Languages in the Therapy Room: The Slovene-Italian Bilingualism in Psychotherapy

This paper presents a qualitative study on the experiences of eight bilingual psychotherapists who treat patients with whom they share the same two languages, Slovene and Italian, as well as the same linguistic environment, i.e. the settlement area of Slovenes in Italy. The data, collected through semistructured interviews, relate to language choice, instances of interlingual contact, and the dynamics associated with transfer and countertransference. The findings suggest that therapists attribute their observations to the characteristics of the Slovene regional spoken variety, known as zamejščina (i.e. the lect spoken on the other side of the border) and to the dynamics within the Slovenian community in Italy.