Interpersonal Process Recall in Systemic Research: Investigating Couple Therapists’ Personal and Professional Selves

In this chapter, we discuss the Interpersonal Process Recall (IPR) or Stimulated Recall Interview (SRI) as a method and show its usage in investigating systemic couple therapy processes in two international research projects. IPR/SRI has been designed as a process-focused interview method for training and supervision, expanded into clinical, especially psychotherapy process research: patients and/or therapists watch video (segments) of the therapeutic situation and comment on their experiences during the session. The aim of the presented analysis is to study the mutual dynamic between the couple therapists’ references to their professional practices and to their personal experiences during the interview. To achieve this aim, we employed two methodological approaches: dialogical analysis to investigate the distinction between the therapist’s professional and personal selves, and the narrative storytelling approach in order to describe the therapist’s positioning in terms of his or her discursive identities being displayed in the IPR/SR interview. We discuss the results in three aspects, describing (1) the therapists’ discursive practices of presenting their professional and personal identities; (2) the shifting of their attention between the video episode from the session and displaying their mental state in relation to it; and (3) the thinking aloud phenomena as enhancing the insight into psychotherapeutic processes. We conclude with methodological reflections.