Guillem Feixas

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Verified

Guillem verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

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• Ph.D.
• Professor (Full) at University of Barcelona

Background Action mechanisms of therapeutic alliance in stepped and digital interventions remain unclear. Aims (a) To compare the development of therapeutic alliance between psychosocial treatment as usual (PTAU) and a stepped digital intervention designed to prevent distress in cancer patients; (b) to analyse the level of agreement between patien...

Based on the repertory grid technique, we developed Explore Your Meanings (EYME), a digital platform that helps patients explore identity values and internal conflicts using virtual reality (VR). EYME was part of a research project treating depression in young adults, including 10 weekly, 1‐h sessions aimed at changing personal constructs—cognitive...

Virtual environments like online videogames offer increasingly more people the opportunity to socialize purely within the digital plane. These interactions, often done through customizable avatars, have brought about the concept of the “virtual-self”, understood as the multiple identities that can be expressed in virtual environments. This can take...

Introduction The overvaluation of weight and shape is a diagnostic criterion in eating disorders, except in binge eating disorder (BED), where it has received less attention. This aspect is also not usually analyzed in people with overweight or obesity without an eating disorder. This research aims to identify the indicators of symptomatology, as w...

Discurs de recepció de Guillem Feixas i Viaplana com a membre numerari de la Secció de Filosofia i Ciències Socials, llegit el dia 6 de juny de 2024 ; resposta de Carles-Enric Riba i Campos, membre emèrit de la Secció de Filosofia i Ciències Socials. La identitat és un tema molt ampli i rellevant per a la majora de Ciències Socials i la Filosofia....

The third DSM-5 diagnostic criterion for borderline personality disorder (BPD) is "identity disturbance". Although there is no unanimous consensus on the precise nature of identity, it is commonly understood as a continuing sense of self. The ambiguity surrounding this definition of identity, further complicates the task of defining its disturbance...

Several studies have researched how people can use the anonymity of the Internet to explore different aspects of their identity. There are many different platforms where one can create a “virtual self” by actively choosing how one presents themselves to others, and each one is designed with different characteristics depending on their purpose: from...

This research aims to develop a Spanish version of the Moral Identity Questionnaire (MIQ) and evaluate its psychometric properties among the Spanish population. Spanish and English speakers developed a Spanish version of the Moral Identity Questionnaire (MIQ) through translation and back-translation. The translated MIQ was administered jointly with...

Urban-living individuals are exposed to many environmental factors that may combine and interact to influence mental health. While individual factors of an urban environment have been investigated in isolation, no attempt has been made to model how complex, real-life exposure to living in the city relates to brain and mental health, and how this is...

In this project, we explored the construal of virtual identity in online videogames. We interviewed 202 online videogame players from around the world and administered them the Repertory Grid Technique, adding an additional element of the self called the “virtual self” (understood as their most played character). We were able to explore how online...

El fenómeno de las autolesiones y los intentos de suicidio es complejo y requiere de modelos capaces de aportar información individualizada sobre cada caso para su prevención y tratamiento. El presente artículo explora cómo la teoría de constructos personales puede contribuir a la comprensión de estos acontecimientos. Se profundiza en la distinción...

Interpersonal perceptions have an impact on the quality of couple relationships but we want to examine the putative moderating role of gender considering personal meanings as the target of perception. We employed the Couple's Grid to measure interpersonal perception based on personal constructs and the Actor–Partner Interdependence Model (pooled re...

With the Internet becoming such a widespread part of our lives, many notions of how we construe our identity have changed, and another layer of complexity has been added to an already deep subject. The anonymity of the Internet and the capacity to customize how other people see us make it possible for anyone to create their own virtual identity wit...

Functional neurological disorders (FND) are a relatively common cause of neurological disability. Hypnosis follows brain processes similar to FNDs and may have therapeutic utility in this entity. This study aims to increasing the empirical evidence for the use of clinical hypnosis in patients with FND. This study aims to contribute to increasing th...

Our patients struggle to improve their mental health and wellbeing. However, the need for change is sometimes in conflict with implicit and idiosyncratic reasons for persistence in current dysfunctional patterns. From a constructivist point of view, well-intended recommendations for change in problematic thoughts and behaviors might involve some de...

Enhancing CBT with self-identity exploration using EYME-Explore Your Meanings: A digital platform using virtual reality, Guillem Feixas, University of Barcelona, Spain Can you turn into your own therapist?, Brenda E. Ryan, Institut d'Investigacions Biomèdiques August Pi i Sunyer (IDIBAPS), Barcelona, Spain What makes us trust virtual agents: th...

