Lynne Angus

York University · Department of Psychology

Objective: Over the past 25 years, humanistic psychotherapy (HP) researchers have actively contributed to the development and implementation of innovative practice-informed research measures and coding systems. Method: Qualitative and quantitative research findings, including meta-analyses, support the identification of HP approaches as evidence...

Personality researchers use the term self-narrative to refer to the development of an overall life story that places life events in a temporal sequence and organizes them in accordance to overarching themes. In turn, it is often the case that clients seek out psychotherapy when they can no longer make sense of their life experiences, as a coherent...

Objective: While the individual contributions of narrative and emotion processes to psychotherapy outcome have been the focus of recent interest in psychotherapy research literature, the empirical analysis of narrative and emotion integration has rarely been addressed. The Narrative-Emotion Processes Coding System (NEPCS) was developed to provide...

This paper addresses the fundamental contributions of client narrative disclosure in psychotherapy and its importance for the elaboration of new emotional meanings and self understanding in the context of Emotion-focused therapy (EFT) of depression. An overview of the multi-methodological steps undertaken to empirically investigate the contribution...

In this study, we identified therapist responses preceding clients’ engagement in productive narrative-emotion shifts in four successful cases of emotion-focused therapy for trauma (EFTT; Paivio & Angus, 2017). Twelve sessions were selected across three phases of EFTT from Paivio et al.’s (2010) clinical trial based on client recovery data and ther...

tract Narrative-emotion process markers have been an important focus of investigation to understand psychotherapeutic processes and therapeutic change. This article presents the Portuguese translation and cross-cultural adaptation of the Narrative-Emotion Process Coding System 2.0, which involved six steps: translation of the original instrument by...

The corrective emotional experience (CEE) has been found to be a key change agent in psychotherapy (Castonguay & Hill, 2012). Is the same true for supervision? This study examines the occurrence and correlates of corrective experiences in psychotherapy supervision through observation of 11 videotaped supervision sessions with expert supervisors usi...

Emotion-focused therapy offers a setting in which clients report on their personal experiences, some of which involve intense moments of distress. This article examines video-recorded interactional sequences of client distress displays and therapist responses. Two main findings extend understanding of embodied actions clients display as both a coll...

Seguimiento de la interacción de los procesos de cambio narrativo y emocional en sesiones de terapia: Sistema 2.0 de codificación de video del proceso narrativo-emocional Estudios recientes sugieren que es el procesamiento reflexivo y regulado de las emociones emergentes, que surge en el contexto de la narración personal, que a menudo se asocia con...

Objectives: This study examined the combined effect of therapist Facilitative Interpersonal Skills (FIS) and Training Status on experiential processes within therapy sessions. In this randomized trial of FIS and Training Status, we predicted that in-session experiential processes would be highest for the high FIS and trained therapist group and low...

Despite the importance of narrative, emotional and meaning-making processes in psychotherapy, there has been no review of studies using the main instruments developed to address these processes. The objective is to review the studies about client narrative and narrative-emotional processes in psychotherapy that used the Narrative Process Coding Sys...

Goals Securing clients’ active and enthusiastic collaboration to participate in activities therapists would like to implement in therapy (e.g., free association, in vivo exposure, or the engagement in chair work) is a core mission in therapy. However, from the clients’ perspective, these tasks frequently represent novel challenges that can trigger...

In this chapter, the case is made that the procedure for memory reconsolidation (MR) is compatible with the strategies and interventions of modern psychodynamic psychotherapy. In particular the concept of the corrective emotional experience (CEE) is seen as integral to the MR process. A measure (the Narrative-Emotional Processing Coding System [NEP...

Objective: We explored the interactive process in which therapists respond to client self-critical positions. Methods: Drawing from the resources of conversation analysis (CA), we examined a corpus of in-session self-critical sequences of talk occurring in different kinds of treatments: Client Centered Therapy, (CCT), Emotion Focused Therapy (EF...

Une évaluation systématique des résultats et progrès des patients est essentielle pour déterminer les effets de la psychothérapie et fournir des renseignements de qualité aux thérapeutes afin que ces derniers puissent ajuster les traitements. Dans le présent rapport, nous avons examiné les recherches sur le suivi des résultats et progrès, y compris...

