Dominance and Nurturance in the Figurative Expressions of Psychotherapy Clients

Abstract

It has been recognized that clients' figurative expressions can be a window into the central themes of therapy and can reveal much about clients' affective experiences, thought processes, and perceptions of self and others. However, there have been few attempts to study the use of figurative expressions within a theoretical or conceptual framework that links the content of clients' figurative expressions to therapy outcome. In this article, we present the results of a study in which all client-generated figurative expressions relating to interpersonal actions from 2 1 cases of psychotherapy were selected and coded on Kiesler's (1985) Acts Version of the Interpersonal Circle. Results revealed a fairly clear and theoretically consistent relationship between therapy outcome and the location on the interpersonal circumplex of clients' figurative expressions of self actions.Researchers who are interested in studying the use of figurative language' in psychotherapy face a rather puzzling state of affairs. Much has been written about the important functions served by figurative language in this context (see, for example,

Dominance and Nurturance in the Narratives Told by Clients in Psychotherapy

“…Although we confirmed the association between better therapy outcome and relatively higher levels of client affiliation or friendliness that has been reported by other researchers (e.g., Henry, Schacht, & Strupp, 1990;Strupp, 1980aStrupp, , 1980bStrupp, , 1980c, our finding that the majority of high-change clients fell in the friendly-submissive to submissive portion of the circumplex on the basis of acts of self in their narratives and that there was a trend toward increasing submissiveness over time was unexpected. This finding was unexpected not only because it departs from expectations derived from interpersonal theory Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 06:05 05 January 2015 (i.e., that friendly-dominance is often associated with well-being and healthy adjustment; see Helgeson, 1994) but also because it does not parallel our findings from a similar analysis of the themes of dominance and nurturance in these same clients' metaphoric expressions of self acts (see McMullen & Conway, 1994). In our analysis of these metaphoric expressions, we found not only that five of the six high-change clients fell in the friendly-dominant to dominant portion of the circumplex (PA-NO) (the one exception being the client referred to in Footnote 5), but that there was no change over time in circumplex placements.…”

“…What is clear from Figure 2 is that five of the six high-change clients fell in the submissive half of the circumplex (primarily the friendly-submissive q~a d r a n t )~ while all of the seven 5As is clear in Figure 2, one high-change client fell in the BC octant on the basis of her narratives about self acts. As noted in McMullen and Conway (1994), this client was the most symptomatically distressed at the beginning of therapy and was still more distressed than most clients in the sample at the end of therapy. In other words, while she may have made substantial improvement over the course of therapy, she was still relatively more distressed than most clients at the end.…”

“…As a way of further understanding the unexpected findings for the highchange clients, we also examined the friendly-dominant to dominant content of these clients' metaphoric expressions found in our previous study (McMullen & Conway, 1994). What appeared most obvious from this examination was that many (although certainly not all) of these figurative expressions were encapsulations of more enduring interpersonal patterns and personal characteristics (what Siegelman [1990] refers to as metaphors of the self or metaphors of the whole person), e.g., "I played mother and housekeeper," "I'm the support person for the universe," "I'm an open person and kind of wear my heart on my sleeve," "I thought I could be his savior," "Everything I did, I was the little star," "I've always got to win."…”

“…logical health. We also know from our previous analysis of the figurative language (mainly metaphors) used by the sample of clients in the present study that the majority of low-change clients fell on the hostile half of the circumplex while the majority of clients classified as high-change fell in the friendlydominant to dominant portions of the circumplex on the basis of their figurative expressions of self (but not others') acts (see McMullen & Conway, 1994). These results are in keeping with Strupp's findings (1980aStrupp's findings ( , 1980b) that negativism, hostility, and resistance are associated with negative therapeutic outcomes and with the general notion that friendly-dominant attributes (e.g., achievement, self-confidence, extraversion, and affiliativeness) are associated with well-being and healthy adjustment in our society.…”

When Skill and Wisdom Merge

“…Unlike much of the empirical research on the use of metaphor in psychotherapy that focuses on how client-or therapist-generated metaphoric language is employed (e.g., Angus & Rennie, 1988;Levitt, Korman, & Angus, 2000;McMullen & Conway, 1994;Tay, 2016), Hamburg's case studies are in keeping with a theoretically-based, practice-oriented literature that has connections to the work of Milton Erickson. In this latter literature, the focus is on indirect messaging (e.g., use of allegory) as a way of facilitating client change and on the employment of often seemingly simple or actually paradoxical tasks or exercises designed to provoke change in entrenched patterns of behavior.…”