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“I Can See Some Sadness in Your Eyes”:When Experiential Therapists Notice aClient’s Affectual DisplayPeter Muntiglab & Adam O. Horvathb

a Linguistics Department Ghent University, Belgiumb Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University, CanadaPublished online: 12 May 2014.

To cite this article: Peter Muntigl & Adam O. Horvath (2014) “I Can See Some Sadness in Your Eyes”:When Experiential Therapists Notice a Client’s Affectual Display, Research on Language and SocialInteraction, 47:2, 89-108, DOI: 10.1080/08351813.2014.900212

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RESEARCH ON LANGUAGE AND SOCIAL INTERACTION, 47(2), 89–108, 2014Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 0835-1813 print / 1532-7973 onlineDOI: 10.1080/08351813.2014.900212

“I Can See Some Sadness in Your Eyes”:When Experiential Therapists Notice

a Client’s Affectual Display

Peter MuntiglLinguistics Department

Ghent University, Belgium;Faculty of Education

Simon Fraser University, Canada

Adam O. HorvathFaculty of Education

Simon Fraser University, Canada

We use the methods of conversation analysis to examine how therapists draw attention to a client’sverbal or nonverbal affectual stance display and thus place the focus of talk on the client’shere-and-now experience. These therapist practices are referred to as noticings. By investigatingfour different experiential-oriented therapeutic approaches (Emotion-Focused, Gestalt, SymbolicExperiential, and Narrative), we explore three ways in which therapist noticings manage theprogressivity of talk: by facilitating, shifting, or manipulating/disrupting the activity in progress.We also found that therapists would put noticings to use with varying degrees of empathy and cooper-ativeness. Whereas empathically designed noticings would facilitate progressivity and cede epistemicauthority to clients, nonempathic noticings would disrupt sequential progression and challenge theclients’ greater epistemic status pertaining to their domain of experience. Differences and similaritiesbetween therapy approaches with respect to how therapists deploy noticings are discussed. Data arein American English.

In the face-to-face contexts of a therapy session, one commonly observes therapists drawing atten-tion to and taking special note of some aspect of what had just transpired during talk. Therapistsmay, for instance, make explicit reference to a client’s manner of speaking (e.g., special use ofprosody) or nonverbal action (e.g., facial expressions or bodily movements). We will use theterm noticing, coined by Sacks (1992, p. 87) and Schegloff (1988), to refer to these practices.Noticings play a unique role in managing the interaction by functioning as retro-sequences(Schegloff, 2007): What Schegloff observed was that they operate retrospectively, creating atwo-part sequence that is activated from the second-position noticing, thus making the source

Correspondence should be sent to Peter Muntigl, Linguistics Department, Ghent University, Muinkkaai 42, B-9000Ghent, Belgium. E-mail: peter.muntigl@ugent.be

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of the noticing the first position in the sequence. Further, noticings also work prospectively byprojecting an upcoming sequence in which noticings are in first position, with the response con-stituting the second. Thus, noticings can work as a powerful resource for accomplishing topicalwork and for managing progressivity by making the “source” of the noticing the topic and byseeking confirmation of what was noticed.

A therapist noticing is shown in Extract 1. This excerpt of therapist-client interaction is takenfrom Les Greenberg’s (1989) demonstration session of Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT). In thissession, the client’s (Dawn) initial complaint is shyness, and at one point she talks about herexperience dropping off her child at day care and reports feeling conflicted about making contactwith two of the other parents. The therapist sets up an empty-chair dialogue (Greenberg, 2010)between Dawn and the other parents, and she identifies her feelings of resentment and sadnessbecause she feels ignored.1

Extract 1

01 Dawn: [((gazes towards empty chair))]2

02 [ (3.6) → → → ]→ 03 Greenberg: let’s go- (.) I can see some sadness [in your ] ey:es. right.

04 Dawn: [mm hm. ]05 Dawn: mm hm. yeah. I’m feeling sa:d.06 Greenberg: yeah.

This extract begins with Dawn gazing toward the parents in the empty chair, being unableto articulate her feelings toward them and making a facial display that could be interpretableas “sadness.” The therapist’s noticing in line 03 draws specific attention to Dawn’s displayed—but not verbalized—emotion as something occurring in the present moment of the therapeuticencounter (see Vehviläinen, 2008; Kondratyuk & Peräkylä, 2011). The noticing thus creates aretro-sequence in which Dawn’s prior facial expression is treated as the noticing’s source, whilesimultaneously making Dawn’s sadness a topic that is relevant for further reflection and explo-ration. In this way, the therapist’s action opens up a new sequence that gets a certain trajectory oftalk involving the topic of Dawn’s sadness underway.

Our interest for this article is to explore the ways in which therapist noticings function asa key resource for managing the progressivity of an ongoing activity (Stivers, 2008; Stivers &Robinson, 2006). Because noticings tend to target relevant features of the here and now of theinteraction, we decided to examine therapy approaches that oriented to the principle of workingwith the client’s immediate or lived experience (see Kondratyuk & Peräkylä, 2011). We thereforedrew from a corpus of data taken from different therapies that have an underlying “experiential”focus. We found that noticings could be mobilized in the service of progressivity by facilitating,shifting, or disrupting topical and sequential development. First, many noticings would facilitate

1In an empty-chair intervention, the therapist pulls up an empty chair or has an empty chair already placed in closeproximity to the client. The client is then asked to engage in a form of role-play in which the client speaks to some “other”in the empty chair. A main purpose of the empty-chair technique is for clients to gain increased access to their unresolvedfeelings and needs with respect to relationship problems (Greenberg, 2010).

2During the silence, Dawn makes a “facial display” that has the following characteristics: raised lower eyelids andslightly drawn down corners of the lips. According to Ekman and Friesen (2003), these are typical features for conveyingsadness.

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topical progression—as already seen in Extract 1—by allowing therapist and client to remain onthe topic of the client’s emotion or by pointing out (i.e., topicalizing) a new feature of the priortalk. Second, some noticings were found to shift progressivity by abruptly changing the topic’sfocus. Third, when designed as a nonempathic or dispreferred response (Pomerantz, 1984) to theclient’s prior turn, they functioned to disrupt progressivity by interrupting and undermining theclient’s course of action.

When using noticings to manage progressivity, it was also found that therapists attended toother relevant features of the interaction. The first had to do with securing affiliation with whatthe noticing had targeted. Recall from Extract 1 that Dawn’s facial expression conveyed—thusallowing the therapist to access—her affectual stance (Stivers, 2008). The therapist’s noticing,in turn, not only informed Dawn that he had monitored and recognized her display of affect, butthat he is prepared to endorse and therefore affiliate with this stance as well. Further, the qualityof affiliation seemed to coincide with how progressivity was being managed; that is, whereasaffiliative noticings tended to foster progressivity of emotion talk, disaffiliative noticings woulddisrupt progressivity. The second issue pertained to epistemic entitlements and the degree towhich therapists have rights and access to know about the client’s here-and-now emotional expe-rience. We found that certain linguistic components of the noticings’ turn design would index thetherapist’s epistemic stance (Heritage, 2012) in terms of the client’s primacy in knowing abouthis or her feelings. In our conclusions, we discuss how the various dimensions of noticings iden-tified in this study (i.e., progressivity, affiliation, and epistemics) are constitutive of the therapists’local therapeutic aims and, more generally, of the therapeutic approach that they are putting intopractice.

