The Referential Process as a Common Factor Across Treatment Modalities

Abstract

Abstract. The paper emphasizes the need for a process component in psychotherapy research, and the need for a theoretical framework within which process measures may be designed and validated. The referential process, defined in the context of multiple code theory, provides a general psychological framework for understanding the mechanisms of therapeutic change in different treatment modalities. The referential process includes three major phases: arousal/activation; narrative/symbolizing and reorganizing/reflection. The paper reviews the theoretical roots of psychodynamic treatments, and several forms of cognitive behavioral treatments, including schema therapy for borderline personality disorder and exposure treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder, and shows how the phases of the referential process provide common mechanisms of change in each of these approaches. Computerized measures of the referential process, in English and Italian versions, which have been applied and validated in clinical and experimental studies, are discussed. Keywords: change mechanisms, referential process, computerized measuresThe field of psychotherapy research is in need of scientific evidence concerning the basic processes underlying emotional disorders and therapeutic change. Such evidence is needed to guide clinical work, and to develop new and more effective treatments. Comparing the outcomes of competing theories is not useful if we do not identify the psychological mechanisms that bring about the observed results. To provide evidence concerning the psychological processes underlying therapeutic change and to develop new and more effective treatment forms, research is needed in both experimental and naturalistic contexts-in fields such as cognitive psychology, affective neuroscience, psycholinguistics, and developmental psychology; as well as in the therapeutic context.In order to carry out such research in a way that will be applicable to clinical issues, an overarching theoretical framework is required. The study of internal psychological processes and variables, such as needs, desires, memories and perceptions, that figure in the psychotherapy process can be likened to the study of the fundamental constituents of matter in modern particle physics. Subatomic particles, like psychological processes, are known and assessed through the signals they send out and their observable effects. The advances in fields such as particle physics have occurred through development of a systematic theoretical framework that is constantly being re-examined and revised, with well defined concepts and relationships among the concepts; and with reliable and valid measures of external events from which inferences to these concepts and relationships can be made. The nature of the human emotional information processing system is at least as complicated as the nature of matter, but we know much less about it. Perhaps this is because it is more difficult to recognize how little we know in a scientific sense about emotional processes that we can ...

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“…Studying language also has the advantage of making possible the development of measures that tap the elaborative or dissociative processes used by people with respect to the emotions they are experiencing. This study takes as a point of reference the theories and research of Bucci (1997Bucci ( , 2013 and Pennebaker (1982Pennebaker ( , 2011, which connect the linguistic qualities of speech to specific psychological and interpersonal processes. Bucci (1997Bucci ( , 2013 (Maskit and Murphy, 2011;Maskit, 2012;Mariani et al, 2013Mariani et al, , 2020Negri et al, 2019) have developed computerized linguistic measures of what they call the "referential process, " which is based on Multiple Code Theory (MCT).…”

“…This study takes as a point of reference the theories and research of Bucci (1997Bucci ( , 2013 and Pennebaker (1982Pennebaker ( , 2011, which connect the linguistic qualities of speech to specific psychological and interpersonal processes. Bucci (1997Bucci ( , 2013 (Maskit and Murphy, 2011;Maskit, 2012;Mariani et al, 2013Mariani et al, , 2020Negri et al, 2019) have developed computerized linguistic measures of what they call the "referential process, " which is based on Multiple Code Theory (MCT). The referential process is the ability of human beings to translate the continuous and indistinct flow of emotional and sensorial experience into images and words, thus making it mentally manageable and communicable to others.…”

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