Background Despite the burden associated to depression, current standards of care are still limited in scope and effectiveness. In addition, therapy outcomes have frequently focused solely on symptoms, leaving patients’ wellbeing relatively unaddressed. Aims The objective of this study was to test whether two cognitive therapies increased subjecti...

Introduction Depressive symptoms are common in patients with Fibromyalgia (FM), a chronic and disabling pain syndrome. Psychological interventions are mostly focused in negative thinking and behavioural activation. However, several studies suggest that personal identity is also affected by FM. Objectives We aimed to examine the effects of Personal...

Introduction The long-lasting effects of trauma on mental health and the cumulative effect during the lifetime is one of the great interest in research and applied psychology. However, the effect of cumulative trauma in combination with cognitive biases, such as cognitive rigidity (“all-or-nothing” thinking pattern), on the severity of depression h...

Los dilemas de identidad personal señalan ámbitos en los que las personas se muestran ambivalentes, pues un cambio deseado en su forma de ser implica, a su vez, otro cambio no deseado en un aspecto central de su identidad. Comprobar si hay diferencias en la presencia y proporción de dilemas de identidad personal en la muestra de personas con diagnó...

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is a severe condition that has brought attention for a long time to mental health professionals due to the significant amount of psychological distress that can produce and the related high risk of suicidal behaviour. Although there are several psychotherapeutic approaches that are currently available for BPD,...

Explore Your Meanings (EYME) is a technology platform (eyme-vr.com) based on the repertory grid technique devised to capture your mental map for construing self and others. It begins with an automatized, structured interview for obtaining elements, eliciting constructs (dyadic method), and rating in a user-friendly interface. EYME provides a graphi...

Academic performance and flourishing are often blocked while the person struggles to understand what hinders their personal development. Core constructs generate personal goals that people can pursue in their life but implicative dilemmas (ID) might interfere in the achievement of their full potential. Procrastination, a common phenomenon among uni...

Aim: Young adults are facing an unprecedented increase of mental health problems. The dissemination of effective, personalized, and attractive psychological treatments for them is a pressing issue. In this case study we focus on the pilot testing of the virtual reality app EYME -Explore Your Meanings- as part of a treatment protocol for a young adu...

Previous research found that bereavement is associated with several pathological responses affecting both physical and mental health. During the COVID-19 pandemic and the socially disruptive measures implemented, losses of close contacts have occurred under exceptional circumstances, and it is reasonable to expect that many bereaved people would be...

Background Psychological interventions are commonly used to treat mild-to-moderate depression, but their efficacy in young adults has not been exhaustively addressed. This meta-analysis aims to establish it in comparison to no treatment, wait-list, usual treatment, passive interventions, and other bona-fide treatments. Methods The search was condu...

The aim of this project is to study the role that online videogames play in the way people build their identities. More specifically, the project is intended to study how people use online videogames and virtual avatars to explore alternative identities. It is possible for people to manifest entirely different versions of themselves through their v...

Background/Objective Fibromyalgia is a chronic pain syndrome that depressive symptoms can aggravate. The aim of the present study was to test the efficacy of Personal Construct Therapy (PCT), an approach that emphasizes identity features and interpersonal meanings as the focus of the treatment of depressive symptoms, in women with fibromyalgia. Me...

Aims: We aim to develop a Spanish version of the Guilt and Shame Proneness Scale (GASP) and evaluate its psychometric properties with a Spanish sample. Method: A Spanish version of the GASP was developed by Spanish and English speakers using translation and back-translation. The translated GASP was administered to a sample of 277 Spanish college st...

Declaración de Conflicto de intereses: Cabe señalar que el contenido del manuscrito y los datos de este trabajo no han sido publicados previamente, ni tampoco están siendo considerados en otra revista. ABSTRACT Introduction: After the declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic, health services have had to adapt to be delivered by eHealth tools. Cancer po...

Background The improvement of psychological treatments for depression in young adults is a pressing issue highlighted in the literature. Its relevance is determined not only because young adults are underrepresented in research, but also to prevent chronic severe mental health disorders later in life. Engagement is considered a key factor for a goo...

The importance of psychological factors in functional gastrointestinal disorders (FGID) is well-stablished in the literature; however, cognitive factors have hardly been researched and, in particular, cognitive conflicts have not been explored for these disorders. The aim of this study is to compare the cognitive and symptomatic characteristics of...

Beck’s cognitive model is one of the most popular for explaining depression. In a previous work, we assessed the presence of some of the cognitive features of Beck’s model (negative view of self and others, dichotomous thinking, low flexibility of thinking) in a clinical sample of patients with depressive symptoms by comparing them with controls. T...

