Ambivalence in emotion-focused therapy for depression: the maintenance of problematically dominant self-narratives.

OBJECTIVE Ambivalence can be understood as a cyclical movement between an emerging narrative novelty-an Innovative Moment (IM)-and a return to a problematically dominant self-narrative. The return implies that the IM, with its potential for change is devalued right after its emergence. Our goal is to test the hypothesis that the probability of the client expressing such form of ambivalence decreases across treatment in good-outcome cases but not in poor-outcome cases. METHOD Return-to-the-Problem Markers (RPMs) signaling moments of devaluation of IMs were coded in passages containing IMs in six clients with major depression treated with emotion-focused therapy: three good-outcome cases and three poor-outcome cases. RESULTS The percentage of IMs with RPMs decreased across therapy in good-outcome cases, whereas it remained unchanged and high in the poor-outcome cases. CONCLUSIONS These results were consistent with the theoretical suggestion that therapeutic failure may be associated with this form of ambivalence.