Objective: In a secondary analysis of Friedlander et al.'s [(2018). “If those tears could talk, what would they say?” multi-method analysis of a corrective experience in brief dynamic therapy. Psychotherapy Research, 28, 217–234. doi:10.1080/10503307.2016.1184350] case study of Hanna Levenson’s Brief Dynamic Therapy over Time (from APA’s Psychother...

This article reviews evidence from developmental, clinical, and psychotherapy process literature about storying emotional experience as a pathway toward change for clients with complex posttraumatic stress. Capacities for emotion regulation, mentalizing, and autobiographical memory storytelling emerge in childhood relationships (Cassidy, 1994; Fona...

According to a narrative-emotion informed psychotherapy approach, individuals enter psychotherapy when their narratives lack flexibility and emotional coherence. Effective psychotherapy helps clients in creating a self-narrative that enables new meaning-making. The Narrative-Emotion Process Coding System Version 2.0 is a measure that consists of 10...

This paper examines the interactional accomplishment of chair work, which is one type of therapeutic intervention for exploring client emotions in Emotion Focused Therapy (EFT). During this intervention, therapists guide clients to speak with either a conflicted aspect of self (two-chair work) or with a non-present significant other to address unre...

Objective: This study aimed to further understand how narrative flexibility contributes to therapeutic outcome in brief psychotherapy for depression utilizing the Narrative-Emotion Process Coding System (NEPCS), an observational measure that identifies specific markers of narrative and emotion integration in therapy sessions. Method: The present st...

A corrective experience (CE) is one “in which a person comes to understand or experience affectively an event or relationship in a different and unexpected way” (Castonguay & Hill, 2012, p. 5). CEs disconfirm clients’ expectations based on past problematic experiences, and can be emotional, relational, behavioral, and/or cognitive. This qualitative...

Although the concept of corrective experiences (CEs) is usually linked to the process of change in psychotherapy patients, we investigated them in the professional development of therapists-in-training. Inasmuch as psychotherapy is a relational process, it is important to look closely at how therapists reach the position of a competent partner in c...

Corrective experiences (CEs), which suggest transformative experience(s) for the psychotherapy patient, have a rich theoretical history; yet there is little empirical information on patients’ own perceptions of what gets “corrected” from therapy, and what is “corrective” (i.e., the mechanisms driving the CE). To address this gap, we investigated 14...

This article introduces a series of 4 original research reports that used varied qualitative methods for understanding an internationally diverse sample of clients’ own accounts of corrective experiences (CEs), as they looked back on their completed psychotherapy. The basis for all studies, which were conducted across 4 different countries, was the...

The Patient Perceptions of Corrective Experiences in Individual Therapy (PPCEIT; Constantino, Angus, Friedlander, Messer, & Moertl, 2011) posttreatment interview guide was developed to provide clinical researchers with an effective mode of inquiry to identify and further explore clients’ firsthand accounts of corrective and transformative therapy e...

Objective: Recent studies suggest that it is not simply the expression of emotion or emotional arousal in session that is important, but rather it is the reflective processing of emergent, adaptive emotions, arising in the context of personal storytelling and/or Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT) interventions, that is associated with change. Method:...

The purpose of the present study was to qualitatively investigate clients' posttherapy accounts of corrective experiences-a proposed common factor and integrative principle of therapeutic change (Castonguay & Hill, 2012)-after completion of either a brief cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) or motivational interviewing (MI) integrated with CBT (MI-C...

We analyzed master theorist/therapist Hanna Levenson's six-session work with "Ann" in American Psychological Association's Theories of Psychotherapy video series to determine if and how this client had a corrective experience in Brief Dynamic Therapy. First, we identified indicators of a corrective experience in the therapist's and client's own wor...

Objective: This research explored the consolidation phase of emotion-focused therapy (EFT) for depression and studies-through a task-analysis method-how client-therapist dyads evolved from the exploration of the problem to self-narrative reconstruction. Method: Innovative moments (IMs) were used to situate the process of self-narrative reconstru...

The Narrative-Emotion Process Coding System (NEPCS) is a behavioral coding system that identifies eight client markers: Abstract Story, Empty Story, Unstoried Emotion, Inchoate Story, Same Old Story, Competing Plotlines Story, Unexpected Outcome Story, and Discovery Story. Each marker varies in the degree to which specific narrative and emotion pro...

