeed mention “at mine” as the first place in which she spends most of her time, then her engagement in dancing, followed in her logic by the therapy sessions, in which she spends the “third largest amount of time”. In the therapist’s logic however, the boyfriend is missing, which would reduce therapy’s demands on her time somewhat. At the same time, the patient is reminded of her boyfriend. Being reminded of something implies that one should have done or said it; not having thought about it makes such “forgetfulness” look like a slip on the part of the patient. The remark “he lives at mine” reverts this very relationship; the other-initiated repair is now face-threatening for the therapist – it is she who is mistaken. She readily admits that and repeats the utterance, becoming quieter as she does so.

Following the “time-to-think pause” of 0.3 sec, both start again with their speech overlapping, as in the previous example. Some interesting turn-taking follows: The therapist’s “yes?” is morpho-syntactically a question, has the intonation of a question and demands – like a delayed “tag” – for consent, and the patient’s “yes” has a falling, confirming intonation. The therapist quickly asks if her understanding that the boyfriend was living with the patient is correct. She receives confirmation, and then utters a brief “mhmh”, breathes deeply, and swallows. This sequence of three turns is followed by a comparatively long pause of 13.8 seconds. The three turns can be read as an activity in which it seems like the therapist is looking for confirmation for her previous question “he lives at your place now” with “yes?” as an almost demanding “tag question”.8 Hence it seems that the therapist was not wrong at all. Because the therapist has now been “right”, the patient cannot withhold her agreement, but she is placed under subtle pressure to confirm what the therapist has said. The patient has to take a stance on this manoeuvre and the long pause of 13.8 seconds is an example of complex reasoning about the preliminary interaction described here. Her subsequent remark that she feels good after leaving the session can be read as a derivative comment (“allusion”) on this manoeuvre. Again, we have the schema of therapist’s slip, face-saving activities, normalising sequence, and derivative comment; the last step indicating that the conflict is not solved. What happens after the pause can be understood again as allusive commentary to the preliminary interaction. The patient tells the therapist that she feels good leaving a session – which can be heard as double meaning: confirming the work done in the session with relief and as a relief to leave the session. This second, rather critical, meaning of her statement is then continued with the statement that she has difficulties when the time of the next meeting approaches. She presents this more critical attitude in a kind of “symptomatic” speech, again prefaced by her “how shall I put it?” phrase of complex reasoning. In psychoanalytic terms this indicates her actual conflict at the beginning analysis. However, the conversation analytic approach presented here points to the relational dimension; the therapist provides his current contribution which should not be overlooked (Thomä, 1984).

Conclusion

I analysed various examples of pauses in therapeutic dialogues; the focus was on pauses induced by slips followed by self-initiated repair after a characteristic length of pause of 1.2 seconds. People listen to how they might be heard. In case of slips with relevance to the ongoing relationship correcting activities follow in order to “re-pair” the relationship with their interlocutor. The conversationalist’s “pairing”, affiliation, and common ground, is restored. However, such “re-pairing” would be just one potential activity.

Slips by therapists receive different treatment by each participant. They are quickly followed by face-saving activities and normalising tendencies. This, then, determines whether these activities have brought the conversation back on track or whether further derivative comments and longer pauses indicate that it cannot proceed yet. Patients’ and therapists’ slips produce different pauses; they are different in terms of length and of contextualisation and what follows the pause.

Pauses before self-initiated self-repairs in case of patients’ slips pose no threat. They are part of conversational objects that can be pointed at and they are treated as being motivated. Motivations are to articulate a protest, produce witty turns of phrase, play with a transformed self- and object definition, point to conflict, or serve as euphemisms. The pauses virtually prove that the patient continues work.

Therapists’ failures, however, have a more serious effect. They have a long-term negative impact on the patient’s faith in the analytic endeavour if he discovers that the therapist was unable to remember relevant information, forgets for example names and hence the therapist’s failure feeds serious doubts as to whether or to what extent the therapist really is “with me”. This doubt, I propose, motivates repair activities transitioning into swift normalising – by both parties. For if doubts continued to be fed, the entire project of therapy would be called into question. Complex reasoning as a kind of cost-benefit calculation (is it worth continuing with the sessions?) might motivate the much longer pauses in such moments.

Appendix – original German transcripts

Slip – “fall out a questionnaire” (“Fragebogen ausfallen / ausfüllen)

(10.00) ((quietschende Geräusche))

P: also diese Fragebö::gen; (-) die sind schon immer sehr schwierig auszufalln (1.2) a auszufülln h h h h ((nasal))

T: was ä:: was [empfinden Sie als =

P: =↑[.hh ((lachend)) ICH FIND

DES SO SO ANSCH (.) SO ↑STRESSIG Weil ich mir immer denk

ich kann das gar net so beurteilen.