NOTICING IN EVERYDAY TALK-IN-INTERACTION

In his lectures from 1969, Sacks (1992) remarked upon a type of noticing, which he called “envi-ronmental noticings,” that drew attention to a specific feature of the setting, as in “Hey, you have ahole in your shoe.” Sacks argued that these noticings tended to be interruptive and thus worked tomomentarily halt the progressivity of a current sequence-in-progress. Later on, Schegloff (1988)advanced our understanding of what noticings can do by providing an analysis of an everydayexchange between students (three women and one man) in a dormitory room. The noticing andthe response to the noticing are shown in Extract 2. Carol had just walked into the room andimmediately after a brief exchange of hellos, Sherri notices that Carol did not bring ice creamsandwiches:

Extract 2 (Schegloff, 1988, p. 122)

01 Sherri: You didn’ get an icecream sanwich,02 Carol: I kno:w, hh I decided that my body didn’t need it,

According to Schegloff, noticings can perform a range of actions. Sherri’s noticing complainsthat Carol did not bring any ice cream (with the added implication that Carol failed to do some-thing that she should have done). Furthermore, it also informs Carol of something; that is, it stateswhat she did not do and therefore presents this “negative event” as something that is salient andpotentially newsworthy. Sherri’s action, therefore, looks backward by targeting what Carol had

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failed to do, thus creating a retro-sequence activated by the second-position noticing (Schegloff,2007).

Noticings also work prospectively by opening the conversational space to a range of ways inwhich the addressee may respond. For instance, because noticings draw attention to somethingpertaining to the addressee (some verbal or nonverbal action the addressee performed, or failed toperform),3 the addressee may have the option of treating this as “news” (e.g., “Oh, I forgot,” “gee,I didn’t realize that”) or as “nonnews.” The latter was illustrated when Carol responded with “Ikno:w.” Here, Carol expressed independent or upgraded epistemic rights and access (Heritage &Raymond, 2005) pertaining to her failure to have returned without the ice cream sandwiches; thatis, Sherri’s noticing did not tell Carol something that she did not already know.

Another way in which noticings tend to implicate certain types of responses relates to thetype of shared knowledge that is being indexed. Labov (1972, p. 303), for instance, has arguedthat utterances referring to B-events (which are events that the addressee rather than the speakerhas privileged access to) tend to be understood as requests for confirmation. Further, telling anaddressee something that the addressee already knows about (i.e., a my-side telling) can be usedas a “fishing” device in which more than confirmation is expected (Bergman, 1992; Pomerantz,1980). Returning to Extract 2, we can see that Carol also accounts for not having gotten theice cream (“I decided that my body didn’t need it,”); that is, it is Carol who can only really“know” her own reasons for not having fetched the ice cream. Noticings, therefore, tend to openup explanation slots in which addressees explain why they have behaved (or not behaved) in theway that they did (or should have) (see also Antaki, 1994, p. 76).4

NOTICING IN PSYCHOTHERAPEUTIC TALK

Bergman’s (1992) article on psychiatric intake interviews included some examples of noticings inpsychotherapy settings. By focusing more generally on psychiatrists’ my-side tellings, he foundthat these initiating moves tended to reference the speaker’s derivative or uncertain character ofknowledge. Psychiatrists, for example, would sometimes frame their noticings with verbs of per-ception such as “I can see . . . ,” thus revealing the derivative nature through which the assessmentwas made. Further, he argued that by displaying limited epistemic access to the event in question,doctors were able to use noticings (or my-side tellings more generally) as a fishing device toprompt the patient’s personal view and assessment of her own mood.

Schegloff (1988, 2007) has remarked upon typical locations for doing noticings in conver-sation. He argued that “perceptual” noticings that involve a person’s appearance (e.g., a newhairstyle or article of clothing) or some new feature of the person’s living arrangement tendto be done at first opportunity, often in conversational openings. Vehviläinen’s (2008) workon psychoanalysis—and our examples of noticings in experiential-based therapies illustrated inthe following—has shown that therapist noticings are not restricted to openings, but rather mayappear throughout therapy. She observed that noticings occurring in psychoanalytic interactions

3But, as Antaki (1994, p. 76) points out, noticings need not refer to an action. Instead, they may simply draw attentionto someone’s physical appearance as in “I see you’ve got a new hairdo.”

4Another interpretation is that Carol’s account may have been generated by Sherri’s complaint rather than the noticingitself. Thus, it may be that not all noticings seek accounts, and our therapy data seems to support this.

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work to shift the topic toward the clients themselves, thus moving the focus of talk away frompersons or issues that do not seem to centrally involve the client. Equally important is that thesenoticings were found to place the focus of talk on the present moment. Vehviläinen found thatlexical terms such as now index the immediacy of the psychoanalyst’s observation and drawthe client’s attention to what is happening in the here and now. This general practice of work-ing with the present moment forms a constituent part of many therapeutic approaches such asclient-centered, existential, gestalt, systemic, and relational therapies (Kondratyuk & Peräkylä,2011). In fact, placing the focus on the client’s “lived experience”—or what the client is experi-encing in the here and now of therapy—is commonly viewed as necessary in facilitating change(Watson, Greenberg, & Lietaer, 1998). When relaying their personal experience to therapists,clients often convey an affectual stance (Stivers, 2008) through interactional features that work ina general evaluative sense or, more specifically, that display emotional meaning. Some researchershave introduced the term emotional stance when referring to the latter form of stance displays(Goodwin, Cekaite, & Goodwin, 2012). These stance displays are seen as opportunities for expe-riential therapists to engage with the client’s lived experience, thus allowing client and therapistto form an empathic and confirming relationship (Watson et al., 1998).

DATA AND METHOD

Our corpus includes 14 hours of therapy conversations taken from video-recorded sessions offour different types of psychotherapy treatments with an experiential focus: Gestalt therapy(Perls, Heferline, & Goodman, 1951; Perls, 1973), Emotion-Focused therapy/EFT (Greenberg,2002, 2010), and two different therapies used in counseling couples: Narrative (White & Epston,1990) and Symbolic Experiential (Whitaker, 1992): see Table 1. Both the Emotion-Focused andGestalt therapies were taken from demonstration sessions with master therapists. The Emotion-Focused therapist was Les Greenberg (Greenberg, 1989), and the Gestalt therapist was FritzPerls (Shostrum, 1966). These two demonstration sessions, conducted with real clients who hadbrought genuine issues to the therapy encounter, provided us with ecologically valid data in whichtherapists closely adhered to a specific theoretical orientation. Moreover, these materials are pub-licly available, and readers who are interested may thus consult the complete videos, payingclose attention to the noticings occurring therein.5 With regard to the other therapy approaches,we decided to use couples therapy data previously collected by one of the authors. These clinicalsessions were conducted by senior therapists with clearly identified theoretical orientations.

