Circular Questioning
In my last article, I said I would like to discuss circular questioning as a therapeutic tool. Circular questioning was a technique written about by Peggy Penn in the eighties, and although it is an "old" technique, I still find it extremely valuable. Such questioning forces people to think in terms of their relationship.
You, the counselor, are there to work on a marriage. Your job is not to "fix" either one of the partners, but to help to correct dysfunctional patterns, which are being repeated in the lives of the people before you. It is the "marriage" (or partnership) which is in trouble, and it is not your job to hone in separate parts of it (either to work at improving the wife's confidence, or to help make the husband more submissive, for example). Your job is to work with the interactional patterns. To repeat myself: the therapist can never actually "fix" a marriage. His task is to help the couple to see the problem differently, to see more alternatives.
The simplest way to use "circular questioning" in marital therapy is to ask one partner what the other thinks, or how the other feels about a particular issue. These questions help each partner to think the issue through from the other person's perspective. The advantage of this is that:
- the silent partner may see that the other partner actually does understand where he is coming from
- the person talking may better understand the motives of the silent partner
- it is a way of fostering positive communication (as opposed to the expected "breaking the other person down")
- it facilitates communication as it is often easier to talk in the third person than in the first person.
- it is a way of involving a partner who is attending sessions against his/her will, and is therefore only intending to be physically present without actively participating. This is important as, if one "gossips" in the presence of the person who is attempting to sabotage the therapeutic process, he cannot help but become active - even if it is only by listening to what is being said. Of course, if something is said that he disagrees with, he will have no choice but to correct the misinformation.
Another important issue to continually remember, is that the couple is usually not alone with you in the room. The issues they have brought with them invariably involve outside parties. Your questions, therefore, also need to involve at least one generation down AND up (ie parents and children). If the couple is childless, one can question around parents and grandparents, or parents and what would have been had the couple had children. Including others in the questioning helps the therapist to stand back if he finds he is doing all the work. For example, one might say something like "what do you think he would do with his son if he stopped drinking?" or "if her mother were still alive, would she be coping any differently with her finances, and if so, how?"
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