The Language of Psychotherapy: An Interdisciplinary Perspective

The research project “The Therapeutic Game” (PI Stefan Rinner) funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation and based at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Duisburg-Essen is organising an interdisciplinary two-day online conference on questions regarding language and its use in psychotherapeutic settings, to be held via Zoom on May 15 and 16. Our goal is to bring together researchers interested in this topic from different fields, including philosophy, linguistics, psychology, psychiatry, communication studies, and sociology. We invite submissions of abstracts for presentations by researchers from all career stages, including graduate students.

Topics may include, but are not limited to, the following:

- features and functions of therapeutic speech and conversations
- linguistic models and explanations of the various functions and effects of therapeutic speech
- application of tools or models developed in other areas of research to therapeutic speech
- similarities between therapeutic speech and other socially relevant kinds of speech (e.g., hate speech and political speech)

The submitted abstracts should be 500 words and indicate the intended kind of presentation:
(i) Regular: 20 min presentation, 10 min discussion
(ii) Exploratory: 5 min presentation, 10 min discussion
Please send your abstract as a .pdf file to [email protected]. The deadline for submission is February 28 2025. The conference language will be English. All abstracts will be reviewed by the members of the research project and selections made on the basis of judgments of quality and fit with the workshop topic and aims. Decisions will be communicated by the end of March 2025.

For more information on the research project visit: https://stefan-rinner.webnode.page/the-therapeutic-game/