Self-Narrative Reconstruction in Psychotherapy: Looking at Different Levels of Narrative Development

Ribeiro, António P.; Bento, Tiago; Gonçalves, Miguel M.; Salgado, João

http://hdl.handle.net/10400.24/1564

Use this identifier to reference this record.

Name:	Description:	Size:	Format:
Self-Narrative Reconstruction in Psychoterapy.pdf		240.13 KB	Adobe PDF	Download

Send Feedback

Authors

Abstract(s)

This 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.