Each of the therapies being examined shared a common experiential focus in which the thera-pists would tend to work with the client’s “lived experience.” We sought to identify how therapistsfrom these various orientations draw attention to the client’s here-and-now experience and thekinds of affectual meanings associated with this experience. We see this study as representing afirst step in outlining how therapists working in different theoretical frameworks use noticings toperform diverse kinds of experiential-oriented work.

Videotapes of all therapy sessions were surveyed by the authors for sequences containing anoticing. Forty-seven instances of therapist noticings were identified and transcribed according

5For an elaborate account justifying the use of demonstration sessions for CA studies of psychotherapy, seeKondratyuk and Peräkylä (2011).

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TABLE 1Overview of Therapy Sessions Examined

Type of Experiential Therapy Number of Sessions Analyzed Clients Therapists

Gestalt 1 Gloria Fritz PerlsEmotion-Focused 1 Dawn Les GreenbergCouples Therapy

Narrative 6 Wendy, Fred∗ Male therapistSymbolic Experiential 6 Lisa, Dave Female therapist

∗Wendy, Fred, Lisa, and Dave are pseudonyms.

to CA conventions (Jefferson, 2004). Each noticing was then carefully examined with respectto its sequential location; thus, it was important to identify the source of the noticing (e.g., theclient’s affectual display) and also what kinds of next actions from the client the noticing setin motion. Primary consideration was given to how noticings managed progressivity in termsof fostering, shifting, or disrupting the topical flow of the conversation. Consideration was alsogiven to the design features of the noticing and especially on how these features indexed (a) thetherapist’s epistemic stance with respect to the noticed event; (b) the degree to which the therapistaffiliated or disaffiliated with the client’s affectual display; and (c) the affectual stance, if present,conveyed by the therapist’s noticings.

FACILITATING PROGRESSIVITY

Apart from the Gestalt therapist, the therapists we examined would regularly deploy noticings toexpand a sequence of talk by empathically focusing on the client’s displayed emotion. Noticingsused in this way were found to be affiliative and were often done in the service of securing confir-mation and subsequent exploration of the client’s affectual stance. When managing progressivityto this end, we found that therapists would sometimes use certain lexical expressions to modu-late the source of their noticing. In our corpus, for example, lexical expressions were deployedto either soften (“a bit of anger,” “some sadness,” “kinda discouraged,” “sort of straighteningyour back”) or sharpen (“really sad,” “a lot of sadness”) the focus on a certain emotion.6 Thesoftening expressions seemed to work to downplay the noticed emotions and possibly make themmore negotiable for the client; that is, by softening the emotion term, therapists were thus ableto design their noticings to be more client-oriented rather than therapist-delivered and to inviteclients to provide an upgraded version that better suited their experience as compared to what ther-apists had offered them. In this way, these expressions oriented to the client’s greater rights andaccess to personal experience (Heritage, 2011). Further, the softening or sharpening expressionsseemed to match the relative strength of the client’s affectual displays; that is, weak or implicitdisplays of emotions were mostly met with softened therapist noticings such as “kind’ve” or“some,” whereas overt displays, such as when clients cried or laughed, were met with noticingsthat sharpened the focus on the emotion such as “really sad.” Thus, noticings with a sharpened

6Our terminology of softening and sharpening is taken from Martin and Rose (2003, p. 38).

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focus would strongly orient to the therapist’s increased entitlement to have perceived the client’sstance and, further, would encourage more talk about the noticed emotion from the client.

Prompting More Emotion Talk

In EFT, client emotions are frequently made a topic in order to engender discussion and negotia-tion about the emotion. At times, however, clients appear reluctant or unable to expand further ontheir emotional experience. In these contexts, noticings may be used to allow both therapist andclient to stay on the topic of the emotion and to prompt additional emotion talk. Consider Extract3, which is an extended version of an EFT interaction previously shown in Extract 1.

Extract 3 (EFT: Greenberg & Dawn)

01 Greenberg: whad’you fe:el right now as you say thet.02 Dawn: I dunno. (1.8) sad and mad. hh hh heh.03 Greenberg: mm hm. mm hm.04 (0.7)05 Greenberg: [tell them this. ] I feel sa:d and mad.=06 Greenberg: [((points to empty chair)) ]07 Dawn: =I feel sa:d an I feel ma:d.08 Greenberg: ◦uh huh.◦

09 Dawn: this isn’t happening.10 Greenberg: uh huh. .hh11 Greenberg: tell them about- (1.5) ◦tell em about-◦ (.) whichever one is most- (0.3)12 strong for you.13 Dawn: [((gazes towards empty chair))]14 [ (3.6) → → → ]

→ 15 Greenberg: let’s go- (.) I can see some sadness [in your ] ey:es. right.16 Dawn: [mm hm. ]17 Dawn: mm hm. yeah. I’m feeling sa:d.18 Greenberg: yeah.19 (1.9)20 Greenberg: can you tell me about the sadness.= what’s- (1.2)21 what’s that like for you to-

At the beginning of this excerpt, Dawn states that she feels sadness and anger toward the twomothers (“sad and mad.”). The therapist then in line 05 asks Dawn to direct this statement to themothers and then, in lines 11–12, he asks Dawn to choose which emotion is the stronger of thetwo. The immediate context prior to the noticing is a 3.6s silence in which Dawn conveys a sadexpression and withholds from telling the “mothers” which emotion (sad vs. mad) is strongestfor her. The silence, therefore, allows Dawn to reflect on and perhaps experience the appropriateaffectual state, but it also may be indicating that she is having trouble in deciding which emotion ismost salient. Further, the progressing silence eventually provides the therapist with an opportunityto take up a turn at talk.

The therapist’s noticing is responsive to the prior context in a number of ways: First, itreferences Dawn’s affectual stance of sadness. Second, it provides a candidate answer to thetherapist’s original question of whether she felt more anger or sadness (i.e., by noticing, the

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therapist answered for Dawn). Third, it also announces to Dawn that she was not only sayingthat she felt sadness, but that she was displaying it nonverbally as well. In this way, the notic-ing picks up on Dawn’s felt experience of sadness in a context where she is “confronting” themothers.

