Constructivist · 1994
Cognitive Narrative Psychotherapy
Change opens up when the person transforms rigid prototypical narratives into more complex, multiple and projectable metaphorical meanings.
Óscar F. Gonçalves's Cognitive Narrative Psychotherapy is a cognitive-constructivist, narrative and hermeneutic approach that understands the person as the active author and interpreter of their own experience. People do not process experience only through logical thought; they organise their identity and their world through narratives, images, emotions and metaphors. The problem is not simply a cognitive distortion, but a rigid, impoverished or dominant personal narrative that limits possible meanings, reduces the complexity of experience and narrows the capacity to imagine viable futures. Its therapeutic aim is to widen the capacity to construct meaning and to develop alternative narratives that are more complex, alive and workable. The process is organised into five phases: recalling narratives, objectification, subjectification, metaphorisation and projection; through them, significant autobiographical episodes are recovered, their sensory and concrete texture is enriched, the emotions, thoughts and personal positions involved are explored, integrative metaphors are constructed and scripts for future narratives are elaborated.
Theory of change
The person changes by elaborating more coherent, complex and multiple narratives, able to integrate experience and orient new ways of acting.
Core ideas
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Human cognition is organised narratively
Cognitive Narrative Psychotherapy holds that human knowledge cannot be reduced to the logical processing of isolated propositions. People organise experience through accounts that integrate events, characters, actions, images, emotions, interpretations and expectations. Narrative thus constitutes a unit of meaning broader than the automatic thought and makes it possible to understand how identity, memory and action are articulated in everyday life. Reference: Gonçalves, O. F. (1994). From epistemological truth to existential meaning in cognitive narrative psychotherapy. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 7(2), 107–118.
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Therapy seeks alternative meanings, not a single psychological truth
The model shifts psychotherapy from a logic centred on correcting supposedly erroneous cognitions towards a hermeneutic practice of constructing alternative meanings. The clinical question is not to determine which interpretation of the patient's life is objectively correct, but to widen the ways in which they can understand, feel, narrate and inhabit their experience without being trapped in a single dominant version. Reference: Gonçalves, O. F. (1994). From epistemological truth to existential meaning in cognitive narrative psychotherapy. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 7(2), 107–118.
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Prototypical narratives can organise suffering
Certain autobiographical scenes acquire prototypical value because they condense themes that are later extended to new situations. These narratives can act as scripts that organise cognitive categorisation, the interpretation of relationships, self-image and the anticipation of future outcomes. Clinical work identifies those accounts not in order to reduce a life to an origin, but to understand which organisation of meaning is being repeated and how it can be transformed. Reference: Gonçalves, O. F., & Machado, P. P. P. (1999). Cognitive narrative psychotherapy: Research foundations. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 55(10), 1179–1191.
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Change is expressed in narrative coherence, complexity and multiplicity
Therapy aims to foster narratives that are more coherent, more complex and more diversified. Coherence connects episodes, affects and meanings; complexity integrates different modalities of experience, such as the sensory, emotional, cognitive and metaphorical; multiplicity widens narrative content and prevents a single story from dominating identity. The aim is not to reach a final closed account, but to develop narrative tools for going on constructing meaning throughout life. Reference: Gonçalves, O. F., & Machado, P. P. P. (1999). Cognitive narrative psychotherapy: Research foundations. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 55(10), 1179–1191.
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The five phases organise a progression from scene to future
The therapeutic process is structured into the recall, objectification, subjectification, metaphorisation and projection of narratives. The sequence leads from the recovery of a significant scene to its sensory and behavioural thickening, the exploration of its inner experience, the metaphorical synthesis of its meaning and the construction of new future stories. This organisation offers a clear clinical architecture without turning the process into a rigid application of standardised steps. Reference: Gonçalves, O. F., & Machado, P. P. P. (1999). Cognitive narrative psychotherapy: Research foundations. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 55(10), 1179–1191.