“Suicide suspects” – “Selbst-Mord-Verdächtige”

P: da [taucht jetzt gleich wieder die Frage in

T: [Mhmh;

P: mir auf .h (--) können Sie das begreifen; weil Sie ham’s sicher mit sehr vielen äh .hhh Selbstmordverdächtigen äh:: (1.2) Kandidaten zu tun gehabt in Ihrem Leben und und .h (-) könn Sie sich in in in: die Situation tatsächlich reinversetzen? .hh (1.1) WIE MAN oder °mh::° WAS ES (.) tatsächlich in einem Menschen passieren kann dass er zu so=m Schritt fähig ist. (.)

T: Mhmh;

(3.3)

P: Und das brauch jetzt gar nicht beantwortet sein

First session of an analysis: “how should I put it?”

P: weil ich immer das Gefühl hab dass sie n total (1.4) ((Zungenschnalzen)) nu soll ich sagen .h so n beherrschter Mensch ist die hmhm die ziemlich weni:g oder ziemlich hart ist (.) fast keine Gefühle hat dann denk ich mir dass sie das .h nicht verstehen würde dass sie das lächerlich fände .h

(1.0)

T: hm

(10.3)

P: un=na mir geht’s immer so wenn ich wenn ich jemanden (-)

.h sEH oder jemanden in meinem Freundeskreis hab wo ich

merke der is n bisschen (1.2) hhh ja wie soll ich sagen

.hh d=d=der is n bisschen schwächer (---) den beHAndel ich

auch so (---) verstehen Sie? .hh und dann denk ich mir

d=dass die das vielleicht dann genauso machen das will ich nich.

(2.7)

“Nett ausziehen” – the pause as a temporary refusal to converse

T: warum darf die das nicht merken dass Sie nervös sind? (-) mh?

P: .h weiß nich ich hätt da h .h ja ich hätte entweder das Gefühl dass ich ihr da ne Schwäche zeig und ich .h ich will dis irgendwie nicht dass sie weiß dass (---) dass mich das Ganze so aufregt

40 (1.3)

41 P: ja wir [ham] uns ja nich

42 T: [hm:: ]

43 P: gerade pleas- (1.2) Sie is ja nich gerade unter netten Umständen ausgezogen (-) und und=ja (-) sondern wir ham uns am Schluss überhaupt nicht mehr verstanden,

Derivative comments – the therapist makes a slip

P: (…)ich werd da imm↑er so nervös (-) dis hass (.) ich (.) so.

(-)

T: hm. (-) .h (-)[mm] °°nur mal so°° wenn Sie die

P: [HH

T: Len[a haben

P: [°Lisa.° ]

(-)

P: [ja: wenn ich] irgendjemand treff den ich (2.2)

T: [bitte entschuldige hmhm]

P: ja m hm: den ich irgendwie von früher kenne oder ich den länger nicht gesehn hab=und, (--) und mit dem hab ich mich irgendwie (---) ja so=#eher zerstritten, (-) also o- oder irgendwie n:- da war irgendwas und dis wurde nicht geklärt (-) .h

The time of the analysis – the therapist makes a mistake

P: und auch irgendwie vor der Anzahl der Stunden hab ich auch n bisschen Schi:ss (--) jetzt so dreimal die Woche dis is dann so, (--) so; wie soll ich sagen (-) so‘ne Art Lebensinhalt (--) we=ne=nee nicht Lebensi=>ja wie soll ich sagen,< .hh also das=is kein wo ich dreimal die Woche hingehe jetzt ausser Tanzen .hh das wär ja dann ungefähr der (--)dieses Zimmer wär dann der Ort ich am .hh wo=wo ich die drittmeiste Zeit verbringe;

T: ja:;

(6.6)

T: wo steht die ersten beiden Male?

P: ja das erste Mal is bei mir Zuhause?

T: Zuhause mh[mh]

P: [und] das zweite Mal beim Tanzen.

(--)

T: ach nicht beim Freund;

P: nein=nein der wohnt ja bei mir

T: Ach stimmt ((Stuhlknatschen)) (-) d=der wohnt inzwischen °°bei Ihnen°°

(.)

T: [ja?]

P: [ja:;]

T: mhmh (.) .hhh ((Schluckgeräusch))

(13.8)

P: is ganz komisch wenn ich (--) also jetzt aber wenn ich aus der Stunde hier rausgegangen bin dann war ich total .hh dann gings mir gut und dann=war ich gut drauf (--)aber das hatt immer nur so=l=lange angehalten wie (--) .h wie soll ich sagen (--) wie nicht die nächste Stunde schon wieder ganz nah in Sicht war (1.2) also vor der nächsten bin ich dann immer total nervös; und wenn das dann wieder vorbei ist bin ich wieder total gut drauf,

Notes

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