Constructivist · 1991
Post-rationalist cognitive psychotherapy
Change begins when the self distinguishes immediate experience from the way it explains that experience and reorganises its coherence.
Vittorio Guidano's post-rationalist cognitive psychotherapy is a constructivist, developmental and systemic model that understands the self as a process of self-organisation of meaning and not as a sum of cognitions, emotions or traits. Human experience is organised in the circularity between the “I”, which lives immediately and with affective charge, and the “Me”, which observes, explains and self-refers that lived experience in order to maintain personal continuity. Psychopathology appears when a Personal Meaning Organisation preserves its coherence too rigidly, restricts the integration of disturbing experiences and reduces the flexibility with which the person can recognise emotions, see themselves and understand others. Therapy works at the interface between immediate experience and explanation by means of self-observation, cinematographic analysis of episodes, the moviola, perspective shifting, reconstruction of affective style and developmental analysis of the person's history. The aim is to modify gradually the evaluation the self makes of its own experience, to broaden emotional differentiation and to sustain a more complex identity coherence without imposing an external version of reality. (Guidano, 1991; Guidano, 1987; Guidano & Liotti, 1983).
Theory of change
Change occurs when self-observation loosens the Me's evaluation of the I's experience and makes it possible to integrate new affective tonalities into a more complex personal continuity.
Core ideas
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The self is a circularity between experience and self-evaluation
Post-rationalism understands identity as a circularity between the I that lives and the Me that observes, explains and self-refers what is lived. Personal continuity derives not from a fixed essence but from the capacity to organise this circulation coherently enough across changes, discrepancies and life transitions. Reference: Guidano, V. F. (1991). The Self in Process.
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Immediate experience precedes the explanation that organises it
An emotion, an image, a sensation or a perception of oneself occurs before being integrated into a narrative explanation. Clinical work becomes more precise when it differentiates the experiential fact from the inferences the patient uses to make it comprehensible, because the explanation may protect an old coherence and leave out decisive information. Reference: Guidano, V. F. (1991). The Self in Process.
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Knowledge is constructive and self-referential
Every act of knowing reflects the observer's distinctions and participates in the organisation of the reality it seeks to understand. Guidano situates this thesis within an evolutionary and constructivist epistemology: the person does not copy an external order but constructs a reality capable of making their experience of living consistent. Reference: Guidano, V. F. (1991). The Self in Process; Guidano, V. F. (1987). Complexity of the Self.
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Psychopathology expresses a restricted organisation of meaning
Symptoms are understood as manifestations of an organisation of meaning whose flexibility, abstractness or integration has become restricted. The model avoids reducing psychopathology to mistaken contents or to static categories and attends to how one and the same coherence may take on more generative, neurotic or disintegrated dimensions. Reference: Guidano, V. F. (1987). Complexity of the Self; Guidano, V. F. (1991). The Self in Process.
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Personal Meaning Organisations guide the formulation without replacing singularity
The depressive, phobic, obsessive-compulsive and eating-disorder organisations describe frequent patterns of coherence, but they are neither diagnostic pigeonholes nor closed identities. Their clinical usefulness lies in guiding the search for invariants of emotion, attachment, self-image and reciprocity, while keeping the formulation open to each patient's singular trajectory. Reference: Guidano, V. F. (1991). The Self in Process; Guidano, V. F. (1987). Complexity of the Self.
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Emotion organises relevance and meaning
Affective tonalities are not secondary additions to an already formed cognition: they are part of the way a situation acquires relevance, is experienced as threat, loss, protection, judgement or ambivalence, and is integrated into an image of oneself. Therapeutic work seeks to broaden the recognition and differentiation of that affective organisation. Reference: Guidano, V. F. (1991). The Self in Process; Guidano, V. F., & Liotti, G. (1983). Cognitive Processes and Emotional Disorders.
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The moviola turns the scene into a transformable object of observation
By reconstructing a scene through slow motion, enlargement, rewinding and the reintegration of details, the moviola modifies the way the patient self-refers what has happened. The change does not come from an imposed explanation but from the possibility of observing an affective experience repeatedly from different perspectives and discovering previously excluded dimensions. Reference: Guidano, V. F. (1991). The Self in Process.
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The therapeutic relationship is a context of affective exploration
The therapeutic relationship makes it possible to activate and assimilate new experiences because it offers a living context in which expectations, resistances, needs for guarantee and patterns of reciprocity appear. The therapist does not merely teach strategies or correct beliefs: they sustain an exploratory collaboration that makes it possible to work on the disturbance without confirming its strange or pathological character. Reference: Guidano, V. F. (1991). The Self in Process; Guidano, V. F., & Liotti, G. (1983). Cognitive Processes and Emotional Disorders.
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Resistance protects a coherence that cannot yet change quickly
Resistance is interpreted as a form of self-regulation that tries to preserve the current coherence in the face of data that would demand an excessive reorganisation. This reading requires working with the pace and function of the defence, because an intervention that forces change may increase explanatory closure or disorganisation of the self. Reference: Guidano, V. F. (1991). The Self in Process.
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Developmental analysis broadens biographical continuity
Reconstructing the developmental history makes it possible to relate current experiences to early styles of reciprocity, boundaries of the self and ways of regulating affect, but the aim is not to find a remote cause that explains everything. Developmental analysis turns the biography into a field of observation in which the person can recognise how their organisation was constituted and how new meanings can be integrated without denying it. Reference: Guidano, V. F. (1991). The Self in Process; Guidano, V. F. (1987). Complexity of the Self.
Influences
- Constructivism
- Personal construct theory
- Evolutionary epistemology
- Attachment theory
- Systems theory
- Cybernetics and self-organisation
- Phenomenology / Hermeneutics
- Italian clinical cognitivism
Key references
- Guidano, V. F., & Liotti, G. (1983). Cognitive Processes and Emotional Disorders: A Structural Approach to Psychotherapy. Guilford Press.
- Guidano, V. F. (1987). Complexity of the Self: A Developmental Approach to Psychopathology and Therapy. Guilford Press.
- Guidano, V. F. (1991). The Self in Process: Toward a Post-Rationalist Cognitive Therapy. Guilford Press.
- Guidano, V. F. (2007). Psicoterapia cognitiva post-razionalista: Una ricognizione dalla teoria alla clinica. FrancoAngeli.