Resistance in psychotherapy sessions: A qualitative examination

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Thesis Type: Postgraduate

Institution Of The Thesis: Middle East Technical University, Graduate School of Social Sciences, Turkey

Approval Date: 2019

Thesis Language: English

Student: OZAN BIÇAKCI

Supervisor: Faruk Gençöz

Abstract:

This thesis investigates what is further constructed through the instances of resistance in actual psychotherapy sessions. For the analysis of the transcribed data, the version of discourse analysis which is proposed by Potter and Wetherell (1987) is employed. Data comprises total of nine recorded psychotherapy sessions of six patients performed by five graduate students who are studying in Clinical Psychology program at Middle East Technical University. As a result of the analysis conducted, three discourses are obtained which are discourse of worthlessness, discourse of discomfort, and discourse of ordinariness. Detected discourses are discussed in the light of the rele vant literature and made connected to each other through the concept of “mirror stage” that Lacan introduced to the field.