Additional interactional work is performed by various discursive features of the therapist’snoticing. First, the expression “I can see . . .” indexes the therapist’s entitlement to know whatDawn is experiencing, which is based on his visual perception. Second, the use of the qualifier“some” in (“some sadness in your eyes”) functions to downplay the therapist’s degree of accessto Dawn’s experience, thus leaving it open as to whether Dawn may be feeling more anger thansadness. Third, the suggested epistemic imbalance as indexed through “some sadness” makesrelevant an upgraded confirmation by Dawn, who is the owner of the experience. Indeed, as shownin the subsequent turn, Dawn’s response consists of three parts or units that express differentdegrees of endorsement with the therapist’s noticing and different degrees of rights and accessto personal experience. First, she utters “mm hm.,” then “yeah.,” and finally, “I’m feeling sa:d.”Note that the strength of her endorsement increases as she moves from one unit to the next; thatis, “yeah.” is stronger than “mm hm.,” and “I’m feeling sa:d.” is stronger than “yeah.” Further,whereas the first two units work simply to confirm, the third asserts her affectual stance in thepresent moment. Dawn ends up strongly endorsing her sad emotion in the here and now of thetherapy session—which was one of the main goals of the empty-chair intervention.7

In this extract, the therapist’s noticing worked to facilitate progressivity by getting Dawn toremain on the topic of her emotions in contexts where she is confronting the mothers. The notic-ing, therefore, helped the client to close the sequence by strongly confirming her feelings ofsadness. We would also note that Dawn’s upgraded confirmation may also make further talkabout her experiencing relevant; that is, Dawn has assumed epistemic primacy for being sad and,for this reason, may be expected to say more about the relevance of having this emotion.

Topicalizing the Client’s Affectual Stance

Noticings may also work to directly topicalize a client’s affectual stance, by mobilizing attentionto an emotion that was just displayed in the present moment and that was not previously verbal-ized. Consider Extract 4, taken from couples therapy with a Symbolic Experiential orientation.During this session, the therapist had been focusing on the husband Dave’s inability to show moreappreciation towards his wife Lisa, but was unable to elicit an elaborated response from Dave onthis topic. This extract begins with the therapist topicalizing the impasse that the therapist andcouple have reached in therapy.

7It could also be argued that Greenberg was pursuing another EFT goal during this sequence, termed emotion assess-ment (Greenberg, 2010). In this form of practice, therapists make distinctions between primary and secondary realizationsof emotions. According to Greenberg (2010),

Primary emotions are the person’s most fundamental, direct initial reactions to a situation, such as being sad at aloss. Secondary emotions are responses to one’s thoughts or feelings rather than to the situation, such as feelingangry in response to feeling hurt or feeling afraid or guilty about feeling angry. (pp. 34–35)

In the sequence analyzed, Dawn’s feelings of anger may be spurned on by her sadness, and Greenberg’s aim, therefore,may also have been to direct Dawn’s attention to which emotion in her experience was primary.

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Extract 4 (SEFT)

01 Ther: there’s some blo:cks. it feels like there’s some ↓blo:cks.02 (1.8)03 Ther: I don’t know if it feels like that (.) to the two of you.04 but it- (.) it does feel like that to me::.05 (3.2)06 Dave: I would think so.07 cuz I guess I mean- >I don’t know< what they a:re.08 or if there are any: or:.09 (0.7)10 Ther: I think we need to talk maybe about what what- (.) what they ↑are.11 (4.4)12 Lisa: mm hm.13 (7.2)14 Ther: ◦what do you think they are.◦

15 (4.0)16 Dave: ◦I have no i↑dea.◦ ((shakes head from side to side))17 (4.8)18 Lisa: ◦I don’t know.◦ .shih19 (18.7)20 Lisa: ◦.shih◦

21 (6.2)→ 22 Ther: Lisa you look rea:lly: rea:lly- (.) sa:d.

23 (2.3)24 Lisa: oh I’m sort’ve thinking about what you said. about- (2.0) getting the kids up25 when you came home from work to have my party for me26 like y- yer trying to make me ↑feel bad. (for longer) I don’t know why.

In line 14, the therapist attempts to elicit talk about the reasons for the impasse by ask-ing a follow-up question. The responses from Dave and Lisa have a strongly dispreferred turnshape: They both deny knowledge of the answer and are prefaced by significant pauses. Lisa’sresponse—unlike Dave’s, however—conveys a distinct affectual stance. She produces a cry token(“.shih”) that can be glossed as a “wet sniff” (Hepburn & Potter, 2007) and, following a lapse inthe conversation (line 19), another single cry token is made audible. Thus, Lisa makes explicitemotional displays of sadness, which seem to have resulted from her inability to provide a rea-son for the couples’ troubles and reach a solution to the impasse. Lisa’s displayed sadness, inturn, seems to then mobilize a response, one the addresses her emotion. In terms of satisfyingthe goal of initiating talk between the couple about their troubles, the emotional display pro-vides Dave with an opportunity to empathically engage with Lisa’s distress. But, as no talk fromDave is forthcoming, the therapist responds with a noticing that sharpens the focus on her emo-tion (“rea:lly: rea:lly- (.) sa:d”). In doing so, the therapist topicalizes Lisa’s sadness, drawingattention to what is plainly perceivable to all present. Unlike the noticing from the prior extractin which softening expressions were used, this therapist’s sharpened focus on Lisa’s sadness inthis sequential context did not appear to seek confirmation—upgraded or otherwise—from Lisa.Instead, it called for more interactional work, such as an explanation for her incipient emotionaldisplay with the added aim of furthering progressivity of the sequence by getting the couple

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to further reflect on—and perhaps eventually provide an answer to—the therapist’s originalquestion.

A therapist’s noticing may also perform topical work by highlighting and praising how theclient has experienced an event. In Extract 5, the therapist uses a noticing to draw attention to theclient’s manner of speaking. But here, rather than using lexical expressions to sharpen the focuson an emotion, the therapist instead calls attention to the client’s use of intonation and placementof stress on her utterances. By doing so, the therapist’s noticing itself conveys an affectual stancethat functions to positively value and extol the client’s actions. This exchange comes from aNarrative couples therapy session in which the client Wendy announces to the therapist that shehas on one occasion actively resisted the feeling of being depressed. The noticing, therefore,occurs in a context in which Wendy conveys to the therapist that a significant change has takenplace.

Extract 5 (Narrative Therapy: Muntigl, 2004, p. 244)

01 Wen: I I vuh verbally (1.0) d uh u::m:: god (1.0) I spoke it. [out ward. stop it. ]02 Ther: [uh huh. uh huh. ]03 Wen: [jus ] sto::p it.04 Ther: [uh huh ]05 Ther: mm hm.06 Wen: a::n I sto::pped (.) feeling (.) depressed. (.) an I stopped feeling (1.0) uh confused.07 (0.8) an I got I ma- did something work in the kitchen or I:: did something went08 outside for a little while an .hh and uh felt good about that. I felt good enough09 about it .hh tuh tell Fred about it a couple’ve times. thet thet I had done that.

