The wounded healer: exploring the role of therapists’ emotional woundedness in facilitating patients’ corrective emotional experiences

In this article the classical concept and the use of the 'corrective emotional experience' in psychotherapy is described. This concept is not widely accepted within the standpoint of contemporary psychoanalytic psychotherapy and object relations theories. It has an unfavorable reputation. However, this paper does not advocate discarding this therapeutic idea and action because it does have therapeutic value. The case is made that the search for the bad object, and patient's reenactment of early experiences as they had been, is a corrective emotional experience in that it is a reparative experience. Furthermore, the search for the bad object is necessary for attachment. In addition, the point is made that patients find and create the object, therefore, the corrective emotional experience must be viewed as something that patients find rather than what therapists do.

Models of brief psychodynamic therapy posit the corrective emotional experience as a key factor in therapeutic change. Although widely taught and used, these models do not have strong empirical support. This article proposes the client–counselor match as a facilitating condition for a corrective emotional experience and reviews the relevant evidence from attachment and interpersonal research. Overall, the notion of the corrective emotional experience has received some support from attachment research, which looks at complementarity of styles at the personality level. Interpersonal research, rather, considers complementarity of actual exchanges in therapy and has yielded mixed results. It thus appears that the validity of the corrective experience has yet to be established, notably through the use of a more fine-grained approach. One of the most famous yet controversial claims ever made in the psychotherapy literature is that of Luborsky, Singer, and Luborsky (1975), who suggested that all psychotherapies produce somewhat equivalent outcomes. Empirical research has since repeatedly tried to challenge this assertion; a host of studies have searched for individual dispositions of both client and therapist that may have contributed to Luborsky et al.’s null findings. At least 175 categories of client characteristics and 40 therapist traits have been studied as potential predictors of treatment effectiveness (Beutler, 1991), and it has been suggested that the client–counselor match accounts for a greater portion of the outcome than does any single characteristic of the client or of the counselor. The interaction between the two partners’ personal characteristics has thus become a focus in recent counseling literature (Beutler, 1991; Nelson & Neufeldt, 1996; Reis & Brown, 1999; Talley, Strupp, & Morey, 1990). The basic assumptions of at least two major theoretical fields converge to suggest that the interpersonal orientation of each partner is the key to understanding the client–counselor match: attachment theory (Bowlby, 1973, 1980, 1982, 1988) and interpersonal theory (Kiesler, 1982a, 1996; Sullivan, 1953a, 1953b). Both these theories assert that opposite or contrasting interpersonal orientations in the therapist and client are optimal for the process and the outcome of the treatment relationship, by virtue of the corrective emotional experience (Alexander & French, 1946, p. 294) they provide to the client. A corrective emotional experience is an experiential relearning through which the client can safely alter his or her rigid relational patterns by being exposed to new interpersonal experiences with the therapist (Teyber, 2000). This is consistent with the core propositions of short-term psychoAnnie Bernier and Mary Dozier, Department of Psychology, University of Delaware. This study was funded by a postdoctoral fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Correspondence regarding this article should be addressed to Annie Bernier, PhD, who is now at the Department of Psychology, University of Montreal, C. P. 6128, succursale Centre-Ville, Montreal, Quebec H3C 3J7, Canada. E-mail: abernier@udel.edu PROD #: 108015

The therapeutic use of pets has usually involved institutional visitation. Noting Freud's comments on the discovery of the profound connection between himself and his dogs, and recent research on the regulatory functioning sustained by a libidinal pair‐bond, this paper reports the therapeutic uses of the clinician's companion animal, a Labrador retriever, in a psychoanalytically oriented private practice. Patients were sitting up and seen once or twice a week. I argue that the containment of the treatment setting, attachment theory and a number of Winnicott's concepts – the good enough mother, the True and False Self, and the development of concern – are pertinent to an understanding of this approach to treatment, and that the right companion animal may contribute to the emergence of a True Self. The companion animal has the qualities of ‘devotion’, offers expressions of love and acceptance, tactile opportunity and responsiveness. I make a distinction between a ‘corrective object relationship’ and a ‘corrective emotional experience’, and take into account analytic debates about the ‘corrective emotional experience’. Through clinical vignettes I demonstrate the value of a trained companion animal as a psychotherapeutic addition in a private practice.

