Emotional Communication And Therapeutic Change

In this book, Wilma Bucci applies her skills as a cognitive psychologist and researcher to the fields of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, opening up new avenues for understanding the underlying processes that facilitate therapeutic communication and change. Grounded in research geared to understanding and demonstrating the clinical process (rather than "outcome") of analytic inquiry and therapeutic dialogue, Bucci’s multiple code theory offers clinicians, researchers, trainers, and students new perspectives on the essential, often unlanguaged, foundations of the psychotherapeutic endeavour.

This influential volume provides a comprehensive introduction to emotionally focused therapy (EFT): its theoretical foundations, techniques, and clinical practice. EFT is a structured approach to couple therapy that integrates intrapsychic and interpersonal perspectives to help couples create new, more satisfying interactional patterns. Since the original publication of this book, EFT has been implemented and tested with growing numbers of couples in a wide range of settings. The authors, who codeveloped the approach, illuminate the power of emotional experience in relationships and in the process of therapeutic change. The book is richly illustrated with case examples and session transcripts.

This volume examines expressions of such feelings as love, anger, and sadness, and highlights the individual and interpersonal processes that shape emotional behavior. It offers a lively and comprehensive discussion of the role of emotional expression and nonexpression in individual adaptation, social interaction, and therapeutic process. Drawing upon extensive theory and research, the authors provide coherent guidelines to help clinicians, researchers, and students identify, conceptualize, and treat problems in emotional behavior. This guide is an important resource for teachers, students, and researchers of clinical, counseling, social, personality, and health psychology, as well as practicing counselors and psychotherapists. It will also serve as a text in advanced undergraduate and graduate-level courses on emotion and interpersonal communication, and in graduate-level counseling and psychotherapy seminars.

Fascinating patient stories and dynamic exercises help you connect to healing emotions, ease anxiety and depression, and discover your authentic self. Sara suffered a debilitating fear of asserting herself. Spencer experienced crippling social anxiety. Bonnie was shut down, disconnected from her feelings. These patients all came to psychotherapist Hilary Jacobs Hendel seeking treatment for depression, but in fact none of them were chemically depressed. Rather, Jacobs Hendel found that they’d all experienced traumas in their youth that caused them to put up emotional defenses that masqueraded as symptoms of depression. Jacobs Hendel led these patients and others toward lives newly capable of joy and fulfillment through an empathic and effective therapeutic approach that draws on the latest science about the healing power of our emotions. Whereas conventional therapy encourages patients to talk through past events that may trigger anxiety and depression, accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy (AEDP), the method practiced by Jacobs Hendel and pioneered by Diana Fosha, PhD, teaches us to identify the defenses and inhibitory emotions (shame, guilt, and anxiety) that block core emotions (anger, sadness, fear, disgust, joy, excitement, and sexual excitement). Fully experiencing core emotions allows us to enter an openhearted state where we are calm, curious, connected, compassionate, confident, courageous, and clear. In It’s Not Always Depression, Jacobs Hendel shares a unique and pragmatic tool called the Change Triangle—a guide to carry you from a place of disconnection back to your true self. In these pages, she teaches lay readers and helping professionals alike • why all emotions—even the most painful—have value. • how to identify emotions and the defenses we put up against them. • how to get to the root of anxiety—the most common mental illness of our time. • how to have compassion for the child you were and the adult you are. Jacobs Hendel provides navigational tools, body and thought exercises, candid personal anecdotes, and profound insights gleaned from her patients’ remarkable breakthroughs. She shows us how to work the Change Triangle in our everyday lives and chart a deeply personal, powerful, and hopeful course to psychological well-being and emotional engagement.

This offers an integrated theory of communication, an alternative to classical, contemporary relational and inter-subjective approaches to treatment.

In previous books, Leslie S. Greenberg has demonstrated the importance of integrating emotional work into therapy and has laid out a compelling model of therapeutic change. Building on these foundations, WORKING WITH EMOTIONS IN PSYCHOTHERAPY sheds new light on the process and technique of intervention with specific emotions. Filled with illustrative case examples, the book shows clinicians how to identify a given emotion, discern its role in a client's self-understanding, and understand how its expression is furthering or inhibiting the client's progress. Of vital importance, the authors help readers think more differentially about emotions; to distinguish, for example, between avoided emotional pain and chronic dysfunctional bad feelings, between adaptive sadness and maladaptive depression, and between overcontrolled anger and underregulated rage. A conceptual overview and framework for intervention are delineated, and special attention is given throughout to the integration of emotion and cognition in therapeutic work.

This book pulls together new research and theory on the verbal communication of emotions by an international, cross-disciplinary group of recognized experts in affective communication. The book's goal is to provide readers with a comprehensive view of current research and encourage cross-disciplinary interaction. Topics include analyses of literal and figurative expressions for emotions, studies of the use of metaphor and other figurative expressions for emotion, analysis of the role of conversational partners in creating emotional meaning, and the effects of culture on emotional communication. The chapters are organized into three broad areas: background theory, figurative language use, and social/cultural aspects of emotional communication. Part I reviews fundamental issues in the verbal communication of emotion. Part II examines the role of metaphor and other figures of speech in emotional communication in both everyday language and psychotherapeutic contexts. Part III looks at ways emotions are embedded in larger socio-culture processes. Taken as a whole, the chapters provide a comprehensive look at the current state of research on the use of language in affective communication and suggest a number of interesting directions for future research.

EMOTION, PSYCHOTHERAPY, AND CHANGE represents a systematic attempt to map the various ways emotion influences the change process and to clarify the underlying mechanisms. A continuation of the editors' pioneering work, EMOTION IN PSYCHOTHERAPY, this volume makes a significant contribution to the development of a transtheoretical approach to affective change events. Viewing emotional experience as an active ingredient in, rather than a by-product of, the change process, the book explores the ramifications of this understanding for the conduct of therapy. A thorough review of the theory and therapeutic implications of emotion in human functioning precedes chapters by representatives of three different therapeutic traditions: cognitive-behavioral, psychodynamic, and experiential. Contributors identify and describe the key affective change events important in their respective approaches and then speculate about the underlying processes. Included here are detailed descriptions of relevant therapist-client interactions as well as clinical transcripts that vividly illustrate the process of change. A separate, theory-oriented commentary section follows in which the theme of emotion in psychotherapy is examined from the perspectives of cognitive psychology and emotion theory. A synthesis and critical analysis of affective change processes rounds out the volume. EMOTION, PSYCHOTHERAPY, AND CHANGE satisfies its practical and theoretical objectives by providing detailed descriptions of intervention strategies while explicating how and why these interventions work. Its attention to both theory and practice, and its synthesis of different theoretical traditions, make this volume essential reading for seasoned psychotherapists, researchers, and students.