A dynamic look at narrative change in psychotherapy: a case-study using the state-space grids

This study aims to further the understanding of how innovative moments (IMs), which are exceptions to a client’s
problematic self-narrative in the therapy dialogue, progress to the construction of a new self-narrative, leading to successful
psychotherapy. The authors’ research strategy involved tracking IMs, and the themes expressed therein (or protonarratives),
and analysing the dynamic relation between IMs and protonarratives within and across sessions using state space grids in a
good-outcome case of constructivist psychotherapy. The concept of protonarrative helped explain how IMs transform a
problematic self-narrative into a new, more flexible, self-narrative. The increased flexibility of the new self-narrative was
manifested as an increase in the diversity of IM types and of protonarratives. Results suggest that new self-narratives may
develop through the elaboration of protonarratives present in IMs, yielding an organizing framework that is more flexible
than the problematic self-narrative.