This study compared an affective (Gestalt two-chair intervention) and a cognitive-behavioral (problem-solving) counseling intervention used to help clients resolve intrapersonal conflicts related to a decision. Forty-eight people were randomly assigned to three groups: a problemsolving group (n = 16), a two-chair group (n = 16), and a waiting-list control group (n = 16). Trained counselors saw clients for two sessions. Subjects were pretested and posttested on measures of indecision and stage of decision making. A one-way analysis of variance revealed that the affective intervention was more effective than the cognitivebehavioral intervention or no treatment for reducing indecision. Both counseling approaches were more effective than no treatment in facilitating movement through the stages of decision making.This study is based on a doctoral dissertation by the first author. Appreciation is expressed to Gloria J. Lewis, who directed the dissertation.

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Creation of meaning events are in-therapy change episodes that occur when a patient seeks to understand the meaning of an emotional experience. A performance model of this task was developed in an earlier study. The present study was conducted to determine which client performance components distinguish successful from unsuccessful creation of meaning episodes. Measures of referential activity were also applied to the events and uncovered important features of the therapist intervention that accompanied successful meaning making. The implications of these results for psychotherapy are discussed.

The differential effects of a Gestalt counseling operation and empathic reflections of feeling on client depth of experiencing, change in awareness, and goal attainment were studied in a counseling analogue. Using four counselors and 16 subjects as their own controls, each of the operations was applied to each subject to facilitate resolution of personally meaningful conflicts. Results showed that depth of experiencing and change in awareness were significantly higher for the subjects following the Gestalt operation. There was no difference in the level of goal attainment following the two operations. The implications for counseling of the change in depth of experiencing and awareness for the subjects, characterized as focusers and normally self-actualized, are discussed.

Creation of meaning events are intherapy change episodes that occur when a patient seeks to understand the meaning of an emotional experience. Theoretical and empirical models of the patterns of change involved in creation of meaning events are presented. Three phases of the event with subphases are identified and illustrated. The next steps of the task-analysis of creation of meaning events are suggested.Research in psychotherapy recently has been advanced by the application of an information processing model to the identification and examination of specific emotional change events (Greenberg & Safran, 1987). This allows the previously diffuse variable of affective change in psychotherapy to be investigated with much more specificity. Research into affective processing requires the examination of the client and therapist behaviors that promote the emotional change proper to these events. Certain emotional change events have been identified, such as acknowledging emotion, arousing emotion, taking responsibility for emotion, and modifying emotion (Greenberg & Safran, 1987). Preliminary models of the patterns of change involved in these events have been developed.This article extends the investigation of an important emotional processing task, namely, creating the meaning of emotion. Clarke (1989) described the creation of meaning as the affective-cognitive processing in which a client engages when an experience highly discrepant with cherished beliefs Correspondence regarding this article should be addressed to (Catherine M. Clarke,