Narrative Processes Coding System: A Dialectical Constructivist Approach to Assessing Client Change Processes in Emotion-Focused Therapy of Depression

Drawing on a Dialectical Constructivist model of therapeutic change, this paper addresses the fundamental contributions of client narrative disclosure, emotional differentiation and reflexive meaning-making processes in emotion-focused treatments of depression. An overview of the multi-methodological steps undertaken to empirically investigate the contributions of client storytelling, emotional differentiation, and meaning-making processes, using the Narrative Processes Coding System (NPCS; Angus et al., 1999) are provided, followed by a summary of key research findings that informed the development of a narrative-informed approach to emotion-focused therapy of depression (Angus & Greenberg, 2011). Finally, therapy practice implications for the adoption of a research-informed approach to working with narrative and emotion processes in emotion-focused therapy are described and future research directions discussed

Developing a Systematic Procedure for the Assessment of Self-Defining Memories in Psychodynamic Therapy: Promise and Pitfalls

The innovative approach to assessing autobiographical memory narratives that Singer and Bonalume (2010) demonstrate in their case study of Cynthia is an ambitious expression of integrative psychotherapy research. It brings together the rich research findings on self-defining memories derived from laboratory studies and therapy case analyses, and applies these to the multimodal assessment situation in a psychotherapy program. Further, Singer and Bonalume's case of Cynthia is grounded in a truly "common factor" that is essential to most if not all psychotherapies: patient narrative expression. However, the integration of findings across different research studies still needs further elaboration to clarify and explore when they are consistent and when they are inconsistent with one another. In our commentary we critically assess the following issues associated with Singer and Bonalume's narrative memory coding system and its application to the case of Cynthia: (a) the utilization of narrative analyses for the identification of themes; (b) challenges inherent in establishing criteria for the identification of clinically important autobiographical memory narratives in therapy sessions; (c) the degree of integrative processing that takes place in narrative expression; and (d) the process of formulating inferences based on client narrative expression in assessment interviews versus therapy sessions.  The commentary concludes with a discussion of promising future directions for narrative research in psychotherapy.