The aim of this project is to study the role that new technologies have in the way people build their identity nowadays. More specifically, the project intends to study how people use videogame avatars to explore different alternative identities. It could be possible for people to manifest entirely different versions of themselves through their onl...

Using ultra-brief hypnosis in the treatment of conversion disorder: a naturalistic study Aims. Patients with Conversion Disorder (CD) present neurological symptoms which cannot be explained by a somatic dysfunction, usually appearing in the context of a conflict. These symptoms are perceived as involuntary and involve a hindrance in functioning, wh...

http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/gqxq-ng18 A unitary view of self does not render a fair picture of our experience of “self” and identity in the globalized and complex living context of our times. Rather, dialogical self theory joins other intellectual ventures arguing that self is multiple and constructed in the context of a diversity of dialogues. Howe...

Functional neurological disorders (FND) are a relatively common cause of neurological disability. Hypnosis follows brain processes similar to FNDs and may have therapeutic utility in this entity. This study aims to increasing the empirical evidence for the use of clinical hypnosis in patients with FND. This study aims to contribute to increasing th...

La Realidad Virtual (RV) permite que las personas se adentren en entornos tridimensionales generados por ordenador e interactúen con ellos. La capacidad para hacer sentir que el usuario está presente en una situación creada artificialmente la convierte en una herramienta con potencial para revolucionar la psicoterapia. La RV ha demostrado ser útil...

Los trastornos neurológicos funcionales (TNF) son una causa relativamente frecuente de discapacidad neurológica. La hipnosis sigue procesos cerebrales similares a los TNF y puede tener utilidad terapéutica en esta entidad. Este estudio pretende contribuir al apoyo empírico para el uso de la hipnosis clínica en pacientes con TNF. Para ello, se ejecu...

A unitary view of self does not render a fair picture of our experience of “self” and identity in the globalized and complex living context of our times. Rather, dialogical self theory joins other intellectual ventures arguing that self is multiple and constructed in the context of a diversity of dialogues. However, from a methodological point of v...

Workshop (pre-conference) Constructivist approaches (e.g., Feixas & Villegas, 2000; Neimeyer, 2009; Neimeyer & Mahoney, 1995) are oriented to tackle the exploration of the person’s complex system of meanings. Emotions, thoughts, and actions are coherent with that system. The self could be defined as the core of the construct system but, as dialogic...

Authors: Guillem Feixas and Joan M. Soldevilla, Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychobiology, Universitat de Barcelona Introduction: The most common clinical strategy for therapists using CBT is to focus their interventions on counteracting their patients’ dysfunctional cognitions and behaviors. However, a constructivist view of the cognitiv...

Guillem Feixas & Joan Miquel Soldevilla Alberti Universitat de Barcelona David A. Winter University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, U.K. Paper in Symposium Where is Personal Identity in the Cognitive Therapies? Presenters Simone Cheli - Center for Psychology & Health, Tages Charity, Florence, Italy Giovanni M. Ruggiero - Psicoterapia Cognitiva e Ric...

George Kelly introduced the notion of formulation in his personal construct psychology and its associated form of psychotherapy. The process of assessing and sharing the formulation, in which the clinician attempts to construe the construction processes of the client using a set of diagnostic constructs, is an example of what Kelly termed sociality...

Background: The improvement of psychological treatments for depression in young adults is a pressing issue highlighted in the literature. Its relevance is determined not only because young adults are underrepresented in research, but also to prevent chronic severe mental health disorders later in life. Engagement is considered a key factor for a go...

Introduction Eating disorders (EDs) are complex pathologies which require equally complex treatment strategies. These strategies should be multidisciplinary, personalised interventions, performed in appropriate settings along a healthcare continuum from inpatient to community care. Personalisation, and the complexity of levels of care and intervent...

It is becoming increasingly evident that the sense of personal identity is a keystone of psychological life and of the thorough understanding of human activity in virtually all domains. However, the exploration and study of self and identity has proved to be elusive and methodologically complex. Personal construct theory uses the notion of “core co...

GRIDCON (EYME) as a personalised alternative to questionnaires in consultancy in general, and in health organisations in particular.

(Resumen in Spanish below) (You can download slides both in English and Spanish) Psychotherapy has not escaped the widely used scheme in the psychology of dividing human activity into behaviors, thoughts, and emotions. Therefore, therapies place more emphasis on some of these components. However, this division distances us from a holistic vision, i...

