The Characteristics, Identification, and Applications of Frames

Abstract

FRAMES (Fundamental Repetitive And Maladaptive Emotion Structures) provide a multipurpose research tool for assessing psychopathology, the psychotherapeutic process and, finally, the treatment outcome. We outline the clinical and theoretical assumptions that underlie and motivate FRAMES, along with the aims of an ongoing research program. We describe four methods for identlfying FRAMES, ranging from our original justified intuition (Method A) to the present systematic set of reliable procedures (Method D). The reliability of necessary judgments, the validity of findings and the strengths and weaknesses are discussed. The FRAMES approach has been successfully used to analyze verbatim transcripts of recorded psychoanalytic and psychotherapy sessions and videotapes and coded records of the behavior of three-year-old children. By applying the FRAMES method to an initial evaluation interview, we demonstrate its usefulness on quite different clinical material.In the early 1980s Teller and Dahl introduced a new method called FRAMES for detecting and representing recurrent patterns of behavior reported by a patient in the manifest content of verbatim transcripts of recorded psychoanalytic sessions (Teller & Dahl, 1981 ). The method also exposed reenactments of these patterns in the transference, as revealed by the patient's behavior toward the analyst (Teller & Dahl, 1986). Since its inception more than a dozen years ago, what was originally envisioned primarily as a means of understanding the basis for and the reasoning behind the inferences that clinicians intuitively make about their patients' behavior has evolved instead into the FRAMES approach to psychotherapy research-a robust, general purpose tool for identlfying psychopathology, tracing process, and measuring change (outcome) and a therapist's contribution to it. FRAMES is now an acronym that stands for Fundamental Repetitive And Maladaptive Emotion Structures (Dahl, 1993).In the first section of this paper we describe the current state of our program of research. Successive sections deal with the motivation for the FRAMES approach and the goals of the research. Four methods for identlfying FRAMES are described, and empirical research findings obtained with each method are summarized. The issues of validity and reliability are discussed along with strengths and weaknesses of the 254 DAHL AND TELLER approach. In the second part of the paper, we apply the FRAMES approach to a new type of data and uncover three FRAMES in an evaluation interview. This demonstrates the usefulness of the FRAMES approach in a quite different clinical setting from the psychoanalytic discourse on which the approach was originally developed. CLINICAL AND THEORETICAL ASSUMPTIONSSimply put, FRAMES are the plots of the stories that patients in psychotherapy tell about their repetitive, maladaptive behaviors. More formally we define a FRAME as a recurrent, structured sequence of events that represent significant wishes and beliefs manifested in a person's actions, thoughts, perceptions, andlo...

Emotional processes in psychotherapy: evidence across therapeutic modalities

“…There is some psychodynamic therapy process research on emotion. Dahl and his group are continuing to develop and validate FRAMES (it stands for 'Fundamental, Repetitive and Maladaptive Emotion Structures) which is a form of narrative analysis that identifies invariant and repetitive structures in the emotional aspects of the stories that clients tell (Dahl & Teller, 1994). This research is progressing and recent findings (Siegel, Sammons, & Dahl, 2002) offer a new, streamlined methodology for identifying core emotion structures, one based on tracking narrative sequences according to eight basic emotion codes, and also provide solid evidence for the interrater reliability of FRAMES.…”

Elaboração da versão em português do Psychotherapy Process Q-Set

“…Não é por acaso, portanto, que muitos dos instrumentos criados nas últimas décadas para a investigação sistemática do processo terapêutico tenham sido desenvolvidos por pesquisadores dessa orientação, entre eles: o Fundamental Repetitive and Maladaptative Emotion Structures (FRAMES) 11 , o Core Conflictual Relationship Theme Method (CCRT) 12 e o Psychotherapy Process Q-Set (PQS) 13 , alvo do presente estudo.…”

Affective scripts: A systematic case study of change in psychotherapy

“…While the construct of interpersonal scripts has been seminal in theories of personality (Alexander, 1990;Demorest, 1995;Mischel & Shoda, 1995;Murray, 1938Murray, /1962Tomkins, 1987), there has been little research on identifying them because scripts require assessment according to a person-specific rather than an a priori structure (Demorest et al, 1999). Although such a method of assessment would provide a more clinically sensitive measure of interpersonal schemas, those that have been developed typically involve interpretation of an individual's words before sequencing them as narrative events (Alexander, 1990;Dahl & Teller, 1994;Demorest & Siegel, 1996). In addition to placing high demands on the skill of the interpreter, the lack of standard categories to code narrative events has made it difficult to establish interrater reliability.…”

“…While FRAMES has been clinically illustrated in particular sessions of a number of psychotherapy cases (Dahl & Teller, 1994;Siegel & Sammons, 1999), it has yet to be used in empirical research. In this article, it is employed in a two-part systematic case study of the archival psychotherapy of Mrs. C. Part I presents a test of FRAMES itself as applied to hundreds of narratives and interactions with the therapist in this case.…”

“…Hoelzer and Dahl (1996) introduced a method for assessing interpersonal scripts that combines these virtues of coding narrative events with standard categories and sequencing them according to the plot of a story. FRAMES (Fundamental Repetitive and Maladaptive Emotion Structures; Dahl & Teller, 1994;Siegel, Sammons, & Dahl, 2002) is a potentially useful measure of personal consistency and change in interpersonal schemas. Unlike other methods that sequence narrative events to develop person-specific scripts, standard content categories are used in order to code narrative events for interpersonal behaviors.…”