The doctoral study "Interaction in Brief Therapy" examines the interaction between the client and the therapist over a solution-focused brief therapy process. The study employs qualitative methods: conversation analysis and discursive social psychology, using authentic video-recorded therapy sessions as data. For each therapist-client pair, 1-5 sessions are collected, and the pairs are both Finnish- and Swedish-speaking. The research particularly focuses on the multimodal features of interaction — meaning not only the spoken language but also so-called body language, such as eye contact, gestures, and intonation.
The research aims to produce new knowledge in areas such as institutional interaction studies and culturally sensitive psychotherapy research. Additionally, it addresses a gap in the current research on interaction in solution-focused brief therapy and offers new insights into what kind of interaction is meaningful, sufficient, and effective for being therapeutic. The results of the study are expected to support evidence-based decision-making, the development of regulation for brief therapies in Finland, and training in brief therapy. More broadly, the findings will benefit multiple institutional contexts where interaction is central.