Introduction: People with psychosis show impairments in cognitive flexibility, a phenomenon that is still poorly understood. In this study, we tested if there were differences in cognitive and metacognitive processes related to rigidity in patients with psychosis. We compared individuals with dichotomous interpersonal thinking and those with flexib...

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) represents a severe mental condition that is usually characterized by distressing identity disturbances. Although most prevailing explanatory models and psychotherapy approaches consider and intervene on self-concept, they seem not to recognize or explore idiosyncratic cognitive conflicts that patients may expe...

Introduction: CBT for depression aims to address distorted cognitions and behaviors. Therapists are trained to identify negative thinking and maladaptive behaviors and to counteract these patterns. Constructivist approaches are oriented to the exploration of the person’s complex system of meanings and to understand their thoughts and actions in coh...

The complexity of Eating Disorders (EDs) generates high personal and economic costs to patients, families, and the society. Various treatments have shown some effectiveness in EDs 1 , but outcomes are still far from satisfactory. Clinical guidelines have mainly relied on controlled efficacy studies to strengthen internal validity, compromising the...

Introduction Substance abuse among medical professionals is common and can lead to malpractice. The study of identity conflicts developed by the Psychology of Personal Constructs could explain part of this problem. Objectives This study aims to describe the medical professionals who abuse substances in terms of their personal construing process an...

A constructivist view of the cognitive system contemplates the possibility of meaning conflicts or dilemmas involving self-identity. Patients’ contradictions between verbal discourse and actual behaviors (e.g., agreeing with the therapist to carry on an action and then not doing it), or between behaviors (e.g., to dismiss a romantic partner and the...

Introduction. A negative self-concept has been established as one of the key psychological features of depression. However, several studies have shown that a particular kind of cognitive conflict, implicative dilemma, is highly prevalent in depression. Objectives. This study aimed to gauge the relative significance of both aspects, self-negativity...

Objective: The study explored the presence of different patterns of change in a sample of patients who received cognitive therapy for depression sequentially in two different formats: group and individual. Our hypothesis was that patients' baseline characteristics (e.g., symptom severity, self-esteem) would discriminate patterns of response to grou...

The Session Rating Scale 3.0 (SRS 3.0) is an ultra-brief measure of the therapeutic alliance, frequently used to provide feedback to the clinician during the therapeutic process (Prescott et al. [2017]. Feedback-informed treatment in clinical practice. Reaching for excellence. American Psychological Association (APA). http://www.apa.org/pubs/books/...

Background People with psychosis experience significant emotional burden and distress associated with the symptomatic consequences of their mental disorder, thus difficulting their recovery. Several studies have found self-reflectivity, a dimension of cognitive insight, to be associated with effects which taken together may seem paradoxical, by pre...

Highlights • Interventions focusing on self-discrepancies could be applied transdiagnostically to psychosis and depression. • Women with psychosis might be the group most affected by feelings of resentment. • Women with psychosis or depression may benefit from working therapeutically with the use of more modulated ‘‘shades of grey’’ in evaluation...

Disturbances in personal identity are recognized in psychosis and depression. However, it is not known whether these disruptions share common processes across clinical groups, or whether there are unique alterations by group or between men and women within each clinical group. To advance on this question, we compared personal identity dimensions in...

Introducción: A pesar de que los tratamientos psico-oncológicos han demostrado su efectividad en disminuir el malestar emocional y mejorar la calidad de vida de las personas con cáncer, aún existen numerosas barreras que limitan su acceso. La transformación a online de esta atención se plantea como una solución para aumentar la cobertura del servic...

This file is the PROSPERO registration of the systematic review recently published in Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy: García‐Mieres H, Niño‐Robles N, Ochoa S, Feixas G (2019). Exploring identity and personal meanings in psychosis using the repertory grid technique: A systematic review. Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy 26, 717–733. DOI: 10....

This is the study protocol registered in ClinicalTrials.gov (Identifier: NCT03820362) of the study recently published in Schizophrenia Bulletin: García-Mieres H, Villaplana A, López-Carrilero R, Grasa E, Barajas A, Pousa E, Feixas G, Ochoa S (2019). The Role of Personal Identity on Positive and Negative Symptoms in Psychosis: A Study Using the Rep...

La violencia de pareja contra las mujeres constituye un problema social y de salud pública. Por ello, la Terminación de una Relación de pareja Violenta (TRV) ha sido objeto de múltiples investigaciones e intervenciones en el área de la salud y los servicios sociales. Aunque hay consenso en considerar la separación psicológica (SP) como un component...