This paper records four stories that emerged from four group therapy members. These stories are stories of fundamentally broken hearts. I utilise this material to address two psychological phenomena in group therapy - self-disclosure and the corrective emotional experience. The overarching theoretical framework is the existential approach to group therapy, and the underlying theoretical assumptions of relational psychoanalysis applied to group therapy. In the context of the material I present several theoretical points. Some of the chief points are the notion of the “in-between-ness of healing” and the importance of two processes in healing - i) the process of telling the story (remembering) in such as way that it is relived both emotionally and physically, and ii) followed closely by a corrective emotional experience. The emphasis in this paper is that remembering and reliving in therapy is not enough and a corrective emotional experience is required. Broadening this perspective of the healing mechanism of a corrective emotional experience, a principle argument of this paper is that the therapeutic action in group therapy (as it can be in individual therapy) is not insight but a new relationship

The present study constructed a preliminary process model of corrective emotional experience (CEE) in an integrative affect-focused therapy. Task analysis was used to analyse 6 in-session events taken from 6 Japanese clients who worked with an integrative affect-focused therapist. The 6 events included 3 successful CEEs and 3 partially successful CEEs for comparison. A rational-empirical model of CEE was generated, which consisted of two parallel client change processes, intrapersonal change and interpersonal change, and the therapist interventions corresponding to each process. Therapist experiential interventions and therapist affirmation facilitated both intrapersonal and interpersonal change processes, whereas his relational interventions were associated with the interpersonal change process. The partially successful CEEs were differentiated by the absence of the component of core painful emotions or negative beliefs in intrapersonal change process, which seemed crucial for the interpersonal change process to develop. CEE is best represented by a preliminary model that depicts two parallel yet interacting change processes. Intrapersonal change process is similar to the sequence of change described by the emotional processing model (Pascual-Leone & Greenberg, ), whereas interpersonal change process is a unique contribution of this study. Interpersonal change process was facilitated when the therapist's active stance and use of immediacy responses to make their relational process explicit allowed a shared exploration. Therapist affirmation bridged intrapersonal change to interpersonal change by promoting an adaptive sense of self in clients and forging a deeper emotional connection between the two.

The author provides an overview of critical factors in the working phase of group psychotherapy from the perspective of psychodynamic theory. The discussion is organized around a clinical vignette to illustrate various types of intervention such as past, here and now, future; individual, interpersonal, group as a whole; in group--out of group; affect-cognition; and understanding--corrective emotional experience. The critical "windows into the unconscious," transference, counter-transference, and free association, are also discussed in terms of the clinical example. The author concludes his article with a few thoughts about the future of psychodynamic theory in relationship to group treatments.

EPA-1423 – Integration of schema therapy for cognitive behavioral therapist

El autor nos presenta las figuras humanas de María Magdalena como paciente y Jesucristo como psicoterapeuta en un encuentro rodeado de todas las características de una «experiencia emocional correctiva». a la manera de Frank Alexander, donde se produce la conmoción psicoterapéutica que transforma la vida y las formas de comportamiento de la personalidad de María Magdalena.

Therapist–Patient Relationship

‘Insight’ and ‘Corrective Emotional Experience’—Two Important Curative Factors in Psychoanalytic Group Therapy

(1990). The Corrective Emotional Experience — Its Place in Current Technique. Psychoanalytic Inquiry: Vol. 10, The “Corrective Emotional Experience” Revisited, pp. 433-454.

Most error estimates of numerical schemes are derived in the field of real or complex numbers. From a computational point of view this assumes infinite precision. For the implementation on a computer, the infinite number fields are quantized into a finite set of

The parts played by stimulation, support, and reality testing in the corrective emotional experience that constitutes the essence of psychotherapy are discussed and illustrated by 2 examples from group psychotherapy, which could not have occurred in individual treatment.

The author provides an overview of critical factors in the working phase of group psychotherapy from the perspective of psychodynamic theory. The discussion is organized around a clinical vignette to illustrate various types of intervention such as past, here and now, future; individual, interpersonal, group as a whole; in group--out of group; affect-cognition; and understanding--corrective emotional experience. The critical "windows into the unconscious," transference, counter-transference, and free association, are also discussed in terms of the clinical example. The author concludes his article with a few thoughts about the future of psychodynamic theory in relationship to group treatments.

Victim-offense mediation (VOM) is the process by which victims of crime meet the involved youth, in the presence of trained mediators, to process and address the emotional and practical ramifications of the crime. We aimed to qualitatively understand the experiences of victims and justice-involved youth during mediation sessions. Participants were recruited from one American and one Canadian mediation center, We combined field observations, semi-structured interviews, and multiple case study analyses with reflexive thematic analysis to explore nine cases of VOM participants’ experiences of the process and its potential link with various desired outcomes immediately following VOM. We generated five themes: Attempting to Satisfy Mediation Needs, Apologies, The Gravitational Pull of Victims, Finding a Healing Connection, and Corrective Emotional Experience & Challenged Expectations. We discuss these themes, the importance of relational processes, the importance and potential burden of the compelling victim, corrective emotional experiences, and the potential role of the mediators.