Constructing adaptive narratives in therapy involves processing and symbolizing (i.e., storying) emotional experience (Angus & Greenberg, 2011), including ambivalence about change. The Narrative-Emotion Process Coding System (NEPCS; Boritz et al., 2014) is a standardized tool for coding in-session client behaviors that indicate 10 underlying narrat...

Qualitative data acquired within the recent Czech part of the independent, multi-site collaborative research project Corrective Experiences are the core basis of this paper. Eight post-treatment interviews with clients of individual therapies were analysed with a special focus on the role of cultural beliefs and cultural expectations in the clients...

Within emotion-focused therapy (EFT), the client’s ability to express and reflect on core emotional experiences is seen as fundamental to constructing the self and to entering into a change process. For this study, we 1) examine storytelling contexts in which clients do not disclose the emotional impact of their narrative, and 2) identify the inter...

This paper explores the development of therapeutic collaboration in Person-Centered Therapy (PCT). It presents a good outcome case – “Mary” – selected from York I Depression Study, treated with PCT. The study examined how therapist and client worked together throughout the therapy, using the Therapeutic Collaboration Coding System (TCCS). The TCCS...

Individuals seek therapy when self-narratives fail to align with lived experience, and fail to create a basis for emotion regulation and flexible meaning-making. Constructing new narratives in therapy involves processing and symbolizing emotional experience (Angus & Greenberg, 2011). The Narrative-Emotion Processes Coding System (NEPCS; Boritz et a...

Objective: Ambivalence can be understood as a cyclical movement between an emerging narrative novelty-an Innovative Moment (IM)-and a return to a problematically dominant self-narrative. The return implies that the IM, with its potential for change is devalued right after its emergence. Our goal is to test the hypothesis that the probability of th...

Abstract Objective: Over the past 25 years, humanistic psychotherapy (HP) researchers have actively contributed to the development and implementation of innovative practice-informed research measures and coding systems. Method: Qualitative and quantitative research findings, including meta-analyses, support the identification of HP approaches as ev...

This article examines how Emotion-focused therapists use person-centred relational practices to re-affiliate with clients after clients have disagreed with therapists’ formulations of clients’ personal experience. Using the methods of conversation analysis, 70 client disagreements were identified from 15 video-taped sessions of Emotion-focused psyc...

Drawing on a Dialectical Constructivist model of therapeutic change, this paper addresses the fundamental contributions of client narrative disclosure, emotional differentiation and reflexive meaning-making processes in emotion-focused treatments of depression. An overview of the multi-methodological steps undertaken to empirically investigate the...

The focus of this article is the increasingly narrow range of therapeutic orientations represented in clinical psychology graduate training programs, particularly within the most research‐oriented programs. Data on the self‐reported therapeutic orientations of faculty at “clinical science” Ph.D. programs, Ph.D. programs at comprehensive universitie...

Drawing on a Dialectical Constructivist model of therapeutic change, this paper addresses the fundamental contributions of client narrative disclosure, emotional differentiation and reflexive meaning-making processes in emotion-focused treatments of depression. An overview of the multi-methodological steps undertaken to empirically investigate the...

Argues that narrative is the essential process through which individuals construct meaningful experiences. Thus, understanding individuals involves inspecting the characteristics of their narratives. Three central elements of the narrative need to be considered: (1) structure—the level of coherence and connectedness between different elements in th...

According to the narrative approach, change in self-narratives is an important part of successful psychotherapy. In this view, several authors have highlighted the usefulness of narrating new experiences (like actions, thoughts, and stories) during therapy in contrast with maladaptive client self-narratives. These new experiences are termed here in...

The present study explored the mental health literacy of young adults (18–24 years of age), in comparison to older adults (25–64 years of age), in a national survey of the mental health literacy of Canadians. Overall, both age groups demonstrated adequate mental health literacy and yet young adults, especially males, preferred to manage problems on...

Previous studies have used the Innovative Moments Coding System (IMCS) to describe the process of change in Narrative Therapy (NT) and in Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT). This study aims to extend this research program to a sample of Client-Centered Therapy (CCT). The IMCS was applied to six cases of CCT for depression to track the Innovative Moments...

