This book offers a fresh paradigm for psychology and the helping professions, distilled from four decades of clinical work and theoretical research. Building on Vygotsky, Leontiev, and Bakhtin — and on Vološinov, Winnicott, and contemporary biosemiotics — Mikael Leiman proposes two basic abstractions: object-directed activity and a revised concept of sign as a trace of encounters carrying both object and relation references. The first half of the book lays these conceptual foundations; the second applies them to foetal development, the emergence of language, the structure of utterance, problems of agency, dissociation, and the practice of brief psychotherapy, counselling, and coaching. Richly illustrated with clinical excerpts and developmental research, the book equips practitioners with a microanalytic method — dialogical sequence analysis — for listening to clients with new precision and offers researchers a coherent alternative to current cognitive and neurocognitive paradigms.

Mikael Leiman is Professor Emeritus in Psychology, Psychotherapy, and Counselling at the University of Eastern Finland, Finland. He introduced Cognitive Analytic Therapy to Finland, has trained psychotherapists for four decades, and developed dialogical sequence analysis (DSA), a microanalytic method for exploring how internal mental activity is embodied in expression.