Browsing by Author "Bento, Tiago"
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- Client's immersed and distanced speech and therapist's interventions in emotion-focused therapy for depression: an intensive analysis of a case studyPublication . Couto, Ana Bela; Barbosa, Eunice; Silva, Sara; Bento, Tiago; Teixeira, Ana Sofia; Salgado, Joào; Cunha, CarlaPrevious laboratory studies have explored the importance of participants adopting an immersed or distanced perspective in the analysis of their experiences. These studies concluded that distancing allows analyzing emotions in a healthier way and immersion leads to higher vulnerability. However, in psychotherapy, the relationship between these perspectives and clinical change has been less investigated. The present study aims to contribute to understanding how these variables evolve during psychotherapy and also to explore the therapist’s contributions to this process. This study analyzes a good-outcome case of emotion-focused therapy for depression through two observational measures of psychotherapy process: the measure of immersed and distanced speech – which identifies client’s adoption of an immersed or distanced stance when talking about their problems – and the helping skills system – which identifies therapist’s interventions focused on exploration, insight or action. Results showed a decrease of immersed speech and an increase of distanced speech along the process, with a higher frequency of exploration skills preceding both types of client’s speech. Finally, the evolution of therapist’s and client’s speech showed a reasonable flexibility of therapeutic dialogue throughout the sessions, in particular due to the evolution of client variables (evidencing a higher diversity of behaviors).
- Client's immersed and distanced speech and therapist's interventions in emotion-focused therapy for depression: an intensive analysis of a case studyPublication . Couto, Ana Bela; Barbosa, Eunice; Silva, Sara; Bento, Tiago; Teixeira, Ana Sofia; Salgado, Joào; Cunha, CarlaPrevious laboratory studies have explored the importance of participants adopting an immersed or distanced perspective in the analysis of their experiences. These studies concluded that distancing allows analyzing emotions in a healthier way and immersion leads to higher vulnerability. However, in psychotherapy, the relationship between these perspectives and clinical change has been less investigated. The present study aims to contribute to understanding how these variables evolve during psychotherapy and also to explore the therapist’s contributions to this process. This study analyzes a good-outcome case of emotion-focused therapy for depression through two observational measures of psychotherapy process: the measure of immersed and distanced speech – which identifies client’s adoption of an immersed or distanced stance when talking about their problems – and the helping skills system – which identifies therapist’s interventions focused on exploration, insight or action. Results showed a decrease of immersed speech and an increase of distanced speech along the process, with a higher frequency of exploration skills preceding both types of client’s speech. Finally, the evolution of therapist’s and client’s speech showed a reasonable flexibility of therapeutic dialogue throughout the sessions, in particular due to the evolution of client variables (evidencing a higher diversity of behaviors).
- Dialogism in detail: Per Linell’s Rethinking language, mind, and world dialogically and its potentialsPublication . Lourenço, Pedro; Basto, Isabel; Cunha, Carla; Bento, TiagoPer Linell’s (2009) book Rethinking language, mind, and world dialogically offers an integrated view upon the many strands of Dialogism, establishing itself as an essential reference to the field. In this review of his book we aim to discuss a few selected topics, building upon these with our own views. Initially, we focus on the relevance and urgency of such book by summing up the most important dialogical concepts presented by it. Following our initial argument, we move on to the discussion of contrasts between monological and dialogical perspectives, the concepts of extended mind and the interworld, suggesting Dialogism as an ontology, and finally, reflecting upon the relation between intersubjectivity and alterity. We conclude our review by stressing how Linell’s book contributes to the unification of an entanglement of different dialogical theories and perspectives, crafting a solid meta-theory. This integration paves the way
- A dynamic look at narrative change in psychotherapy: A case study tracking innovative moments and protonarratives using state space gridsPublication . Ribeiro, António P.; Bento, Tiago; Salgado, João; Stiles, William B.; Gonçalves, Miguel M.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.
- Fluctuation in the Assimilation of Problematic Experiences: A Case Study of Dynamic Systems AnalysisPublication . Basto, Isabel; Stiles, William B.; Bento, Tiago; Pinheiro, Patrícia; Mendes, Inês; Rijo, Daniel; Salgado, JoãoDynamic systems theory suggests that instability can be a key element in the promotion of human change processes. Several studies have confirmed an association between unstable patterns and successful psychotherapeutic outcome. Somewhat similarly, the assimilation model of psychotherapeutic change argues that clinical change occurs through the integration of problematic experiences that initially threaten the stability of the self. This study examined how instability in assimilation levels was related to assimilation progress and change in symptom intensity, within and across sessions, in a good-outcome case of Emotion Focused Therapy. We used the assimilation of problematic experiences scales (APES) to measure assimilation and the outcome-questionnaire (OQ-10) to measure clinical symptom intensity. To assess assimilation instability, we used a fluctuation measure that calculated the amplitude and the frequency of changes in assimilation levels. To analyze the structural relationships between variables we used a dynamic factor model. The results showed that APES level and APES fluctuation tended to increase across treatment, while OQ-10 scores tended to decrease. However, contrary to expectations, the dynamic factor model showed no significant associations between APES fluctuation and OQ-10 scores either within sessions or between adjacent sessions.
