Therapeutic discourse analysis

Abstract

Independently of how they are presented, all therapies are based, more or less explicitedly, on the patient's discourse, where the construction of the individual and his meaningful world takes place. However, few therapies have striven to outline a systematic method for analyzing how this material should be analized. This article developes, from the semiotic perspective, different techniques of textual analysis, applying such techniques to divers modes of therapeutic discourse: logical, analogical, and paralogical. The article presents various questions relative to textual hermeneutics, contrasting this point of view with that of psychoanalysis, and arguing for the utility of textual hermeneutics in the co-construction of existential experience within the context of psychotherapy.