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What was I thinking?, What are they like?, What is he worried about?, How did that happen?, Who cares?, What does it matter?, What did I do that for?
Rhetorical questions like the ones above emerge often spontaneously in consultations, whether these take place in supervision or in the context of therapy with couples or families. The distinctive feature of rhetorical questions is the paradoxical injunction they convene: a question not intended as a question, while uttered as such. I will present a technique consisting on overlooking the metacommunication that rhetorical questions are not to be answered, as such questions can point to an impasse in the process of therapy and at the same time contain a key to its resolution.
Carmen has been working as a Systemic Family Therapist in different mental health contexts in the UK since 2004. In 2013, she joined the Systemic Family Therapy Trainings team at the IOPPN, King's College London, as an Academic Tutor, obtaining a Senior Fellowship in 2020, in recognition of her attainment against the UK Professional Standards Framework for teaching and learning support in higher education. Carmen's ongoing interests are: diversions; paradox; change processes; and dialectics. Carmen.Garcia@kcl.ac.uk
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