Previous studies have used the Innovative Moments Coding System (IMCS) to describe the process of change in Narrative Therapy (NT) and in Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT). This study aims to extend this research program to a sample of Client-Centered Therapy (CCT). The IMCS was applied to six cases of CCT for depression to track the Innovative Moments...

After 5 years of conceptualizing, investigating, and writing about corrective experiences (CEs), we (the authors of this chapter) met to talk about what we learned. In this chapter, we summarize our joint understanding of (a) the definition of CEs; (b) the contexts in which CEs occur; (c) client, therapist, and external factors that facilitate CEs;...

Angus and her colleagues have examined the importance of metaphor and narratives in their patients' lives, particularly the expression of emotion-laden metaphors by patients who have received serious psychological or physical illness diagnoses. What seems to be particularly important in these emotion-laden metaphors is that they allow patients to e...

In a dialogical perspective, self is described in a constant process of self positioning and repositioning. So, the identification of the self positions assumed by a person in therapeutic conversation is important to understand the organizational patterns and mechanisms involved in change process. On the other hand, the work on the Innovative Momen...

How do clients change is still a demanding question in psychotherapy research. Within the dialogical studies, there have been varied contributions on how the metaphor of the self as a multiplicity of voices can help our understanding of clients’ problems and changes. In this study, the case of “Lisa”, a successful case of emotion-­focused therapy,...

While Motivational Interviewing (MI) has demonstrated efficacy, little is known about the mechanisms through which MI achieves beneficial effects or how clients perceive the process of MI. The present study addressed this gap through a qualitative analysis of client accounts following four sessions of MI for generalized anxiety disorder. Clients id...

Innovative moments (IMs) are exceptions to a client's problematic self-narrative in the therapeutic dialogue. The innovative moments coding system is a tool which tracks five different types of IMs-action, reflection, protest, reconceptualization and performing change. An in-depth qualitative analysis of six therapeutic cases of emotion-focused the...

Motivational Interviewing (MI) has recently been applied to the treatment of anxiety disorders in an effort to bolster engagement with and response rates to cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). In a recent randomized control trial, the addition of MI as a pretreatment compared to no pretreatment was found to significantly improve response to CBT for...

Clinically depressed individuals have consistently been shown to demonstrate a bias for overgeneral autobiographical memory (ABM) disclosure, a strategy used to protect against the access of intense, primary emotions that may accompany specific memories. The present study examined how ABM specificity in client narratives was related to expressed em...

Clinically depressed individuals have consistently been shown to demonstrate a bias for overgeneral autobiographical memory (ABM) disclosure, a strategy used to protect against the access of intense, primary emotions that may accompany specific memories. The present study examined how ABM specificity in client narratives was related to expressed em...

The innovative approach to assessing autobiographical memory narratives that Singer and Bonalume (2010) demonstrate in their case study of Cynthia is an ambitious expression of integrative psychotherapy research. It brings together the rich research findings on self-defining memories derived from laboratory studies and therapy case analyses, and ap...

The aim of this study was to advance understanding of how clients construct their own process of change in effective therapy sessions. Toward this end, the authors applied a narrative methodological tool for the study of the change process in emotion-focused therapy (EFT), replicating a previous study done with narrative therapy (NT). The Innovativ...

This article presents an intensive analysis of a good-outcome case of emotionfocused therapy—the case of Lisa—using the Innovative Moments Coding System (IMCS). IMCS, influenced by narrative therapy, conceptualizes narrative change as resulting from the elaboration and expansion of narrative exceptions or unique outcomes to a client’s core problema...

Change processes have been studied from a variety of clinical and theoretical approaches. Within the dialogical studies, this question has become the following: how do clients position themselves in ways that lead to change? A promising research path towards a deeper understanding of these processes is to assume a microanalytic focus on the course...

Expectancy violations have generally been neglected in psychotherapy research but may have important implications for therapy process and outcome. A qualitative approach was used to examine discrepancies between actual experience and expectations in client posttreatment accounts of cognitive-behavioural therapy. Nine good- and nine poor-outcome cas...

The innovative approach to assessing autobiographical memory narratives that Singer and Bonalume (2010) demonstrate in their case study of Cynthia is an ambitious expression of integrative psychotherapy research. It brings together the rich research findings on self-defining memories derived from laboratory studies and therapy case analyses, and ap...