Fluctuation in the Assimilation of Problematic Experiences: A Case Study of Dynamic Systems Analysis.

Dynamic 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.

Narrative therapy vs. cognitive-behavioral therapy for moderate depression: empirical evidence from a controlled clinical trial.

Background: Systematic studies of the efficacy of Narrative Therapy (NT) for depression are sparse.

Objective: To evaluate the efficacy of individual NT for moderate depression in adults compared to Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT).

Method: Sixty-three depressed clients were assigned to either NT or CBT.

Positioning microanalysis: studying the self through the exploration of dialogical processes.

Self-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.

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

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.