Performance and performativity of emotions in systemic psychotherapy

This is a post-qualitative research inquiry that drew upon a new materialist approach to investigate the performance and performativity of emotions in systemic psychotherapy. Whilst there have been some developments in understanding emotions from a relational and contextual perspective in systemic psychotherapy, research on emotions within the field continues to fall behind other disciplines. The aim of this research inquiry is to understand how emotions are performed by systemic psychotherapists and families in the process of systemic psychotherapy in a General Adolescent Unit (GAU) in the UK. The study comprised three parts: (1) a microanalysis of two recorded systemic psychotherapy sessions using multimodal Conversation Analysis and New Materialist methodology; (2) a piece of ethnography in the GAU involving only clinicians, with the materials generated analysed using a thematic and descriptive approach; (3) an autoethnographic work that served as a means to connect my ‘self’ with the first two parts of the study. The themes generated from the microanalysis of the systemic psychotherapy sessions were: (i) connecting through haptic touch, (ii) participation of non-human bodies, and (iii) affective influence on the movement of bodies. The ethnographic themes included: (a) invisible structures formed by the subthemes of ‘surveillance’ and ‘rules and boundaries’, (b) visible structures supported by the subthemes of ‘space and infrastructure’, ‘physical items’ and ‘sound’, and (c) physicality of human bodies, contributed by the subthemes ‘whiteness’, ‘binarism’ and ‘embodied reactions to violence’. This study suggests that emotions are performed through movement, bodies (human and non-human) and relational processes within the haptic field of systemic psychotherapy sessions. It critiques (self-)reflexivity as still keeping the practitioner-researcher outside and separate from the client’s/participant’s world. The study advocates for practitioner-researchers to adopt a stance of reflexive becoming which can be facilitated by autoethnography.