(1) Background: This study aims to explore the usefulness of personal construct psychology as a comprehensive framework and assessment tool to embrace a diversity of selfknowledge organization constructs, and to account for developmental differences across adolescence. (2) Methods: The repertory grid technique was used to measure selfknowledge diff...

Background: Fibromyalgia (FM) is a debilitating syndrome, more prevalent in women, which is aggravated by the presence of depressive symptoms. In the last decade, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) has demonstrated to reduce such depressive symptoms and pain in these patients, but there are still a considerable number of them who do not respond to...

This study aims to describe health professionals who abuse substances in terms of their personal construing process and other associated psychological measures. Thirty health professionals hospitalized because of a substance use disorder in a specialized clinic were recruited for this study. In the same way as in previous studies carried out in cli...

Aims: 1) Describe the challenges and success implementing comprehensive data in a complex multicentre psycotherapy centered service. 2) From the Y1 baseline data to present a comprehensive picture of the state of clients entering integrated treatments mainly for Eating Disorders (ED). 3) Analyse the psychometrics of the self-report measures notin...

La marcada complejidad de los Trastornos de la Conducta Alimentaria (TCA) requiere consecuentemente programas de tratamiento altamente complejos. Estos deben garantizar la continuidad asistencial a través de diferentes dispositivos coordinados, ser suficientemente personalizados y flexibles y combinar diferentes componentes terapéuticos. 325 pacien...

Previous investigations have found specific communication patterns in couples dealing with depression, specifically when depression concurs with conjugal conflicts. The presence of these patterns can reflect couples' difficulties in engaging in collaborative communication during their sessions, posing a real challenge for therapists. This explorato...

Current research and clinical practice in person‐centered approaches highlight the importance of self, identity, and personal meanings in psychosis. Previous research has focused on dimensions of self, but less attention has been paid to the personal meanings involved in identity. The Personal Construct Theory framework and the Repertory Grid Techn...

When faced with a personal problem people typically give better advice to others than to themselves. A previous study showed how it is possible to enact internal dialogue in virtual reality (VR) through participants alternately occupying two different virtual bodies – one representing themselves and the other Sigmund Freud. They could maintain a se...

Abstract Background People with psychosis experience disruptions in personal identity that affect positive and negative symptoms, but the complexity of these phenomena needs to be addressed in an in-depth manner. Using the Personal Construct Theory, we examined whether distinct dimensions of personal identity, as measured with the Repertory Grid Te...

Desde finales del siglo XX la práctica basada en la evidencia ha sido el paradigma de referencia para establecer la eficacia de los tratamientos sin que ello estuviera exento de controversia. Algunos autores cuestionan seguir un modelo de investigación médico que tiene limitaciones importantes al aplicarse a la investigación en psicoterapia. Por ot...

Aim. To describe the challenges and success in implementing comprehensive data collection. To learn from the first year of data collection, focusing mainly on the baseline data as many clients are in continuing therapy and present a comprehensive picture of the state of patients entering integrated treatments for Eating Disorders (ED). To analyse a...

Introduction: Several studies have noted the potentially negative effect of eating disorders (ED) on cognitive performance. Objective: To compare the impact of the duration of abnormal eating behaviors on cognitive performance in a sample of people with short- and long-term eating disorders and in two control groups matched for age. Method: The neu...

This is a reprint of Botella, L. y Feixas, G. (1992). The autobiographical group: A tool for the reconstruction of past life experience with the aged. The International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 36, 303-319. The book reference is J. Hendricks, ed., The meaning of reminiscence and life review, pp., 141-157, Baywood Pub. Co., Nova Yor...

The main objective of this study is to identify fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS) clusters using the Revised Fibromyalgia Impact Questionnaire (FIQR); and to examine whether the clusters differ in sociodemographic characteristics, clinical measures, direct and indirect costs, levels of inflammatory markers and brain morphometry. A hierarchical cluster an...

This article identifies common features of existing models of radicalization and deradicalization, such as the transition from uncertainty to certainty, before integrating these in a model based upon personal construct theory. It is proposed that the personal construct concepts of validation and invalidation are particularly relevant to processes o...

Background/Objective The comorbidity of depression and fibromyalgia chronic syndrome has been well documented in the literature; however, the cognitive structure of these patients has not been assessed. Previous results reported variability in cognitive rigidity in depressive patients, the key for this might be the presence of chronic physical pain...

Processes of identity reconstruction and reconstruction can be considered to be central to human meaning-making and personal transitions. They involve delicate balancing of the need for belonging with that for differentiation; and of the need for change in aspects of identity with that for continuity and coherence. The various theoretical approache...