Innovation and stability within the dialogical self: The centrality of ambivalence

This commentary focuses on Ligorio's ( 2010) and O'Sullivan-Lago and de Abreu's ( 2010) work as an opportunity to elaborate upon discontinuity emergence and continuity restoration within the Dialogical Self. We depart from the pair rupture-transition as a unit of analysis for understanding the flow of change within the Dialogical Self and the centrality of ambivalence as a development catalyser to focus on the way change and maintenance of problematic self-narratives in psychotherapy are pictured by the innovative moments model. We have argued that innovative moments ( or i-moments) can be understood as episodes of rupture or discontinuity, since they challenge a person's usual way of understanding and experiencing (i.e., the problematic narrative), generating ambivalence or uncertainty. We have suggested that avoiding this ambivalence, by means of semiotic attenuation of i-moments, can foster the maintenance of the problematic self narrative. In fact, when ambivalence is not overcome, i-moments and the problematic narrative may establish a cyclical relation throughout the therapeutic process, blocking the self's development.
This article was supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), by the Grant PTDC/PSI/72846/2006 (Narrative Processes in Psychotherapy, 2007–2010) and by the PhD Grant SFRH/BD/46189/2008. We are very grateful to Carla Cunha for her comments on the first draft of this paper.
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