Self-narratives of the client serve as a starting point in verbally oriented psychotherapies. Therapeutic work involves the reconstruction of the clients' self-narratives, with both client and therapist taking an active role: the therapist helping to elaborate and transform various aspects of the client's story by asking questions and offering interpretations etc. The therapist's involvement in constructing the client's self-narratives results in what is considered a joint construction of narratives. This book shows how such narrative interaction contributes to psychotherapy process by analyzing perspective shifts of speakers during the joint construction of narratives, using a novel discourse-based model of narrative perspective. Gathering empirical data from psychoanalytic psychotherapy over a number of years, the book also examines the analyst's role in transforming narratives by facilitating the client's perspective shifts. Joint Construction of Narratives in the Psychoanalytic Setting will be of benefit to scholars of narrative discourse, clinical practitioners, and to students of both narrative and psychotherapy.
In psychotherapy, the client's narratives serve as a starting point. Therapeutic work involves the reconstruction of such narratives, with both client and therapist taking an active role: the therapist helping to transform various aspects of the stories by asking questions, offering interpretations.
Eszter Berán was born in Budapest, Hungary. She completed her Masters degree at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, USA, and her PhD in psychology at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, 2010. She is currently an associate professor at the Institute of Psychology at Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Budapest.
Zsolt Unoka M.D., Ph.D., psychiatrist and psychotherapist, psychoanalyst, member of the Hungarian Psychoanalytical Society. Deputy director of the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy and the head of the Psychotherapy ward at Semmelweis University Budapest. Published papers in the area of psychoanalytic process research, and social cognition in borderline personality disorder.