→ 10 Ther: okay uh I like tuh stop people when they say things that are stand out as→ 11 signifi [cant ]. so you said I:: stopped (.) feeling (.) d’you hear what you’re

12 Wen: [y(h)eah ]→ 13 Ther: saying. I stopped feeling depressed.=

14 Wen: =yeah.→ 15 Ther: I simply said STOP IT.

16 Wen: yeah.17 (1.0)18 Ther: you really became assertive against the problem.=19 Wen: =mm hm=20 Ther: =an you stopped feeling de [pressed. ]21 Wen: [yeah ]22 (1.5)23 Wen: I did.24 Ther: well whad’ya think’ve that. like ha how d’ya d’you make25 how d’you make sense of that.

At the beginning of this example, Wendy is disclosing a recent narrative of personal experi-ence in which she was able to act against the problem (“I I vuh verbally (1.0) d uh u::m:: god(1.0) I spoke it. out ward. stop it.”) and, thereby, eliminate her feelings of depression and confu-sion (“a::n I sto::pped (.) feeling (.) depressed.”). Wendy’s repeated and consistent use of stressdraws attention to her actions, making them stand out as noteworthy. Her narrative also containsevaluative expressions in which she not only indicated that she felt good about accomplishing

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this feat, but that she even disclosed this newfound ability to her husband Fred on more than oneoccasion. Thus, Wendy’s narrative is designed as a highly meaningful event, whose importancemay be recognized and even appreciated by her recipients.

The therapist’s response to Wendy’s announcement is provided in lines 10–15. First, he pref-aces his response by commenting on the newsworthiness and significance of Wendy’s talk (“okayuh I like tuh stop people when they say things that are stand out as significant”). This preface alsoseems to function as an account for doing the action of noticing and thus deals with the “inter-ruptive” and potentially dispreferred character of the action by indicating that the noticing inquestion is not going to be disaffiliative (cf. Vehviläinen, 2008). Subsequent to this, the therapistgoes on to specify what remarkable event has been noticed (“so you said I:: stopped (.) feeling (.)d’you hear what you’re saying. I stopped feeling depressed.”). Here, the noticing gets reinforcedby quoting what Wendy had said. Note that the therapist recycles not only the exact wording ofWendy’s prior utterance, but also her intonation (i.e., stress and prosody). In this way, the ther-apist is able to preserve and isolate Wendy’s speech, making it stand out as a highly significantevent and thus make it memorable, something that has achieved the status of being an importantnarrative. We should also observe that the therapist does not use mitigating expressions. On thecontrary, he works explicitly to emphasize Wendy’s precise wording of how she effaced the prob-lem. Therefore, in contexts in which clients reveal some form of positive change, noticings neednot be delicately formulated (i.e., mitigated), but instead can be forcefully made, drawing atten-tion to and praising the full import of what the client has said. Wendy’s repeated confirmations(e.g., lines 12, 14, 16, 19, 21, 23) may also be seen as affiliating with the therapist’s praise andas aligning with the therapist’s attempts to encourage further sequential progression of Wendy’sunique outcome story.

From the perspective of narrative therapy (White & Epston, 1990), the noticing worked toapplaud and affiliate with Wendy’s newfound ability to narrate an exception to her “problem-saturated” life story (being helplessly depressed; doing things for others). Furthermore, theoccurrence of Wendy’s unique narrative in which she is able to efface the problem is promotedto something that has a reason and that Wendy has some control over (i.e., agency) and, as aconsequence, it is something that Wendy needs to explain and thereby assimilate into her newlife story. The therapist’s practice of repeating Wendy’s (near-)exact wording and prosody ofher negative feeling aligns with his narrative therapeutic goal of focusing on Wendy’s successfuleffort. This focus on the client’s expression of personal agency is further elaborated by the thera-pist’s comment at lines 18 and 20 when he said “you really became assertive against the problem. . . an you stopped feeling depressed.” But the design of the therapist’s noticing also makes animplied reference to Wendy’s prosodically displayed emotional stance; that is, Wendy’s mannerof speaking during her narrative (i.e., her intonation) conveys a feeling of happiness and relief,and it is these implied emotions that the therapist is detecting and recycling.

SHIFTING PROGRESSIVITY IN THE THERAPEUTIC ACTIVITY

Because noticings topicalize the client’s displayed affect, they can be used to create pronouncedtopical shifts in the conversation, thereby profoundly influencing the progressivity of the currentactivity underway. We have found instances in couples therapy in which therapists would usenoticings to shift the progressivity of talk away from a couples conflict and toward an exploration

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of one of the client’s emotions during the conflict. Consider Extract 6, taken from another sym-bolic experiential couples therapy session involving Dave and Lisa. In this example, Lisa had beencomplaining that Dave is not attentive enough toward her. She provided two concrete examplesin which Dave had not given her flowers for their anniversary nor for Valentine’s Day. To makematters worse, both of these events occurred in the same week, which made Lisa feel especiallyneglected.

Extract 6 (SEFT/Dave & Lisa)

01 Ther: =is there something that prevents you from doing it? (0.3)02 u- other than- (.) sort’ve- (.) the things you’ve mention:ed.03 Dave: mm::. (.) not rea:↑lly. ((mumbling))04 (0.4)05 Dave: I mean not that I know of (or)=06 ((makes palm up, open hand gesture next to and in front of body))07 Lisa: =it must be something h(hh)eh.08 (2.2)09 Dave: alotta times I just don’t think about it? (1.2) I guess I’m thinking of- (.)10 other things which- (1.0) may be of important to me like- (.) m:oney or whatever.11 (0.7) or- the bizness or whatever.= but it’s not like I:: (1.4) I think about it12 on purpose tu:::h (0.5) like it’s not like I- don’t think about her?13 (0.4)14 Ther: ◦mm hm::.◦=15 Dave: =but it’s- (2.6) I don’t- purposely: not do anything.= it’s jus: that16 I don’t [think about it. er- ]17 Lisa: [ it seems ] that way.18 (4.8)19 Lisa: I don’t understand how you could’ve hit [both in the s(h)a(h)me ] week.20 Dave: [((clears throat)) ]21 (2.5)

→ 22 Ther: no:w as I’m- (.) hearing you ta:lk it sounds like you- (0.3)→ 23 i- it sounds like- I sense a bit of anger. (1.0) in your voi:ce.

24 (0.8)25 Lisa: u:m. (1.2) I wuz mad about ↑it.26 (0.2)27 Ther: ◦mm [hm::.◦

28 Lisa: [an I wuz] upset about it. (0.3) an: (0.7)29 like I really f:elt at the time .hh um:: (3.3) u:m hhhh30 (4.6) I dunno. I just had an incident where I: could just- .hh I could just31 really see:: how easily:: um: like a marriage could fall apart u-32 by [not fee- like- ] .hh (0.6) I don’t know. (1.8)33 Ther: [◦mm hm::.◦ ]34 Lisa: by not feeling good about yourself. by not-35 Ther: ◦mm hm::.◦

36 Lisa: I dunno.

In the preceding context leading up to the therapist’s noticing, Dave and Lisa are having a dis-pute about Dave’s reasons for not paying enough attention to Lisa. Dave’s rebuttal (lines 09–16) isthat he is preoccupied with other life matters such as earning money and the family business.

