Dynamics of sense-making and development of the narrative in the clinical exchange

The present work is aimed at exploring the relationship between the
dynamics of sense-making carried out by the clinical exchange and the
content of the patient’s narrative. To this end the relationship between the
formal and functional mapping of a psychotherapy carried out by the
Discourse Flow Analysis (DFA) and the analysis of the patient’s narrative
provided by the Innovative Moment Coding System (IMCS) have been
compared. The comparison concerns a 15-session good outcome Emotion-
Focused Therapy (Lisa's case). Findings highlight the association between the
formal and functional characteristics of the clinical dialogue and the content
of the narrative. More in particular, an association between the U-shape
trajectory of the super-ordered meaning depicted by DFA and the evolution of
the innovative content of the narrative enucleated by the IMCS were found.