What Can Therapeutic Communication Do?

Therapeutic communication is a technique that can be applied during any form of communication, but especially during the interviews. It uses open ended questions, restating, reflecting, or even silence to seek information from the interviewee. It is compiled in such a way that neither the person’s feelings are triggered, nor the questions sounds judgmental. In other words, the interviewer is capable of establishing a therapeutic relationship with the interviewee. This type of communication proves to be helpful in hospital settings i.e., in a nurse-client relationship, but not exclusively limited to this form of scenario. By using the interview of Oprah Winfrey and Michael Jackson, this paper tries to explore the potential of therapeutic communication during an interview. Therapeutic communication can bring sensitive, emotional and personal elements of a person, if tactically utilized, without igniting the flames of distress.

The 1993 interview of Michael Jackson with Oprah Winfrey, at the time, was a live show taking place in Neverland Ranch Valley in California. It can be considered delicate considering the fact that, Jackson is coming live for an interview after fourteen years of not appearing on any talk show. The interview itself is sensitive as Oprah is asking personal questions that are hair triggering. The interview explores Jackson’s childhood, adolescence and present life, with a special clarification attained on allegations, such as the oxygen chamber in his house, skin bleaching, plastic surgery, casting a light complexioned boy to play his childhood, “the Elephant Man’s” bones etc. Jackson opens up about his loneliness he felt during childhood, being teased by his own father, relationship with his family, him being a perfectionist, the process of making music albums, using make up to cover his skin condition and the entertainment services he have opened for children. There are moments of both sensitive personal emotions and humor. In both the instances, Winfrey has employed strategic therapeutic techniques to divulge further particulars.

The most common therapeutic techniques used by the interviewer are accepting and voicing doubt. According to Halter, accepting is used to indicate that the “person (interviewee) has been understood,” while, voicing doubt expresses “uncertainty” (Halter, 2017, p. 143-144). Oprah has used terms like “yeah,” “yes”, “uh-huh”, “mm-hmm”, to agree and continue listening to Jackson throughout the interview. For instance, she responds using “uh-huh”, when Jackson says “James Brown is a genius”.” In one part of the beginning of the interview, they discuss about Jackson being happy when he sees one of his earlier performances. He says, “it made me giggle” and “it bring back memories”, to which Oprah responds by saying “yeah”. On the other hand, Oprah voices doubt and astonishment when Jackson says about him being sad and lonely during his childhood. She asks him if he was equally happy on and off stage. He replies, “once I got off stage, I was very sad”. Oprah shows her surprise by asking him, “really”! Jackson replies to this by answering “yes”. This further leads to discussion about the loneliness and its severity he felt as a child, since he could not do what other children could. Due to this therapeutic technique deployed, it is clear how Jackson’s popularity during childhood snatched away its innocence and adversely affected him.

Another technique of therapeutic communication applied during the interview is restating. The interview starts with Oprah shaking hands with Jackson and asking him if he was nervous. He replies “I am not nervous at all, actually.’ The surprised Oprah restates, “you really aren’t”, to which Jackson asserts by saying, “I never get nervous”. This steers to the further conversation that this is his first live interview. The interview has also brought into light, several unexpected and touching facts from his adolescence when he suffered from acne, for which his father would ridicule him. Jackson mentions, “I had pimples so badly, it made me shy… I wash my face in the dark, I never looked in the mirror, my father would tease me”. Oprah restates, “your father would tease you about your skin”, for which Jackson confirms by saying, “yes, he would say I am ugly”.

This prompts to disclose his fear for his father, who would beat him. As a child and an adult, his father’s presence would make him “sick”. Here, the therapeutic technique has exposed the probable reason for his insecurities throughout his life. A technique similar to restating is verbalizing the implied. This is used to make the statements “more explicit” (Halter, 2017, p. 144). Jackson has been accused for performing numerous plastic surgeries and skin lightening. He says that the make-up is used to cover up his uneven skin tone. Oprah makes his explanation clear by stating, “you are not taking anything to change the color of the skin”. Jackson affirms, “oh no”. The interview has brought out Jackson’s side of explanation to the allegations against him.

Exploring is another therapeutic technique utilized during this interview. This is especially administered to gather more details about Jackson’s feeling of loneliness in the childhood. The intrigued Oprah, questions more about his loneliness by asking, if he was “sad from the beginning”? Jackson’s reply to this is, “I used to always cry due to loneliness”. The next question from Oprah is, “beginning at what age”, to which Jackson states, “oh very little… 8 or 9”. He reveals that though his popularity has brought many benefits, as a child he craved for a “normal life” like other children and sobbed because of his “lost childhood”. This was one of the heartbreaking parts of the interview, which portrays that celebrities despite their fame and glamor yearn for simple things in life. In the case of Jackson, his troubled childhood would have been one of the reasons that contributes to his insecurities as a teenager and an adult. The interview has made use of various therapeutic techniques that have yielded great results.

The interview is relaxed, friendly and composed, yet significantly professional. Other examples of therapeutic communication could be discovered from the interview. Oprah placed the events in time, starting from Jackson’s childhood, then adolescence, moving on to adulthood and then the current life. She has used silence as a technique to give Jackson “time to collect thoughts or think through a point (Halter, 2017, p. 143). The only negative found is, Oprah cutting off Jackson to draw up conclusions on the discussed topics. Another side of Jackson, which seems sensitive and grounded is brought through this interview.

As stated earlier, therapeutic communication techniques are widely used in hospital settings when a nurse has to attain clarification on the condition of the patient. This practice is important because, being in hospital itself puts a patient in an unstable mind set. And if the questions asked sounds as if patient’s feelings are minimized, being judged or disapproving, this might illicit a bad response. This moves to another level, when nurses are practicing in mental health, where patients are emotionally imbalanced. Here, therapeutic communication is to be advocated to get better responses, and also not to poke their triggers. According to Kleier (2013), therapeutic communication “has been associated with better outcomes, including increased adherence to treatment plans, improved patient health, increased patient satisfaction, accurate diagnoses, and reduced malpractice risk”. Thus, it is capable of bringing out the best results during communication.