Open Access

Solution-oriented questions conceptually implicate change: a problem or conflict is expected to be solved and the current status will also be changed. Interactionally this is based on structural features of communication: the fundamental sequentiality of verbal interaction, i.e. interrelated succession of utterances of at least two interlocutors, provides for and guarantees the production of intersubjectivity and therapeutic efficacy. Solution-oriented questions as a rhetorical practice serve to produce forward-looking awareness, expansion and reorganization of knowledge as well as an increased ability to act on the patient’s side. These processes become apparent not only locally in the immediate context of solution-oriented questions but also globally in the course of the interaction as a whole. The data for this research consist of psychodiagnostic interviews conducted according to the concept and manual of the Operationalized Psychodynamic Diagnostics (OPD Task Force 2009).

The goal of the current contribution is to discuss the specific change potential of requesting examples in the helping formats ‘psychotherapy’ and coaching’. Requesting examples are defined as retrospective requests from the therapist/coach to the patient/client to elaborate the latter’s directly preceding utterance via an exemplary concretization. To appropriately reflect upon past events and upon personal experiences is often considered a key for change given that such reflections allows patients/clients to develop alternative and new perspectives on their lives, their relationships, their selves etc. To work with examples or to present concrete experiences thus functions as a central change practice both in psychotherapy and in coaching. While this discursive practice entails an inherent change potential, we still have to empirically unfold the sequential, thematic and action theoretical design of requesting examples as well as their interaction-type specific change function(s). This has already been done in the context of therapy. We now widen the focus and contrast these findings with analyses of requesting examples in executive coaching. Thereby this contribution does not only provide in-depth insight into the change potential of requesting examples, but also adds to further differentiate therapy and coaching as regards their discursive and interactive layout.

Veränderung gilt als raison d’être helfender Berufe in Beratung, Psychotherapie, Coaching, Medizin oder Physiotherapie. Die helfenden Interaktionen in den genannten Berufen und die dadurch initiierten und realisierten Veränderungen werden in und durch das Gespräch zwischen den AgentInnen und den KlientInnen / PatientInnen hervorgebracht. Bei diesem Band handelt es sich um eine der ersten Publikationen, die Zugänge zur qualitativen linguistischen Veränderungsforschung in helfenden Berufen bündeln und systematisieren. Pragmatik der Veränderung analysiert und beschreibt das Ko-Konstruieren von Veränderung mikroanalytisch auf der Basis authentischer Gesprächsdaten. Insbesondere werden interaktive Momente und Praktiken identifiziert, in denen Veränderung angestoßen, umgesetzt oder konstatiert wird. Der Band legt so eine theoretische, methodologische und empirische Systematisierung der linguistischen Veränderungsforschung in helfenden Berufen vor.