Grammar, cohesion and the co-ordination of the ‘self’ in a current psychotherapeutic technique

This paper aims to show how concepts and analytical methods of systemic functional linguistics can work congruently with other human practices to improve outcomes for those undergoing the suffering around loss of meaning and the absence of purposeful, self-directed experience. Based on a two-decade collaboration between linguists and psychotherapists in Sydney, Australia, and using the tools of text linguistics as developed by Michael A. K. Halliday and Ruqaiya Hasan in systemic functional theory, the paper presents an indicative selection of intense exchanges between traumatized persons and therapists (centrally the experience of ‘Ruth’). The level by level linguistic descriptions of these exchanges offer opportunities for understanding how progress in the clinical interaction might be achieved. The descriptions can also be evaluated against the theoretical claims of psychotherapy in psychiatry – in particular, the emphasis of the Conversational Model of Psychotherapy developed in England and Australia by Robert Hobson and Russell Meares, whose characterization of disorders involves an emphasis on ‘co-ordination’ and ‘cohesion’ within frontal lobe activity of traumatized patients. In this way the paper also explores conceptual parallels and intellectual antecedents shared between the Conversational Model and Systemic Functional Linguistics, contributing to the broader intellectual history of the human sciences.