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Although Dave first begins his account by claiming to be primarily concerned with himself (“I’mthinking of- (.) other things which- (1.0) may be of important to me”), he does make an attemptto soften his position by countering the implication that he is purposely not paying attention toLisa (“but it’s not like I:: (1.4) I think about it on purpose”; “but it’s- (2.6) I don’t- purposely: notdo anything”). Lisa’s first response in line 17, however, challenges Dave’s pledge of innocence(“it seems that way”) and her follow-up response intensifies her lack of understanding of howDave could have forgotten both the anniversary and Valentine’s Day (“I don’t understand howyou could’ve hit both in the s(h)a(h)me week”). Also, the intonation of her utterance is stronglysuggestive of anger and frustration.

Faced with this growing conflict between Dave and Lisa, the therapist first orients to thissensitive moment by waiting for a brief lapse in the conversation before uttering a noticing to redi-rect the conversation towards the immediacy of Lisa’s displayed emotion—the prefacing “now”indexes and strengthens the therapist’s reference to the present moment (see Vehviläinen, 2008).In doing so, the therapist seems to, momentarily at least, take the onus away from Dave in havingto respond to Lisa’s accusations, thus defusing the negative affect generated between the couple.Note that this noticing is similar in design to the therapist’s noticing in Extract 3. For instance,she orients to her derivative state of knowledge by first uttering what she hears (“now as I’m (.)hearing you ta:lk”), then changes this to what Lisa’s talk sounds like (“it sounds like you- (0.3) i-it sounds like-”), and finally produces the complete noticing in terms of what she has sensed (“Isense a bit of anger. (1.0) in your voi:ce.”). The therapist also downplays the “object” of what shenotices, which is Lisa’s anger. This is done by prefacing “anger” with “a bit of” and by locatingthe anger within Lisa’s voice.8 In addition, the therapist adopts a first person frame of reference inwhich she identifies the source of the attribution as stemming from her own perception (“I sense. . . ”). In this way, the therapist accounts for her entitlement to have observed Lisa’s anger. Thismakes the therapist’s assertions subject to negotiation by inviting compliance or commitment tothe assertion instead of tentativeness or contestability.

Lisa’s responses in lines 25 and 28 (“I wuz mad about ↑it.”, “an I wuz upset about it.”) affil-iates with the therapist’s noticing by providing upgraded confirmation but, at the same time,also challenges some of the discursive “terms” launched by the noticing. First, Lisa groundsthese statements in past tense, thus indexing her resistance to deal with her emotions in thehere and now. In this way, she redirects attention away from her present feeling of anger toher past feelings of when Dave had forgotten the anniversary and Valentine’s Day. Second, byusing different, yet semantically related terms such as “mad” and “upset,” rather than “anger,”Lisa demonstrates specialized access to her feelings and shows that what the therapist has noticedis not really news to her. But even so, the noticing seems to have succeeded in making anger atopic in the conversation; that is, the explanation slot is taken up by Lisa and is not resisted. Forinstance, Lisa goes on to explain the negative consequences for a relationship if a spouse doesnot receive enough attention from another (“how easily:: um: like a marriage could fall apart,”“not feeling good about yourself”). In this way, Lisa is able to explicate her anger and elaborate

8Locating an emotion within someone’s voice may generate at least a couple of differing inferences: It could beinterpreted as “your voice betrays your emotional state = anger”; another possible interpretation is that the anger isseparate from Lisa in that because the anger is localized in her voice, Lisa herself may be experiencing different or awider range of emotions. Note that the EFT therapist’s noticing from Extract 4, in which sadness is localized in Dawn’seyes, would seem to generate the same kinds of inferences.

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on her fears that her feelings of self-worth may diminish and that her marriage could be placed injeopardy.

We should also point out that conflicts have special relevance in experientially based couplestherapy theory; in these situations, therapists often work at redirecting couples away from usingtheir usual patterns of interaction about the conflicting issues and, instead, try to foster a differentcontext that would permit the dispute to be renegotiated using different language resources. Thetherapist’s noticing, therefore, helped to achieve this aim by facilitating a shift in progressivityfrom a conflict situation in which the couple is arguing about Dave’s reasons for not showingappreciation to a more reflective situation in which Lisa not only identifies her anger and dissat-isfaction with Dave (i.e., the aggressive dimension of the situation) but is also able to name someof her fears and anxieties (i.e., the vulnerable dimension). The communicative resources are nowin place for the couple to engage with their issue in a much broader context and to make use ofthe additional resources linked to Lisa’s vulnerability.9

MANIPULATING AND UNDERMINING PROGRESSIVITY

The noticings we have examined so far have worked to affiliate with the client’s affectual stanceby endorsing and displaying empathy with the client’s emotional experiencing. Noticings thatwere put to use in this way were shown to manage progressivity by shifting the topic of the con-versation toward “emotion talk” with the aim of reflecting on and exploring the client’s displayedaffectual stance. Topicalizing affect via noticings may, however, be performed in an overtly dis-aligning and disaffiliating manner. Consider Extract 7, which is taken from Perls’s interview withthe client Gloria (Shostrum, 1966). What this extract shows are the specialized ways in whichPerls deploys noticings to derail the progressivity of talk. His noticings are used as dispreferredresponses that systematically avoid endorsing the client’s interactional projects (e.g., seekingaffiliation and emotional support).

Extract 7 (Gestalt: Perls & Gloria)

01 Perls: .hh we are going to have an interview for half an hour.02 [(5.7) ]03 Gloria: [((reaches into handbag for cigarette and lighter, placing cigarette to mouth)) ]04 Gloria: right away I’m scared. hhhhhh ((says while smiling))05 (0.8)

→ 06 Perls: .hh you say you’re sca:red. (.) but you’re smi:ling.= I don’t unduhstand how one07 can be scared an smile at the same ti:me.08 [(1.8)09 Gloria: [((finishes lighting cigarette))10 Gloria: .hhhh ((inhales smoke))11 (2.1)

9It may, however, still be possible to detect indirect expressions of anger, blame, and appeal in Lisa’s talk about hervulnerability and, therefore, the position of the client may only have partly moved from blaming the partner to reflectingon her own experience. We thank an anonymous reviewer for having pointed this out.

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12 Gloria: an I’m also suspicious of you.= I think you understand very well. I think you13 know thet- [(1.8)14 Gloria: [((hands up, palms facing inwards)15 Gloria: hhhhhh (1.2) when I get sca:red. I: laugh or I kid tuh cover up.16 Perls: uh huh. .hh17 well do you have stage fright.18 (1.3)19 Gloria: tch .h ↓u::h? I don’t know? [I’m mos]tly: aware of you. I’m afraid thet- a:h20 Perls: [( ) ]21 (1.0)22 Gloria: >I’m afraid you’re gonna have such a< direct attack that uh23 you’re [s:- gonna get me inna corner an I’m afraid of it.= I want’cha tuh24 Gloria: [((places left hand on chest below throat))25 Gloria: be more on [m:y si:de.

