SFP 10 – Episode 10: Seeing Interaction: Interview with Janet Beavin Bavelas, Ph.D., F.R.S.C., Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Victoria
Simply Focus Podcast – Episode #10Hosted by: Elfie Czerny & Dominik Godat | Intro: Bibiana Czerny | Music: www.bensound.com
SFP 10 - Episode 10: Seeing Interaction: Interview with Janet Beavin Bavelas
“So, it’s really a matter of choosing a focus. (…) And once you do that, it’s right there. And people can see it pretty quickly, so it’s really a matter of getting the other stuff out of the way.”
“There are two things that you have to do: One is to see interaction and not go into people’s heads. But the other is the timescale (…) you see how precise and fast it is (…) what goes on is regularly less than simple reaction time. (…) It really is being able to see it in slow motion.”
Show Notes
In today’s episode, we talk with Janet Beavin Bavelas, Ph.D., F.R.S.C., Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Victoria, about
- what fascinates Janet about Solution Focus
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what fascinates Janet about microanalysis (moment-by-moment analysis) of face-to-face dialogues
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how she stayed curious to unfold and demystify all these things around communication
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what helped Janet to focus on the interaction even in times when people mainly focused on inner concepts and to start her career as a scientist on that
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what she and her team see and see differently than others when they look at face-to-face dialogues moment-by-moment in microanalysis
- what calibration is, what is happening there and how that could be important for everyday conversations and for Solution Focus
- what changed for Janet since they wrote “Pragmatics of Human Communication” more than 50 years ago
- hand gestures, facial gestures and gaze and common misunderstandings around these co-speech gestures
- what the overall goal of her research was and is
- The challenge of the week: Look at one and the same conversation (e.g. this one) in two ways: First, look at only one person and start thinking hard about what’s going on in the person’s mind, look at what the person is feeling, why she/he is doing what she/he does, what the person is thinking, focus completely on the individual. Go and get a coffee and afterwards look at the same conversation again. Look only at what’s happening between the people. What you are looking for has to be what somebody does observably – physically or vocally – that the other person would notice and that was aimed at the other person, that would effect the other person.
Resources
- Visit Janet Beavin Bavelas’ website to learn more about studying face-to-face dialogue and about Janet and her teams precious work.
- On their website, you’ll also find a collection of publications with direct links to the publications.
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Pragmatics of Human Communication: A Study of Interactional Patterns, Pathologies and Paradoxes. by Paul Watzlawick, Janet Beavin Bavelas, Don D. Jackson (1967)
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John Weakland – mentor of Janet Bavelas, Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg – was one of the founders of brief and family psychotherapy. He was a Senior Research Fellow at the Mental Research Institute (MRI) in Palo Alto, founding member and Co-Director of MRI’s Brief Therapy Center (along with Paul Watzlawick and Dick Fisch), and a Clinical Associate Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Stanford University School of Medicine.
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‘It’s not really probably your first memory. It’s the one you devoted some effort to remember.’ Janet quoting Arthur Rank
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Don D. Jackson (1958): Guilt and the control of pleasure in schizoid personalities.
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ELAN is a professional tool for the creation of complex annotations on video and audio resources.
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Herbert H. Clark, Stanford; Theory of common ground.
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Here you can find more about the current work on calibration by Janet Bavelas, Jennifer Gerwing & Sara Healing.
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Elfie Czerny & Dominik Godat
Welcome to our weekly podcast with the little extra Solution Focus for your daily life! The SIMPLY FOCUS Podcast is a weekly show where we share focuses that have enhanced our lives. Our podcast is a resource for people who want to train an effective focus in their life and embrace a life in joy and ease. What you focus on in your daily life matters. Choose focuses that uplift, empower, and amplify useful change. Let yourself inspire for your business and private life.
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Inspiring face-to-face encounters with Janet and her lovely Newfoundland dog on Vancouver Island, BC!
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Listen to more Simply Focus Podcast episodes:
SFP 99 – Introducing Solution Focus in Schools: The kind of teachers we want to be with Sharon Casey
SFP 55 – Practice-Based Evidence: Looking at what is effective in what we do with Prof. Frank Thomas
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I really enjoyed the podcast. Chris Iverson recommended that I look into the work of Janet Bavelas subsequent to some comments I made in an SFBT training Group about Milton Erickson’s insistence that therapists must take considerable time to observe interactions between people in different settings and consider the meaning of their interactions not the why.
I noticed that Janet was constantly interjecting some sound often a kind of brief almost “yeah” and at times specifically that when ever either of you were talking which was annoying to listen to and may have been encouraging to you as it was of a positive sense even acknowledging you as you spoke.
Sometimes either of you would give a sort of yes sound in a brief pause of Janet’s speech. That was very different from her almost constant sound interjections on top of your speaking Not waiting for pauses to do so almost as a kind of accompaniment to your speaking. I’m going to study some of the Elan materials.
I like the term entuning similar and more than joining which is rarely taught to therapists. Joining has a less positive action aspect to it than entuning which implies more of a selfless process to me. Bandler and Grinder excerpted “Joining and leading actions and The specific sense aspects of words In the joining and leading process “from their study of Erickson and Satir as well as a very interesting video of Carl Rogers in session.
The entuning means to me the action of a person in stepping into the other person in the face to face interaction to an extent letting go of yourself in doing so and operating in a facile way multitasking not letting go of ones intention in the conversation while being at choice about that intention.
Are we wanting to influence the other person to bring them around to our belief And actions we want them to do or co-constructing the conversation toward a goal of expansion of the possibilities for both of us going forward. Not just understanding one another, actually expanding both our abilities of creating in our lives for whatever our purpose may be.
In psychodrama training, one of the most important early training practices is doubling another person, we’ll call the protagonist in this instance, sitting next to them and doing everything they are doing in terms of their body position and movements and listening with great attention to their words allowing those observations to bring about a deeper sense of this person. At one point Feeling something strongly, the double may actually voice some thoughts that are coming to them that the protagonist aren’t saying. The protagonist can either go with those thoughts and expand them as a stimulus for them to go into their thoughts more deeply, or reject the double’s thought and correct it to which the double immediately changes accepting the protagonist’s correction and allow that to deepen their doubling further.
Thanks again. I look forward to listening to more of your podcasts
Thank you very, dear Bud. We are happy that Chris Iveson recommended Janet’s work and that you really enjoyed the podcast. Microanalysis of Face-to-Face Dialogue is a fascinating topic for us. You might also like podcast #60: https://www.sfontour.com/project/sfp-60-in-interaction-debunking-myths-of-communication-with-jennifer-gerwing-and-sara-healing/