Das Projekt erklärt die Ergebnisse und Erfolge therapeutischer Gespräche mittels sprachphilsophischer Theorien. Das Projekt wird von der Fritz-Thyssen-Stiftung gefördert.
In his seminal paper ''Scorekeeping in a Language Game'', the analytic philosopher David Lewis famously compares conversations to playing baseball. For Lewis, just like baseball, conversations have a score which, together with rules for correct play, determines which utterances are acceptable or even true in the course of a conversation. While the score of a baseball game consists, among other things, of the strikes, the balls, and the outs, the score of a conversation is composed of the underlying circumstances that make a conversation possible.
These circumstances contain a set of presupposed propositions, a boundary between relevant possibilities and ignored ones, a boundary between the permissible and the impermissible, and the like. For example, an utterance of 'Fred's children are asleep' is only acceptable if its presupposition that Fred has children is already assumed to be true by the conversational parties. Lewis compares this to the fact that in a baseball game it is only correct that the batter advances to first base if the score counts four balls.
For all similarities, however, there is a crucial difference between conversations and baseball games, viz. regarding the rules that determine the kinematics of the score. Unlike baseball, conversations have so-called rules of accommodation. For example, if in a baseball game the batter walks to first base after only three balls, his behavior does not make it the case that there are four balls and his behavior is correct. Conversations are different. Lewis illustrates this again using the example of presuppositions. Even if the score of a conversation does not already include the proposition that Fred has children, an utterance of 'Fred's children are asleep' results in the score accommodating in such a way that the utterance counts as correct play.
Starting from this ''scorekeeping'' approach to language use, the overall aim of the present project is to develop a completely new explanation of the effectiveness of the methods and interventions of psychotherapy by focusing on their linguistic aspects.
The basic idea is that the methods and interventions of psychotherapy are effective by changing the score of the therapeutic conversation, in particular in the form of accommodation. This can affect different aspects of conversational score.
For example, the effectiveness of a therapeutic method can consist in a change in belief, or an expansion of the possibility/permissibility range (to name just a few), all aspects of conversational score.
Furthermore, therapeutic methods and interventions can be effective by making certain utterances possible on the part of the client, utterances about certain events or ones attitudes and feelings. Using the scorekeeping model this will be explained with the fact that the therapeutic method or intervention changes the conversational score so that new utterances count as correct play in the course of the therapeutic conversation.
In this way, the scorekeeping approach to language use promises a completely new understanding of psychotherapy and its effectiveness, one that has significant implications for the therapeutic practice, as it highlights the importance of training therapists in the linguistic aspects of therapeutic methods and interventions, and in particular in the use of accommodation.
In addition, the complexity of therapeutic conversations will require the scorekeeping model to be further developed, which, in turn, will lead to a better understanding of language itself.