The Relevance of Conversational Domains to Psychotherapy

Psychotherapy is fundamentally a linguistic enterprise. Therefore, therapists need to understand the basics of how language functions. In this theoretical analysis, we introduce the cybernetic concept of “conversational domains” and use clinical examples to illustrate its relevance in the clinic. Conversational domains determine the questions that can be asked and the ways in which they can be answered. Clients often get stuck in narrow domains that do not contain the answers they seek. The job of the therapist is to help clients see beyond the limits of the conversational domain in which they have become ensnared. This can be accomplished primarily in two different ways. The therapist can focus the client’s attention on the framework of the current conversation rather than its contents or they can respond to client utterances in oblique ways that shift the conversational trajectory. In this article, we outline the major characteristics of conversational domains and provide examples of the two major strategies for helping clients move from one domain to another.