Emotion-focused psychotherapy for GAD: individual case comparison of a good and poor outcome case

Abstract

ABSTRACTEmotion-focused psychotherapy proposes that maladaptive emotional processing and a vulnerable sense of self is core to generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). This paper examined changes in clients’ maladaptive emotions and negative treatment of self in a good and a poor outcome case in emotion-focused psychotherapy. Transcribed sessions were coded using a measure of emotion derived from Plutchik’s wheel of emotion and a measure of negative treatment of self based on subscales of the Measure of Client Productive Processing. The changes observed across therapy for each client on each dimension were compared and contrasted and the trajectory of change plotted and described. The findings provide a preliminary model of change in GAD to inform future investigations of the change process in GAD and the development of a task analytic model of resolution for clients with GAD.