Problematic Internal Voices in Clients with Borderline Features: An Elaboration of The Assimilation Model

Abstract

The assimilation model is an empirically researched account of psychotherapy process, focusing on stages of clients' change. According to the model, traces of a person's experiences are manifested as agentic internal voices, and personality is understood as a community of such voices. This study focuses on how unassimilated voices appear clinically, and it applies the assimilation model to clients with borderline or dissociative disorders. We introduce the notion of subcommunities of voices, i.e., constellations of voices that appear unassimilated to each other. They are manifested as drastic shifts in self-states and availability of personal resources. We propose five distinctions and illustrate them with clinical examples: Voices or subcommunities (1) may be dominant or nondominant and (2) included in a community to different degrees. They (3) may express broader or more limited segments of experience, which (4) may be processed more or less thoroughly. Finally, (5) they may be avoided or engaged by the community to varying degrees.Theories of personality and psychopathology frequently represent people as communities of multiple roles, voices, internal objects, or self-states (e.g.). Internal multiplicity is represented in many theories of psychotherapy, for example, cognitivebehavioral concepts of automatic thoughts, intrusive thoughts, self-talk, and self-statements; psychodynamic concepts of internal objects, introjects, and states of mind; the humanistic focus on contradictory aspects of self and unrealized potentials; dialogical accounts of the self; archetypes; dissociative phenomena and borderline states; reflective thinking; reciprocal role procedures in cognitive analytic therapy; and two-chair work in gestalt

Therapeutic collaboration and the assimilation of problematic experiences in emotion-focused therapy for depression: Comparison of two cases

“…The APES describes a sequence of eight levels or stages of assimilation through which problematic experiences pass as they become increasingly assimilated into the self. These levels or stages represent anchor points in the change process, which is regarded as a continuum (Stiles, 2002;Osatuke & Stiles, 2006). Any advance in the APES (i.e.…”

A Case Study Investigating Whether the Process of Resolving Interpersonal Problems in Couple Therapy Is Isomorphic to the Process of Resolving Problems in Individual Therapy

“…The ongoing elaboration of this model has led researchers to shift from a predominantly cognitive framework that uses the lens of assimilation and accommodation (Stiles et al, 1990) towards an increasingly dialogical model (e.g., Stiles, 1997;Brinegar et al, 2006;Osatuke & Stiles, 2006;Stiles et al, 2006) that attends to changes in relationships between intrapersonal voices. The case presented here contributed to explicitly extending the model's applicability to the interpersonal realm by assessing and refining the model's ability to describe therapeutic change in couple therapy.…”

“…Observations from individual therapies have led researchers elaborating this model (e.g., Brinegar, Salvi, Stiles, & Greenberg, 2006;Brinegar, Salvi, & Stiles, 2008;Osatuke et al, 2004;Osatuke & Stiles, 2006;Stiles et al, 2006) to adopt interpersonal terminology (e.g., voices, community, dialogue, and inclusion) as metaphors to describe intrapersonal change processes, and to use these metaphors in describing the process of therapeutic change.…”

“…Using the lens of the multi-voiced self, the APES also describes the unfolding of mutual understanding and acceptance between intrapersonal voices . It chronicles a process of assimilating, integrating (e.g., Brinegar et al, 2006Brinegar et al, , 2008 or including (Osatuke & Stiles, 2006) a voice into the community of voices representing the accepted sense of self. This process yields more comprehensive and coherent narratives about the self (e.g., Osatuke et al, 2004;Osatuke & Stiles, 2006;Ribeiro, Bento, Salgado, Stiles, & Gonçalves, 2011), an achievement that has, in turn, been linked with psychological well-being (Baerger & McAdams, 1999).…”

Assimilation des expériences problématiques : une étude de cas de psychothérapie psychodynamique limitée dans le temps

“…Elles proviennent par exemple d'expériences traumatiques ou de relations destructives et sont considérées comme étrangères ou malvenues par le Self. Osatuke et Stiles (2006) ont développé le concept de voix dominantes et non dominantes. Les voix dominantes se réfèrent aux voix totalement intégrées dans la communauté qui sont facilement disponibles au sujet et dont la perspective se manifeste le plus fréquemment.…”