Narrative coherence in brief good-outcome client-centered psychotherapy

The present study explored the theoretical assumption, made by narrative psychologists, that psychopathology may be a function of clients' incoherent or unacceptable life-stories while psychotherapy may be a process whereby clients' narratives are restored to form more coherent, more adaptive and more complete narratives. Narrative psychologists, thus, hypothesize that the client's level of narrative coherence is higher at the end of successful psychotherapy compared to its initial stages.

Since coherence has not been previously investigated in the therapeutic context, this study was exploratory in nature and mainly focused on the degree to which certain elements, considered to be indicative of narrative coherence in other disciplines, were manifested in the therapeutic context. To this end, a coding measure of narrative coherence in the therapeutic context was developed, hereinafter referred to as the Narrative Coherence Method. The Narrative Coherence Method allowed for the assessment of structural and thematic coherence in clients' micro narratives (the individual stories or event descriptions) as well as clients' macro narratives (the thematic story line which weaves together different stories) within the therapeutic setting. This novel method was subsequently applied to 17 sequential therapy sessions of one brief good-outcome client-centered dyad. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)