The Narrative Model of Therapeutic Change: An Exploratory Study Tracking Innovative Moments and Protonarratives Using State Space Grids

Abstract

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 on 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.

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to Leslie Greenberg and Lynne Angus from York University (Toronto, Canada) for allowing them to use the transcripts from the York I Depression Project.

This article was supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) via grants PTDC/PSI-PCL/121525/2010 (Ambivalence and unsuccessful psychotherapy, 2012–2015) and PTDC/PSI-PCL/103432/2008 (Decentering and Change in Psychotherapy) and by Ph.D. grants SFRH/BD/46189/2008 and SFRH/BD/48266/2008.