→ 26 Perls: [you said I get you [into your corner.27 Perls: [((moves left hand to chest))

→ 28 Perls: [an you put your hand on your che:st]29 Perls: [((leaves hand on chest)) ]30 Gloria: [(0.4) mm hm. ]31 Gloria: [((moves hand to chest and back to resting position))]32 Perls: Is this your corner.

At the very beginning of the session, Perls announces to Gloria how long the interview willtake. Following this is a lengthy 5.7 s pause in which Gloria reaches into her handbag, takes outher cigarettes and lighter, and places a cigarette to her mouth. She is visibly anxious. Although,to some degree, the silence is Gloria’s because she should in some way acknowledge Perl’sannouncement, the length of the silence may also serve as a prompt for Perls to initiate a newmove in order to gain a client response. Seen from this perspective, Perls’s withholding fromtaking a turn can be viewed as putting more pressure on Gloria to respond and, therefore, asdenying her a scaffold on which she could safely engage with Perls. This initiating context inwhich Perls does not display any affiliation with Gloria may thus be seen as shaping her responsein which she confesses to being scared and smiles during her turn. Noteworthy is how Gloriaprefaces her turn with “right away,” which suggests that everything leading up to her first turn, i.e.,Perls’s factual announcement and his withholding from speaking, is the cause of her uneasiness.The prior context for Perls’s noticing, therefore, is a conversational opening (Schegloff, 1968)—the initial points of contact between the speakers—in which the client behaves nervously, makesa claim of being scared, and smiles while making her claim.

Gloria’s affectual stance sets up a certain conversational trajectory. Her avowal of beingscared may, for instance, seek an empathic response from Perls in which he not only displaysan understanding that she has this emotion, but also reassures her that she will be in a supportiveenvironment throughout the therapy. Perls, however, takes the conversation along a completelydifferent track. His noticing (“you say you’re sca:red. (.) but you’re smi:ling.”) instead points outa contrast between what Gloria says and what she actually does nonverbally. Perls then furtherhighlights this contrast by claiming not to understand the connection between these two behav-iors (“I don’t unduhstand how one can be scared an smile at the same ti:me”). Thus, rather thandisplay empathy, Perls analyzes Gloria’s actions, by implying that these actions are problematic

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and thus puts her in the position of having to account for her actions. The relevance of an upcom-ing explanation from Gloria is therefore doubly realized: First, the noticing implicates a clientresponse that explains the disparity between what was said and nonverbally expressed; Second,Perls’s claim of not understanding, although grammatically realized in declarative form, is aquestion that specifically seeks an explanation (i.e., “tell me how one can be scared an smile atthe same ti:me?”). Perls’s question also undermines Gloria’s experiential primacy in terms of herown feelings because it suggests that Perls knows something about her emotional state that shedoes not, or is not willing to admit.

Gloria’s response to Perls is complex and contains a number of components. To begin, sheneither confirms nor disconfirms what he has said. Instead, following a lengthy pause in which shelights her cigarette and starts smoking, she begins by designing her turn as if it were an extensionof her prior one: “right away I’m scared. hhhhhh . . . an I’m also suspicious of you.” On theone hand, she gives the appearance of having disregarded Perls’s noticing and, on the other, shespecifically responds to Perls by questioning his motives. Subsequent to that, she challenges hisavowal of ignorance (“I think you understand very well.”). Now, although Gloria does eventuallyproduce an account for her contrastive behaviors (“when I get sca:red. I: laugh or I kid tuh coverup.”), this is framed as knowable to Perls (“I think you know thet-”) and, hence, as something thatis not remarkable or newsworthy. But more importantly, it precludes the need for Gloria having toexplain what Perls had noticed and, hence, for any further discussion on that topic (i.e., it worksto close down the explanation slot); that is, Perls knows why Gloria has produced contrastingverbal and nonverbal actions so he should not “innocently” try to extract that information fromher. In this way, Gloria is rejecting Perls’s displayed epistemic stance.

Perls’s response is, in turn, equally complex. We should note that he does not respond to thechallenges and accusations being leveled at him, nor does he explicitly acknowledge Gloria’sreluctance to explain and elaborate. Instead, he begins by producing a weak acknowledgement(“uh huh”), which is then followed by a confirmation-seeking question (“well do you have stagefright.”). At one level, the question offers up a candidate “label” or interpretation of the noticedevent; that is, Gloria’s contrasting smile is a sign for having stage fright. But at another level, itattempts to elicit further talk about the noticed event and to keep the discussion within the hereand now of the initial noticing.

But rather than generating more talk about her smile, Gloria continues to resist Perls’s promptsby (a) delaying the production of response through silence and prefaces (1.3s silence, “tch .h↓u::h?”); (b) denying knowledge (“I don’t know?”); and (c) producing a series of complaintsabout her feelings of uneasiness, which she causally attributes to Perls. Further, toward the end ofher turn, Gloria makes an explicit appeal for receiving support from her therapist (“I want’cha tuhbe more on m:y si:de.”). Perls, however, refrains from making an empathic display and insteadproduces another noticing (“you said I get you into your corner. an you put your hand on yourche:st”). In this way, he is able to redirect the focus of the conversation on something Gloriadid while complaining about Perls; that is, his noticing derails the progressivity of talk set up byGloria’s complaints (and plea for support) and, instead, attempts to bring the conversation backinto the here and now by constructing a link between Gloria’s feelings of uneasiness and herbeing placed into her corner.10

10Perls’s noticing may also be seen as “locating” the somatic aspect of Gloria’s experience; for example, it directsattention to what her chest (and the action of placing her hand onto her chest) symbolizes.

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In Perls’s writings, he has often expressed that the client’s nonverbal mode of expression is ahighly important resource for understanding client actions. When explaining the aims of Gestalttherapy just prior to the therapy session with Gloria, Perls stated the following:

I disregard most of the content of what the patient says and concentrate most on the non-verbal level,as this is the . . . only one which is less subject to self-deception than his [sic] verbal pseudo self-expression. On the non-verbal level, the relevant gestalt always emerges and can be dealt with in thehere and now. (Shostrum, 1966)

As we have seen from this Extract, the discursive technique that Perls uses to focus on Gloria’snonverbal actions is noticing. His first noticing drew attention to the mismatch between her verbaland nonverbal affectual displays (scared vs. smiling), whereas the second noticing drew attentionaway from her complaints about Perls and toward her bodily actions during her complaints. In thisway, Perls’s noticings revealed a blatant disregard for the relevant import of Gloria’s actions.Whereas the first noticing failed to empathize with Gloria’s verbalization of affect, the secondnoticing refrained from producing a relevant next action to Gloria’s ascriptions of blame suchas acceptance or denial and to Gloria’s desire for a more affiliative relation with Perls. Thus, byrefusing to endorse and cooperate with Gloria’s initiating actions, Perls continued to control andreframe the sequential context of the interaction, not only to maintain his therapeutic agenda, butalso to frustrate the client and to make it more difficult for the client to engage in what fromPerls’s theoretical position would be called “game playing.”

