The role of mutual in-feeding in maintaining problematic self-narratives: exploring one path to therapeutic failure.
According to the author's narrative model of change, clients may maintain a problematic self-stability across therapy, leading to therapeutic failure, by a mutual in-feeding process, which involves a cyclical movement between two opposing parts of the self. During innovative moments (IMs) in the therapy dialogue, clients' dominant self-narrative is interrupted by exceptions to that self-narrative, but subsequently the dominant self-narrative returns. The authors identified return-to-the-problem markers (RPMs), which are empirical indicators of the mutual in-feeding process, in passages containing IMs in 10 cases of narrative therapy (five good-outcome cases and five poor-outcome cases) with females who were victims of intimate violence. The poor-outcome group had a significantly higher percentage of IMs with RPMs than the good-outcome group. The results suggest that therapeutic failures may reflect a systematic return to a dominant self-narrative after the emergence of novelties (IMs).
Gonçalves
Miguel M
MM
School of Psychology, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal. mgoncalves@psi.uminho.pt
Ribeiro
António P
AP
Stiles
William B
WB
Conde
Tatiana
T
Matos
Marlene
M
Martins
Carla
C
Santos
Anita
A
D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000328:Adult; D003674:Defense Mechanisms; D003866:Depressive Disorder / Q000523:psychology / Q000628:therapy*; D004532:Ego; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007389:Internal-External Control; D008875:Middle Aged; D008960:Models, Psychological; D033262:Narration; D010555:Personality Inventory / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011340:Problem Solving; D011369:Professional-Patient Relations; D011594:Psychometrics; D011613:Psychotherapy / Q000379:methods*; D013179:Spouse Abuse / Q000523:psychology* / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D017211:Treatment Failure; D055815:Young Adult