Repairs of Time References in Psychodiagnostic Talks

Abstract

This paper explores interaction in psychotherapy. The main object of research are the situa-tions in which patients show difficulties in formulating time frames or temporally organiz-ing life events. The data was collected by the study group of the OPD (Operationalisierte Psychodynamische Diagnostik), who establish theories on how to improve the results of psychotherapy. The theoretical background of this paper is the research of Celia Kitzinger and Sigmund Freud. The former focuses on repair in spoken interaction and technologies of repair in interactions, the latter published a scholarly piece about his findings on slips of the tongue, forgetting names, false memories, and other similar phenomena. With the help tran-scripts from recordings of two psychotherapy sessions, I discovered that when talking about time, patients always refer to incidents that influenced their life thereafter. Furthermore, when slipping while trying to determine a certain point of their life, it eventually indicates an event they tried to forget, replace or refer to as being aggravating.