Aspects of the Client's Conscious Control of the Psychotherapeutic Process

An analysis is made of the opening moments of dialogue between and a client and her therapist in the light of the client's commentary given during an Interpersonal Process Recall interview about the moments. These moments are drawn from a study of 14 clients' reports on their experiences of therapy, thus particularizing the general understanding derived in the larger project. This passage of dialogue was chosen because the client's commentary revealed that, in the brief space of time involved, she had exerted control in terms of the three main relationships as experienced by all clients in the larger study: the relationship with the self, the therapist, and the therapist's techniques. Such control is understood to be an expression of clients' reflexivity, defined as self-awareness and agency within that self-awareness. The understanding that there is an agential involvement in reflexivity is based on both the participants' reports and the author's examination of his own consciousness. The study is discussed in terms of clients' covert experience of therapy and ways of gaining greater access to the unspoken in order to facilitate the working alliance.