New Developments for Case Conceptualization in Emotion-Focused Therapy

Emotion-focused therapy (EFT) has increasingly made use of case conceptualization. The current paper presents a development in the case conceptualization approach of EFT. It takes inspiration from recent research on emotion transformation in EFT. The case conceptualization presented here can guide the therapist in listening to the client's narrative and in observing the client's emotional presentation in sessions. Through observing regularities, the therapist can tentatively determine core emotion schemes' organizations, triggers that bring about the emotional pain, the client's self-treatment that contributes to the pain, the fear of emotional pain that drives avoidance and emotional interruption strategies. The framework recognizes global distress, into which the client falls, as a result of his or her inability to process the underlying pain, the underlying core pain and the unmet needs embedded in it. This conceptual framework then informs therapists as to which self-organizations (compassion and protective anger based) have to be facilitated to respond to the pain and unmet needs, so that they might transform it. The conceptual framework can guide the therapist's thinking/perceptions and actions in the session.

Therapists can better facilitate emotional transformation when they understand the dynamics involved in the client's distress. Emotion transformation is facilitated by first helping the client to access the core underlying painful feelings and unmet needs embedded in them and then by helping the client to generate adaptive emotional responses to those unmet needs.