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Objectification widens experience without returning to objectivism
Narrative objectification incorporates sensory, behavioural and contextual detail in order to enrich the autobiographical scene. Its purpose is not to recover an objective photograph of the past, but to increase the differentiation of experience and prevent the account from remaining reduced to global labels, abstract conclusions or already closed interpretations. Concreteness thus becomes a route to widening the capacity to elaborate meaning. Reference: Gonçalves, O. F., & Machado, P. P. P. (1999). Cognitive narrative psychotherapy: Research foundations. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 55(10), 1179–1191.
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Subjectification integrates emotion and cognition within a narrative
The inner experience of a narrative includes emotions, thoughts, wishes, fears, appraisals and personal positions. Gonçalves integrates experiential strategies of activation, focusing and symbolisation with cognitive resources such as thought listing and the downward arrow, placing them within a significant narrative scene. Cognition ceases to appear as isolated content and comes to be understood as a dimension of the way the person constructs their experience. Reference: Gonçalves, O. F., & Machado, P. P. P. (1999). Cognitive narrative psychotherapy: Research foundations. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 55(10), 1179–1191.
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Metaphor organises complex configurations of meaning
Metaphors play a central role because they make it possible to condense configurations of meaning that are difficult to express in literal language alone. A root metaphor can link body, emotion, identity, relationships, actions and expectations within a structuring image, making the deep logic of a prototypical narrative visible while also offering a starting point for imagining alternatives. Reference: Gonçalves, O. F. (1995). Cognitive narrative psychotherapy: The hermeneutic construction of alternative meanings. In M. J. Mahoney, Cognitive and constructive psychotherapies: Theory, research, and practice, pp. 139–162.
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Narrative projection turns meaning into authorship
The elaboration of alternative meanings acquires clinical relevance when it can be oriented towards upcoming life experiences. Narrative projection invites the creation of alternative characters, new metaphors and future scripts that can be objectified, subjectified and rehearsed. This process strengthens the sense of acting and of being the author of one's own life, understanding agency as active participation in the construction of possible futures. Reference: Gonçalves, O. F., & Machado, P. P. P. (1999). Cognitive narrative psychotherapy: Research foundations. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 55(10), 1179–1191.
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Dreams can be used as proactive narrative constructions
Dream work is integrated into the model as an opportunity to explore narratives of meaning, not as a method for deciphering universal symbols or revealing a predetermined unconscious truth. Dream images can be recalled, objectified, subjectified, metaphorised and projected, allowing the dream to contribute to the elaboration of new possibilities for waking experience. Reference: Gonçalves, O. F., & Craine, M. (2004). From reactive to proactive dreaming: Cognitive narrative strategies in dream work. In R. I. Rosner, W. J. Lyddon and A. Freeman, Cognitive therapy and dreams.
Influences
- Constructivism
- Narrative psychology
- Hermeneutics
- Cognitive linguistics
- Constructivist cognitive psychotherapy
Key references
- Gonçalves, O. F. (1994). Cognitive Narrative Psychotherapy: The Hermeneutic Construction of Alternative Meanings. Journal of Cognitive Psychotherapy, 8(2).
- Gonçalves, O. F. (1994). From epistemological truth to existential meaning in cognitive narrative psychotherapy. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 7(2), 107–118. https://doi.org/10.1080/10720539408405072
- Gonçalves, O. F. (1995). Cognitive narrative psychotherapy: The hermeneutic construction of alternative meanings. En M. J. Mahoney (Ed.), Cognitive and constructive psychotherapies: Theory, research, and practice (pp. 139–162). Springer Publishing Company.
- Gonçalves, O. F., & Machado, P. P. P. (1999). Cognitive narrative psychotherapy: Research foundations. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 55(10), 1179–1191. https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1097-4679(199910)55:10 3.0.CO;2-L
- Gonçalves, O. F., Korman, Y., & Angus, L. (2000). Constructing psychopathology from a cognitive narrative perspective. En R. A. Neimeyer & J. D. Raskin (Eds.), Constructions of disorder: Meaning-making frameworks for psychotherapy. American Psychological Association.
- Gonçalves, O. F., & Craine, M. (2004). From reactive to proactive dreaming: Cognitive narrative strategies in dream work. En R. I. Rosner, W. J. Lyddon & A. Freeman (Eds.), Cognitive therapy and dreams.