Question: What do people talk to you about?

Sally Tilt answered on 2 Mar 2019:

Love this question.

OK – when I meet with a prisoner, it is usually to try to understand why they have done something – for example, I might want to know ‘why did this person break the law?’ It’s just one little question.

This one question however actually involves knowing loads of different things about the person – what was happening at the time of the crime, who they were with, what job they were doing, how they were feeling, whether they had done this before, what attitudes or values are important to them … (you can probably think of lots more things). So as part of our discussion we’d need to talk about all of these things.

Also, something that research tells us is important about how well psychologists work, is how well the psychologist and the other person ‘get on’ – we sometimes call this building rapport or therapeutic alliance. This makes sense to me – if I was the person in the other seat, I’d want to know that the psychologist understood me, and that we had the same goals for the conversation. So actually, we might also talk about football, tv, news, even science!

Great question – thanks for asking.