title: Maintenance and transformation of problematic self-narratives: a semiotic-dialogical approach.
abstract: This study focuses on how the emergence of innovative moments (IMs), which are exceptions to a person's dominant self-narrative (i.e., his or her usual way of understanding and experiencing), progresses to the construction of a new self-narrative. IMs challenge a person's current framework of understanding and experiencing, generating uncertainty. When uncertainty is excessively threatening, a semiotic strategy to deal with it often emerges: attenuation of novelty's meanings and implications by a quick return to the dominant self-narrative. From a dialogical perspective, a dominant voice (which organizes one's current self-narrative) and a non-dominant or innovative voice (expressed during IMs) establish a cyclical relation, mutual in-feeding, blocking self-development. In this article, we analyze a successful psychotherapeutic case focusing on how the relation between dominant and non-dominant voices evolves from mutual in-feeding to other forms of dialogical relation. We have identified two processes: (1) escalation of the innovative voice(s) thereby inhibiting the dominant voice and (2) dominant and innovative voices negotiating and engaging in joint action.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of Minho, 4710, Braga, Portugal. id2218@alunos.uminho.pt
authors.forename: António P
authors.initials: AP
authors.lastname: Ribeiro
authors.forename: Miguel M
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: Gonçalves
mesh_terms: D032882:Comprehension; D006801:Humans; D008960:Models, Psychological; D011613:Psychotherapy / Q000379:methods*; D012649:Self Concept