| This study extends Dance's Speech Theory of Human Communication (STHC) to adult communication in in-depth psychotherapies relying on either words or enactment. The practices of psychoanalysis and psychodrama are analyzed for their communicative content through their original literature and via interviews with seventeen highly experienced therapists and educators in the two schools.; Theoretical background in the STHC, Pavlov, Vygotsky, Mead, Damasio, and Korzybski is discussed. Results of interviews are analyzed in communicative terms using ethnographic practices and narrative analysis. Analysis of the contents of interviews leads to understanding of how in-depth psychotherapy succeeds and/or fails in communicative terms as described by the practitioners who know their fields best. Consciousness can be expanded communicatively. Speech and spoken language are key in the therapeutic process, while the central role of non-vocal communication in moving material from the unconscious to consciousness is acknowledged. The aim of therapy is a revised autobiographical self, arrived at via a mutually recognized endpoint to therapy, visible to both therapist and client. Increased choice and responsibility are sought and obtained in successful therapy. Failures are attributed to failures to build rapport between therapist and client or group, such that the process of expansion of consciousness and revision of self cannot occur. |
