Exploring Innovative Moments and Change Processes in Psychotherapy

Miguel M. Gonçalves, Professor of Psychology at School of Psychology, University of Minho, Portugal
CREST seminar 26th May 2022

In this presentation the major tools that our team developed studying psychotherapy from a narrative and dialogical perspective will be presented. From this perspective, psychotherapy is conceived as a form of constructing and elaborating on new ways of functioning (e.g. new actions, new meanings) that challenges the former problematic pattern of meaning, leading to the emergence of a new alternative pattern meaning. The events tracked in the conversation between therapists and clients in which these novelties emerged were termed innovative moments, and I speculate that innovative moments have the potential of creating a virtuous cycle in which new forms of functioning prompt disruptions in the former pattern of meaning, leading to the emergence of new innovative moments, creating at last the emergence of an alternative pattern of meaning. We also studied how these virtuous cycles may be interrupted by the emergence of ambivalence, and how ambivalence is resolved in therapy. I will discuss similarities between this model of change, and other models. Finally, strategies that may be used in the future to prompt innovative moments, and deal with ambivalence in therapy will be also addressed.

Biography
Miguel's main research interests focus on narrative and dialogical processes in psychotherapy. He and his team have developed the concept of innovative moment, as events in psychotherapy in which novelties to a previous problematic pattern emerge and contribute to meaningful change. This concept has been inspiring his research projects from the past few years, allowing the study of change, ambivalence to change and resolution of ambivalence. Despite his main research interest on psychotherapy, the concepts and methods his team developed to study the psychotherapy process, have been applied on other related domains, like vocational counselling and academic underachievement.