Innovative moments in grief therapy: reconstructing meaning following perinatal death

This article presents an intensive analysis of a good outcome case of constructivist
grief therapy with a bereaved mother, using the Innovative Moments Coding
System (IMCS). Inspired by M. White and D. Epston’s narrative therapy, the
IMCS conceptualizes therapeutic change as resulting from the elaboration and
expansion of unique outcomes (or as we prefer, innovative moments), referring to
experiences not predicted by the problematic or dominant self-narrative. The IMCS
identifies and tracks the occurrence of 5 different types of innovative moments:
action, reflection, protest, re-conceptualization, and performing change. Results
documented the process of meaning reconstruction over the 6 sessions of treatment,
and demonstrated the feasibility and reliability of analyzing narrative change in
this form of grief therapy, opening it to comparison with other approaches.