- Narrative Therapy vs. Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for moderate depression: Empirical evidence from a controlled clinical trialPublication . Lopes, Rodrigo T.; Gonçalves, Miguel M.; Machado, Paulo P.P.; Sinai, Dana; Bento, Tiago; Salgado, JoãoSystematic studies of the efficacy of Narrative Therapy (NT) for depression are sparse.
- Positioning Microanalysis: Studying the Self Through the Exploration of Dialogical ProcessesPublication . Salgado, João; Cunha, Carla; Bento, TiagoSelf-multiplicity is a widely recognized phenomenon within psychology. The study of how self-continuity emerges amidst self-multiplicity remains a crucial issue, however. Dialogical approaches are widely viewed as suitable for developing this field of study but they demand coherent methods compatible with their theoretical bases. After reviewing the available methods for the study of the dialogical self, as well as other dialogical methods for the study of psychotherapy, we conclude that we still lack a method which can be used by external observers and is devoted to the systematic tracing of the dialogical dynamics of self-positions as they unfold over time. A new method, positioning microanalysis, is described in detail as a possible way to overcome current limitations in methods focused on the dialogicality inherent in selfhood processes. Positioning microanalysis takes a genetic-developmental perspective on dialogical processes in the self and allows for the depiction of microgenetic movements of self-positions over time and the establishment of more or less stable sequences or patterns of positions. This is illustrated by its application to an emotion-focused therapy session.
- Self-Narrative Reconstruction in Psychotherapy: Looking at Different Levels of Narrative DevelopmentPublication . Ribeiro, António P.; Bento, Tiago; Gonçalves, Miguel M.; Salgado, JoãoThis commentary focuses on Cross’s (2010, this issue) work as an opportunity to elaborate upon how to study narrativedialogical processes from the perspective of complexity. We start by elaborating on the notion that narrative development is a multidimensional activity that extends through several organizational levels and on the limitations of conventional research methods for narrative analysis. Following this, we focus on our experience of research on narrative change in perspective, clients’ problematic self-narratives can be challenged by the emergence of innovative ways of thinking and behaving that the client narrates during the therapeutic conversation (innovative moments or i-moments). Our results suggest that the reconstruction of a person’s self-narrative depends on the structure of relations between i-moments, rather than on the mere accumulation of i-moments. Therefore, we are particularly interested in looking at how clusters of i-moments create a pattern, which we call protonarrative. We are interested in the dynamic processes between former self-narrative, i-moments, protonarratives and new emergent self-narratives. Hence, we have developed a research strategy that allows tracking these different levels of narrative development in psychotherapy. In the remaining of our commentary we will briefly present our research strategy.
- Semiotic Mechanisms and the Dialogicality of the Self: Commentary on Carriere (2013), Minikes (2013), and Wall (2013)Publication . Bento, TiagoThe semiotically mediated nature of human experience is being increasingly stressed in contemporary psychology. In this paper, the consistency of this axiomatic assumption with the type of communicational constructivism being proposed by dialogical models of selfhood processes is explored. A general semiotic conception if the dialogical self is suggested that characterizes it as a semiotic pre-‐adaptive system. It is described as a fuzzy control system that equilibrates operating field forces to delimitate a locus for meaning construction in immediate future. The contribution of the semiotic mechanisms proposed by Carriere (2013), Minikes (2013), and Wall (2013) for the operation of this pre-‐adaptive system is stressed and the nested operation of semiotic processing, sign convergence and semiotic switches within the pre-‐ adaptive system is elaborated. Other possible ways through which those semiotic mechanisms enable us to specify the dynamically intertwined processes that constitute the dialogical self are also elaborated.
- The Narrative Model of Therapeutic Change: An Exploratory Study Tracking Innovative Moments and Protonarratives Using State Space GridsPublication . Bento, Tiago; Ribeiro, António P.; Salgado, João; Mendes, Inês; Gonçalves, Miguel M.Despite the popularity of narrative approaches to the change in psychotherapy, a better understanding of how narrative transformation facilitates therapeutic change is needed. Research on innovative moments (IMs) has explored how IMs in psychotherapy evolve over time. We expand upon past studies by exploring how IMs become aggregated in narrative threads, termed protonarratives, which come to constitute an alternative self-narrative at the conclusion of therapy. The results suggest that the good outcome case had a different pattern of IM integration within protonarratives, revealing greater flexibility than the poor outcome case. These results support the heuristic value of the concept of the protonarrative.