DISCUSSION

Our examination of different experiential-based therapeutic approaches has aimed to shed lighton how therapist noticings manage the progressivity of a sequence. It extends prior conversationanalytic studies on psychotherapy (Kondratyuk & Peräkylä, 2011; Vehviläinen, 2008), by illus-trating how therapists work with the present moment when noticing a client’s displayed affectualstance. Most of the noticings from our corpus were found to facilitate progressivity by pressing formore emotion talk when the emotion had already been topicalized or, more commonly, by mak-ing an affectual stance a new topic for further discussion. Subtle differences were found betweenthe individual therapy approaches. First, the Emotion-Focused and Symbolic Experiential thera-pists most often targeted emotional displays, whereas the Narrative therapist also drew attentionto the client’s expression of agency and would praise the client’s ability to exert control overa negatively charged situation. Second, using noticings for shifting the topic to defuse negativeaffect and to create a different quality of interaction between the husband and wife seemed tobe a common technique of couples therapy, as practiced through a Symbolic Experiential lens.Finally, designing noticings in an unmitigated manner to disrupt progressivity of the client’s pro-jected line of (verbal) action seemed characteristic of Gestalt therapy, as practiced by Perls. Thus,whereas the other therapists would exploit noticings to work with, understand, and affiliate withclient actions, Perls tended to disaffiliate, manipulate the conversational topic, and frustrate theclient’s expectations.

Noticings were also found to set in motion certain kinds of client responses; in particular,noticings worked to gain recognition and confirmation from clients that they have displayed acertain mode of affect in a relevantly therapeutic context of talk. Therapists would often use

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softening devices to downplay the noticing of an emotion and to make explicit reference tothe therapist’s own derivative access to knowledge. In this way, clients were invited to provideupgraded confirmation and to assume ownership of their personal experience. Seeking client con-firmation seemed also to orient to the larger therapeutic goal of eliciting subsequent explorationof the client’s affectual/emotional stance in a next sequence. Thus, some noticings seemed to per-form important therapeutic work by projecting a sequence that initiates and enables the step-wiseentry into exploration. Getting clients to expand or elaborate on personal events has been arguedto be a generic form of therapeutic practice (Muntigl & Hadic Zabala, 2008), and psychother-apy research on experiential-oriented therapies has drawn attention to the therapeutic benefitsderiving from client elaborations of personal experience (Boritz, Angus, Monette, & Hollis-Walker, 2008; Goldman, Greenberg, & Angus, 2006). This general kind of sequential patternin which client emotions are noticed or identified and then explored appears to be a generic modeof practice that extends beyond experiential therapies. In cognitive psychotherapy, for exam-ple, Voutilainen, Peräkylä, and Ruusuvuori (2010) have identified an interactional sequence inwhich therapists first recognize, then interpret, a client’s emotional experience. Other noticings,however, may work to expedite the exploration of the client’s stance by explicitly seeking anaccount from the client. For example, Perls’s intitial noticing highlighting the disparity betweenGloria’s verbal and nonverbal expressions calls upon her to provide reasons for the disparity. TheSymbolic Experiential therapist’s noticing from Extract 4 sharpens the focus of Lisa’s expressionof sadness, thus providing a subsequent sequential environment that precludes the production ofupgraded confirmation, seeking instead an account that gives Lisa an opportunity to elaborate onwhy she feels sad.

Noticings sequentially occur in second position, thereby activating a retro-sequence that placesthe source of the noticing in first position (Schegloff, 2007). Thus, on their own, affectual dis-plays may be seen as only weakly inviting or mobilizing a response from another conversationalparticipant (Stivers & Rossano, 2010). Nonetheless, it would appear that clients do offer up ver-bal and nonverbal displays of emotion to be noticed and responded to by therapists. From Extract4, Lisa’s “wet sniffs” seem to have been designed to invite a crying receipt from the therapist(Hepburn & Potter, 2007), one that displays empathy with her sadness. In the narrative therapyexample, Wendy’s use of prosody to highlight her agency and how she conquered her feelingsof depression seemed to be inviting praise from the therapist. Finally, Dawn’s displayed facialexpression may also have been presented to the therapist as something to be noticed and sub-sequently negotiated. Stivers and Rossano (2010) propose that there exists a cline of responserelevance and that this cline is influenced by various mobilizing features such as action designand sequential context. Thus, clients can step up their emotional displays through clearly read-able facial expressions, “emotive verbalizations” (i.e., laughter or crying) or intensified prosodyin order to manage their own aims or needs to be heard or empathized with (i.e., noticed) bytherapists.

For their part, therapists concerned with the client’s experiential domain and how this getsexpressed in the here and now will make it their business to attend to a client’s emotional stancedisplay. In this way, therapists can subtly modify response relevance and expectations by regu-larly working to notice what the client is doing. We would suggest that the therapist’s immediatetherapeutic agenda operating within their overall theoretical orientation is most relevant here:For example, the Symbolic Experiential and Emotion-Focused therapists would commonly draw

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attention to client emotional displays, and the Narrative-oriented couples therapist would high-light the client’s expression of agency and accompanying affectual displays in contexts wherethe client is beset by the problem. Perls, on the other hand, paid special attention to the client’snonverbal actions, including facial expressions and bodily movements, and noted discrepanciesbetween the client’s verbal and nonverbal production. Well into the Gestalt interview, for exam-ple, Gloria even complained to Perls that “hh aw::: I’m afraid you’re gonna notice everything Ido:::. Gee:: .hh.” For Gloria, the increased response relevance of her nonverbal actions seemed tobe a constant source of anxiety, especially because Perls’s noticings tended to strongly disaffili-ate with Gloria’s turn and move progressivity in a different and unexpected (for Gloria) direction.There may, of course, be far more variability in terms of how therapists of a given experiential ori-entation may put noticings to work, and, further, there are most likely other functions of noticingsthat we have not been able to detect due to our sample. Further studies involving a greater rangeof therapists and clients for a given therapeutic orientation and perhaps even experiential-basedtherapies not analyzed here will be needed to address these questions. It is also very likely thatother forms of therapy that do not align with experiential-based forms of treatment use noticingsto manage progressivity (see Vehviläinen, 2008), but it is left for future projects to documenthow differently—or similarly—these are realized. To conclude, this study has shown how ther-apists can use noticings to reorganize the sequential context in which emotional displays tendto occur, to try to achieve specific therapeutic ends by managing the progressivity of talk. Theunique design of the noticing and its sequential placement thus forms part of the therapist’s stockof powerful interactional resources with which important therapeutic work gets accomplished.

FUNDING

This research is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada(410-2009-0549).

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