Recursive Frame Analysis: A Qualitative Research Method for Mapping Change‐Oriented Discourse

by Hillary Keeney, Bradford P. Keeney, Ronald Chenail

Recursive Frame Analysis (RFA) is a qualitative research method for mapping and analyzing change-oriented conversation. Cybernetician and therapist Bradford Keeney invented RFA over twenty years ago as a means of discerning and indicating the bare bones organization of real-time therapeutic performance. This book revisits some of Keeney’s original ideas while providing a more exhaustive theoretical foundation for RFA, a thorough exploration of its practical application as a research tool, and several detailed analyses of therapy sessions.

Rooted to Gregory Bateson’s notion of contextual frame and the way that a distinction can recursively operate on itself as formulated by G. Spencer-Brown’s Laws of Form, RFA offers both researchers and practitioners of all kinds a formal way of tracking the dramatological construction and movement of a conversation through its beginning, middle, and end episodes. By limiting the analysis to the actual performance of the conversation being studied - including spoken discourse and description of non-verbal action - RFA lays bare the primary distinctions, re-indications, and contextual frames embodied by the communication being studied, as well as those of the researcher. Commentary later generated by the researcher must be demarcated as a separate order of discourse, providing opportunity for multiple layers of analysis by researchers while keeping the primary data intact.

Though this book primarily exemplifies the application of Recursive Frame Analysis to the study of therapeutic sessions, RFA as a research tool is not limited to this domain but can be applied to the analysis of any change-oriented conversation, interaction, or even textual discourse to track the primary distinctions, recursively generated re-indications, and emergent contextual frames being constructed. It is intended that this book serve as a resource for the future application of RFA across multiple fields.

237 pages, Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 2014

Reviews

[Therese Fisher · Rating 5 out of 5]

The EGO in me gives this book five stars because it wants you to know I read and liked a book with such complex words and ideas. The GO part of me gives this book five stars because it wants to catch your eye with those pretty five stars and encourage you to go and read this book... it can change your life. The O part of me gives this book 5 stars for two reasons: one, the rug got pulled out from under me... O, as in Oh ouch! (But I needed that, and I suspect you do too!) followed by two, O, as in Oh praise God! There is another way to be in this world. We can recalibrate our lives to be resourceful as opposed to day in and day out classification, labeling, filing and indexing what is wrong. Therapy can be a creative heart filled healing dance. Oh please dive On in and see for yourself!