Narrative change in emotion-focused psychotherapy : a study on the evolution of reflection and protest innovative moments

摘要

Innovative moments (IMs) are exceptions to a client’s problematic self-narrative in the therapeutic dialogue. The innovativemoments coding system is a tool which tracks five different types of IMs*action, reflection, protest, reconceptualization andperforming change. An in-depth qualitative analysis of six therapeutic cases of emotion-focused therapy (EFT) investigatedthe role of two of the most common IMs*reflection and protest*in both good and poor outcome cases. Through thisanalysis two subtypes (I and II) of reflection and protest IMs were identified, revealing different evolution patterns. SubtypeII of both reflection and protest IMs is significantly higher in the good outcome group, while subtype I of both IMs typesdoes not present statistically significant differences between groups. The evolution from subtype I to subtype II across thetherapeutic process seems to reflect a relevant developmental progression in the change process.