A dynamic look at narrative change in psychotherapy: A case study tracking innovative moments and protonarratives using state space grids

Abstract

This study aims to further the understanding of how innovative moments (IMs), which are exceptions to a client's problematic self-narrative in the therapy dialogue, progress to the construction of a new self-narrative, leading to successful psychotherapy. The authors' research strategy involved tracking IMs, and the themes expressed therein (or protonarratives), and analysing the dynamic relation between IMs and protonarratives within and across sessions using state space grids in a good-outcome case of constructivist psychotherapy. The concept of protonarrative helped explain how IMs transform a problematic self-narrative into a new, more flexible, self-narrative. The increased flexibility of the new self-narrative was manifested as an increase in the diversity of IM types and of protonarratives. Results suggest that new self-narratives may develop through the elaboration of protonarratives present in IMs, yielding an organizing framework that is more flexible than the problematic self-narrative.

Interacção terapêutica em momentos de ambivalência: Um estudo exploratório de um caso de insucesso

“…No sentido de analisarmos o padrão de interacção terapeuta-cliente durante as sessões, recorremos ao State Space Grids (SSG; Lewis, Lamey, & Douglas 1999;Lewis, Zimmerman, Hollenstein, & Lamey, 2004), um método de análise de dados utilizado na psicologia do desenvolvimento e que já foi usado para análise processual de sessões terapêuticas (e.g., Ribeiro, Bento, Salgado, Stiles, & Gonçalves, 2011). O SSG permite estudar duas sequências temporais sincronizadas de variáveis categoriais ou ordinais (Lewis et al, 1999, necessárias para representar um sistema dinâmico com um número limitado de estados possíveis.…”

Emotional inertia: A key to understanding psychotherapy process and outcome

“…A similar method was introduced by Gonçalves et al (2011). For an application of this method in a psychotherapy case study see Ribeiro, Bento, Salgado, Stiles, & Gonçalves, 2011.…”

Client's immersed and distanced speech and therapist's interventions in emotion-focused therapy for depression: an intensive analysis of a case study

“…To make this concept clearer, Hollenstein and collaborators (2004) provide some examples that illustrated this pattern in a family dynamic: a state of mutual hostility can be understood as an attractor for a particular family that means that they easily get drawn toward a hostile pattern of interaction and once the conflict has begun, it is difficult to pull out of this (p. 597). The process of change is evidenced when there is movement between and variability in different attractors over time (Hayes, Yasinski, Barnes, & Bockting, 2015;Hollenstein, 2007;Howertwe, Hollenstein, Boon, Niemeyer, & Brulee, 2012;Lewis et al, 1999Ribeiro et al, 2011, for other studies using this type of analysis).…”

“…Additionally, as a SSG allows representing the temporal evolution of the dyadic exchange, each line and arrow between circles (and cells) depicts the trajectory and the succession of exchanges, given the direction from one interaction to another. Finally, the hollow circle represents the first behavior occurrence in the session (Granic & Hollenstein, 2003;Hollenstein, 2007Hollenstein, , 2015Ribeiro et al, 2011). To specify with an example, a dyad may start a session with an exploratory intervention from the therapist how are you today?, followed by a client attributive statement I'm sad (depicted by a hollow circle in a cell that intersects therapist exploratory intervention and client attributive statement) and then, in the next turntaking, the therapist can use an action intervention let's talk about it.…”

“…This depicts a graphic movement, a pattern of dyadic interaction along the grid, providing information on the structural dynamics and temporal trajectory of the dyad, i.e. flexibility between cells (referring to movements across the cells, creating a trajectory that is more or less spread along the grid -evidencing more or less flexibility in the dyadic interaction) or attractors (a name for the cells that concentrate most of the interactions occurring in the dyad (Hollenstein, Granic, Stoolmiller, & Snyder, 2004;Ribeiro et al, 2011).…”