title: Toward a multimodal communication theory of psychotherapy: the vicarious coprocessing of experience.
abstract: "Talking" therapy is examined as an interpersonal transaction. The personal-experience narrative is used as a vehicle through which the patient and therapist coprocess a mutual experience. Within the narrative transaction, the patient is able to vicariously re-experience and reconfigure the narrated events as he/she believes the therapist is experiencing them. Nonverbal symbolic modes of communication such as music, movement, and art also provide media through which patients and therapists can coprocess a mutual experience. The vicarious coprocessing of experience is a therapeutic factor common to talking therapy, music therapy, art therapy, movement therapy, conventional social interaction, and some healing practices in other cultures.
authors.affiliation: Department of Family Medicine, Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
authors.forename: H M
authors.initials: HM
authors.lastname: Adler
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000328:Adult; D003142:Communication; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D008602:Mental Healing; D008875:Middle Aged; D009633:Nonverbal Communication; D011613:Psychotherapy / Q000379:methods*; D012919:Social Behavior; D016896:Treatment Outcome; D014705:Verbal Behavior