ABSTRACT
This refers to the therapist's use of phrases such as 'and that would mean', 'and if that were true' or 'and then' to 'nudge along' her client's train of thought to its cognitive destination by inviting him to finish his thoughts. The therapist removes the full stop at the end of the client's sentence and replaces it with a conjunction. DiGiuseppe observes that an 'advantage of this method is that it keeps clients focused on their thoughts. The less a therapist says, the fewer clients have to respond to the therapist's words or attend to whether the therapist has understood them. The conjunctive phrase focuses clients on the meaning of their statements'. They have used the term 'verbal economy' to convey the same point as DiGiuseppe's. Sometimes a client's idiosyncratic usage needs investigating to tease out the core belief embedded within it. This core belief reflected an aspect of the self than commenting on or self condemning.