Working With Narrative in Emotion-Focused Therapy: Changing Stories, Healing Lives

Course overview

This book describes how the interaction between emotion and narrative creates a constantly evolving sense of self; how clinicians can address both narrative and emotion processes to help clients create more adaptive, empowering meanings and sense of self; and the importance of a strong therapeutic alliance. Engaging, in-depth case studies illustrate how the model can be applied to treatment of depression and emotional trauma. Angus and Greenberg's narrative-informed approach to emotion-focused therapy, successful psychotherapy entails the articulation, revision, and deconstruction of clients' maladaptive life stories in favor of more life-enhancing alternatives. Because emotions and narratives interact to form meaning and sense of self, the evocation and articulation of emotions is critical to changing life narratives. In psychotherapy, as in life, significant emotions are embedded in important stories, and all significant stories revolve around important emotional themes. Yet, despite the interaction between emotion and narrative processes, emotion-focused therapy and narrative-informed therapies have evolved as separate clinical approaches. In this book Lynn Angus and Leslie Greenberg address this gap and present a groundbreaking, empirically based model that integrates both approaches.